"She recalled that it was snowing gently when the Germans occupied her town in March 1939. An officer commandeered the family’s house."

"Residents were lining the streets silently, she said, and then, 'as if with one voice, they started singing our national anthem that started with the words "Where is my home?" I didn’t realize that our home was no longer ours, and I didn’t realize that this was the end of our happiness and the beginning of the occupation.' Vera’s mother queued up for four days to apply for the Kindertransport; then, one evening, she announced to her husband at dinner that the girls had secured seats and would be going to England. 'There was a deathly silence. Father looked shocked and terribly surprised,' Mrs. Gissing wrote in her memoir. 'All at once his dear face seemed haggard and old. He covered it with his hands, whilst we all waited in silence. Then he lifted his head, smiled at us with tears in his eyes, sighed and said, "All right, let them go."'"

From "Vera Gissing, Who Was Rescued by ‘Britain’s Schindler,’ Dies at 93/She was not quite 11 when train convoys organized by a London stockbroker carried her and hundreds of other Jewish children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II" (NYT).