Then / Gleitzman, Morris

In early 1940s Poland, ten-year-old Felix and his friend Zelda escape from a cattle car headed to the Nazi death camps and struggle to survive, first on their own and then with Genia, a farmer with her own reasons for hating Germans.

After Nazi soldiers commandeer their orphanage in Poland, young Felix escapes with his friend Zelda, but the safe places the pair finds to hide quickly turn dangerous, and the orphans must remain on the run to avoid capture and death in a concentration camp.