In 1939, on the eve of Hitler's invasion of Poland, seven-year-old Edith Milton (then Edith Cohn) and her sister Ruth left Germany by way of the Kindertransport, the program which gave some 10,000 Jewish children refuge in England. The two were given shelter by a jovial, upper-class British foster family with whom they lived for the next seven years. Edith chronicles these transformative experiences of exile and good fortune in "The Tiger in the Attic," a touching memoir of growing up as an outsider in a strange land.
In this illuminating chronicle, Edith describes how she struggled to fit in and to conquer self-doubts about her German identity. Her realistic portrayal of the seemingly mundane yet historically momentous details of daily life during World War II slowly reveals itself as a hopeful story about the kindness and generosity of strangers. She paints an account rich with colorful characters and intense relationships, uncanny close calls and unnerving bouts of luck that led to survival. Edith's journey between cultures continues with her eventual passage to America--yet another chapter in her life that required adjustment to a new world--allowing her, as she narrates it here, to visit her past as an exile all over again.
"The Tiger in the Attic" is a literary gem from a skilled fiction writer, the story of a thoughtful and observant child growing up against the backdrop of the most dangerous and decisive moment in modern European history. In the midst of all this, Milton offers a unique perspective, summed up in these words: "But always, shaking our heads over the marvel of being pulled away from a world drowning in chaos, we talk about our seven years in England. Isupposed I see them in my imagination as being like one of those brilliant days of January that take you by surprise in New England: a rare interval of inexplicable, astonishing sunshine at the very moment when you are least expecting it. Just when the year seems surely sunk in darkness, a morning breaks, radiant with contradiction of the winter, bright with the anticipation of the spring."