A second-generation Holocaust survivor spoke to Middle School boys in February about her mother’s escape from Hungary in the early years of World War II.
 
Michelle Bisson, author of the award-winning picture book Hedy's Journey: The True Story of a Hungarian Girl Fleeing the Holocaust, told boys that her mom was still a teenager when her family made the difficult decision to leave their home.
 
Bisson said Hungarian Nazis had already deported a cousin, Marika, to Germany. And they had forced Bisson’s grandfather to work in a labor camp. He was released, but the family knew that they would not be so lucky in the future.
 
Crowded trains meant the family could secure only three train tickets to the coast of Portugal, where a boat would take them to America. That meant Bisson’s mother, Hedy, then just 16-years-old, had to travel through Nazi Germany alone in 1941.
 
Bisson’s book recounts Hedy’s dangerous travel in the days before she met up with her family in Portugal, where they eventually secured passage to America aboard an overcrowded ship.
 
Bisson visited Brunswick in observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.