Sonja's Story

The departure from Berlin in January 1941 was not a simple train ride; it was a desperate, clandestine operation organized under the ticking clock of the Nazi regime. For fourteen-year-old Sonja and the fifteen other girls, the transition from the familiar streets of Berlin to the freezing mountains of the border was a blur of trauma and cold.

As the very last group of Aliyat Hanoar to leave Berlin, these sixteen girls carried the weight of those left behind. The separation at the train station was a finality they could sense even then. Sonja’s memories of the journey are defined by a “mixture of terror, devastation, and hopelessness.”