Readers of all generations have grown up on The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier's best-selling tale of children under wartime occupation, but few know the real life stories of the children and teenagers who went further and actually stood up to the Nazis. Here, for the first time, Monica Porter gathers together their stories from many corners of occupied Europe, showing how in a variety of audacious and inventive ways children as young as six resisted the Nazi menace, risking and sometimes even sacrificing their brief lives in the process: a heroism that until now has largely gone unsung. These courageous youngsters came from all classes and backgrounds. There were high school drop-outs and social misfits, brainy bookworms, the children of farmers and factory workers. Some lost their entire families to the war, yet fought on alone. Often more adept and fearless at resistance than adults, they exuded an air of guilessness and could slip more easily under the Nazi radar. But as nets tightened, many were captured, tortured or imprisoned, some paying the highest price - a life cut short by execution before they had even turned eighteen. These children were motivated by different ideals; patriotism, political conviction, their Christian beliefs, or revulsion at the brutality of the Third Reich. But what united them was their determination to strike back at an enemy which had deprived them of their freedom, their dignity - and their childhood.

In March 1944, eleven divisions of German troops marched into Hungary. Thousands of Jews were rounded up and deported to death camps. Desperately, they sought foreign diplomatic relations, false identity papers, and hiding places. Vali Racz R���¡cz was a successful singer and film actress, the darling of the Hungarian public. Since she was young, beautiful, and safely Aryan, the Nazis represented no particular threat to her, but she was horrified by the persecution of the Jews, many of whom were friends and mentors. Risking her own life, she turned her villa in Buda into a secret refuge. Monica Porter traces both the life of her remarkable and courageous mother and a fascinating period in Hungarian history. In September 1991, the Jewish people's highest expression of gratitude was conferred upon Vali Racz in Jerusalem: the title of 'Righteous among the Nations'.