Canada World War

“Don’t cry darling. We need this baby. You will see.” With these words from her husband, Zoltán, Ibolya Rechnitzer’s fear of being pregnant during the uncertainty of wartime is somewhat eased. But in November 1942, four months after their baby, Andy, is born, Zoltán is drafted into the forced labour service of the Hungarian army and Ibolya must cope, alone, as a single mother and a Jew facing persecution in Budapest. Her son gives her a reason to fight, and Ibolya protects him fiercely during the war and after, when she must make a crucial decision that will forever alter their lives.

England 1922. It’s been four years since Rudy’s brother Edgar went missing in war-torn France. Still deep in mourning and grappling with unanswered questions, Rudy and his mother struggle to move on. When the enigmatic Mariette arrives unexpectedly at the family’s manor claiming to be Edgar’s widow, and the mother of his child, Rudy urges her to stay, hoping she’ll shed light on the missing pieces.

With these last words from their mother, two little girls, Marguerite and her older sister, will begin a long wandering that will last two years. Equipped with a new identity, they must cut themselves off from everything that constitutes their familiar universe. Led from farms to convents, they learn to keep quiet, to pretend, to lie, to adapt and above all to keep hope, against all odds. The story that Marguerite Élias Quddus gives us takes one to the centre of it and lets us glimpse history through the eyes of a very young child.