Reading childhood: The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier

‘The Silver Sword’ by Ian Serraillier, published in 1956, is set during and just after WW2. It’s the story of finding lost parents.

Four Polish children, three siblings, Ruth, Edek and Bronia, and an orphan, Jan, travel across Europe in the aftermath of War. The first three want to reach Switzerland in the hope of find their parents, both taken by the Nazis for acts of resistance. Jan is just looking for a family to join.

One wonders how much the author’s personal experience played in this choice of story. His father died as a result of the 1918 flu pandemic, when Serrailier was only 6.

Like the best fiction about WW2, The Silver Sword asks the reader to understand how a personal humanity survives in the face of brutality. The difference here is that children are facing this challenge.

Placing children at the centre of this story allows Serraillier to show what an unformed mind makes of the landscape of war. He highlights how conflict can shape and warp the perceptions of those who live through it. The character who most obviously embodies this is the orphan, Jan. His view of the world is permanently damaged by the events of the German invasion and occupation, so that everything is seen through the prism of struggle and flight.

But, despite these horrors the children face, the sheer faith in humanity Serrallier has still shines through. As the children make their way across war-torn Europe, facing deprivation, danger and despair, at every point they meet people who go out of the way to help them, and who display touching faith in the power of love. The children’s benefactors and protectors come from every nation, including Germany. Indeed, the German couple that help the children are perhaps the most engaging adult characters in the book, having lost their two sons in the conflict.

The point I think Serrallier, a Quaker and conscientious objector, is making is that a basic decency is inherent within us.

The simple power of this point is helped by the fact that, although dark in subject matter, the Silver Sword remains a children’s book. Unlike adult novels, which deal with shades of grey, Serrallier deals with questions of right and wrong in black and white terms, in order to address the essential question, can good triumph over evil?

We have a main character, Ruth, the oldest sibling (although only 17), who is all bravery and sacrifice, who would and in many ways does, forgo everything for her siblings and her “adopted child” Jan. Her brother, Edek, displays the courage all young people imagine is inherent within themselves; he is brave, resourceful and kind. In an “adult” novel, these characterisations would be attacked as undemanding, but in this context, where readers have more patience for broader brushstrokes, it is a commanding device.

In many way, both in this and subject matter The Silver Sword is evocative of Ann Holm’s ‘I am David’. The clarity of view is something common to many of the best children’s book, the freedom, partly granted by a less critical readership, to cut through pretence and equivocation, in search of the truth.