When I was a child, I read The Silver Sword by Ian Seraillier. I remember it vividly as the story of four children making their way across the ravaged landscapes of postwar Europe to find their parents. Now, more than half a century later, reading Henriette Roosenburg's gripping memoir of her postwar journey home to Holland from the Waldheim camp in Germany, I feel the same sense of awe at the human courage and indefatigable quest for home that pervades the book.

First published in 1957, and now reissued by Scribe Publications, The Walls Came Tumbling Down begins with an Introduction to set the context and introduce the four companions who were liberated by the Soviet Army from the Waldheim Concentration Camp in May 1945. They were three young women who were members of the Dutch resistance, caught by the Gestapo and sentenced to death—Nell; Joke (pronounced Yokuh); the narrator Henriette Roosenburg codenamed 'Zip'; and Dries, a merchant seaman caught trying to escape to Britain in 1944 and also sentenced to death. All four were members of the Nacht and Nebel ('Night and Fog') group of political prisoners (NNs) who were treated more harshly than any others and whose whereabouts were always obscured in order to magnify the deterrent against resistance. This Introduction includes a remarkably restrained description of their brutal treatment and the ways in which they managed to communicate despite solitary confinement. Although at all times Roosenburg understates the horror, the narrative also includes a sobering explanation of the (strictly forbidden) embroidery that they did, using needles stolen when they were forced to mend uniforms and socks for the German army,

From the very beginning, I also managed to hold onto a square linen handkerchief of my father's that I happened to have when I was caught. As time went on, this piece of linen became more and more valuable, for as I passed through each prison I embroidered in small characters the name, my cell number, and dates, plus in a half circle around them, the song we associated with that particular jail, and some microscopic drawings of the things that happened to us. (p.9)

So, for example, when they were at a prison near Aachen in September 1944, 'Zip' embroidered a crude drawing of a gun (in field-grey thread pulled out of uniforms I was supposed to mend) to convey the fact that we heard what we thought was Allied gunfire.

The Introduction concludes with the harrowing ten days when the liberation of the camp was imminent and they did not know if the rumour was true that they would be executed beforehand as ordered by Himmler. (It was true, and in the dying days of the war that order was indeed carried out in other camps.)

The memoir then begins with the group's freedom, though it was a circumscribed freedom. Despite their yearning for home and their desperate anxiety to know the fate of their families, they could not just set off for Holland. With millions of displaced persons (DPs) and slave labourers throughout Europe, there were constraints against movement, both official and practical. Transport was chaotic or non-existent; airfields and bridges had been destroyed; and debris blocked roads and river crossings (even if a vehicle or boat could be found). Because of the Nazi policy of concealing the existence of the NNs, they were all undocumented so they had no identity papers, which were essential when the Allies were keen to round up any Nazis and their sympathisers. To make matters worse for the Dutch DPs, the Nazi blockade of Holland caused the 1944-45 famine known as the Hongerwinter, and although the Allies were flying mercy missions and organising relief operations, they deferred repatriation until the famine was brought under control. The camp inmates were also in perilous health and very weak. With their tormentors gone, camp inmates raided the kitchens and stores in the camp but...

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The author was a Dutch resistance fighter during WWII, arrested in 1944 and sentenced to die as a "Night and Fog" (NN) prisoner. Such prisoners were in a special category set up by Hitler for those from occupied territories who tried to undermine the German war effort. They were, upon capture, to be brought to Germany "by night and fog" for trial by special courts, a process that circumvented conventions governing the treatment of prisoners. Transferred from prison to prison, they were the least desirable among non-concentration camp prisoners and were starved while being isolated and neglected in filthy cells. In May, 1945, Henriette's prison in Waldheim was liberated by Russians, and she and her small group of fellow Dutch NN prisoners started the 400 mile trip home, walking and pulling carts with their meager belongings, hitching when possible and using a boat to row down the Elbe. It took several more weeks, time in a displaced-persons camp, and some conniving, but they finally managed to get a lift from Brussels into northern Holland, which had been suffering from a war-time famine and into which no one was being sent home pending a fix for the food crisis.

This was a book recommended in "1000 Books to Read Before You Die" by James Mustich, and I managed to get a copy via interlibrary loan. Published in 1957 while Henriette was working as a journalist in New York City, it details a side of the war rarely mentioned because of the emphases (rightly) on the Holocaust proper. The descriptions of the prisons, the treatment of political prisoners, and the conditions they found in the countryside during the first months after the war are a moving look at look at the physical and psychological damage of war and the camaraderie that can arise amidst the little joys of sudden freedom. And the struggles faced by Henriette and her friends highlight the difficulties in repatriating millions of survivors, especially in a broken world where communication, transportation, and supplies are limited. I admit it, I cried at the end. ( )

This is a very good book about four people journeying home after the second world war. The heroes in the book were all sentenced to death by the Germans, and were waiting for their punishment in prison. Thankfully, the war ended before they could be executed. Their greatest wish is to go home, and they do this by their own clever plans, bravery and fulhardiness. ( )