Improbable Truths

Making the apparently unreal sound real 

It’s often said that truth is stranger than fiction, and in my research for my second novel: The Child on Platform One I initially came across two improbable events: the rescue of hundreds of Czech children from under the noses of the Nazis by a London stockbroker, and a labour camp where Jews were allowed to put paint, sing, act and put on music concerts. Yet, there is documented evidence, not to mention eye witness accounts from those still alive, that both these extraordinary happenings took place.

I set myself the task of coming up with a collection of characters and a narrative that threaded them together. First I invented a young woman named Eva, a Czech musical prodigy whose Jewishness results in her being sent by the Germans to Terezin, a Jewish ghetto built on the site of an old Prague fortress.  But before she is transported, Eva manages to send her young daughter Miriam to safety in England under the care of Nicholas Winton. It’s a brave act, considering Eva may never see her daughter again.

But than I ran across a problem. Miriam is safe in England but another Czech girl, Hana, who Miriam has been corresponding with, is trapped in Prague after the war when the Russians come in. How was I to get Hana out of Czechoslovakia to join Miriam in England?

And this is where I came across perhaps the strangest, most unlikely truth of all: a three way hijack arranged by ex RAF Czech pilots looking to escape with their families to the west before the iron curtain descends. It was a remarkable story….

This is how Wikipedia describes it:

March 24, 1950: three Douglas DC-3s from Czechoslovakia were simultaneously hijacked by former Czech Royal Air Force pilots seeking asylum in the West. Most of the hijackers were the crew of all three aircraft. All three planes landed at the US Air Force Base at Erding, West Germany. 26 of 85 passengers stayed in West Germany to escape from the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. This was the first incident of mass hijacking in aviation history.

It was an extraordinary event but how was I to persuade my readers it had really happened? Well, apart from announcing in my ‘Author’s Note’ that the three way hijack was a real historical actuality, I felt the answer was to embed these incredible happenings in concrete, minute detail. So I invented other passengers, gave them idiosyncrasies and gestures and generally wrapped the whole narrative in sensory details to give it, hopefully a grounded aspect.

If you read the book, you will have to decide for yourself if my method works, but no-one’s complained yet …