The Silver Sword

Ian Serraillier’s 1956 The Silver Sword is a work of historical fiction set in Europe during and immediately after World War II. It is aimed at an audience of middle-grade readers. Serraillier, a teacher, novelist, and poet, worked as an air raid warden during the war; he was a conscientious objector to the conflict. The Silver Sword is his most popular work. It was adapted to television by the BBC in 1957 and again in 1971. The novel traces the journey of the Balickis, a Polish family who are separated through warfare, imprisonment, and forced labor. The three Balicki children, Ruth, Edek, and Bronia, as well as their friend Jan, travel across Poland and then through Germany to reach Switzerland, where they hope to find Ruth, Edek, and Bronia’s mother and father, Joseph and Margrit. The novel explores the traumatic and destructive nature of war, the importance of family and friends, and the resilience and resourcefulness of war survivors.

This guide refers to the New Windmill Series 1957 hardcover edition.

Plot Summary

Joseph Balicki, the headmaster of a school in Warsaw, Poland, turns a portrait of Adolf Hitler to the wall as he teaches. He is reported, arrested, and imprisoned in Zakyna camp as a political prisoner. Conditions are harsh at Zakyna; the men are freezing and malnourished. Joseph struggles with illness. When he recovers, he manages to escape by striking a guard unconscious with an improvised slingshot, putting on the guard’s Nazi uniform, and hiding in a luggage cable car leaving town. He hides with a Polish family, and eventually walks through a mountain range and back to Warsaw, which takes weeks.

While Joseph has been imprisoned, Margrit Balicki, Joseph’s wife, has been arrested and deported as part of a German labor program. Their three children, Ruth, Edek, and Bronia, live in the cellar of a bombed-out ruin after their house is destroyed by the Nazis. Edek steals food and supplies from the Nazis, while Ruth starts to run a school for the local children. In summer, they live in the forest. One day, Edek does not return; Ruth correctly assumes that he has been caught and arrested by the Nazis. When winter arrives, Ruth and Bronia return to the city’s ruins.

When Joseph arrives in Warsaw, he finds the city—including his family’s home and his school—in ruins. He looks for his children but finds no trace of them. Joseph meets a child called Jan, who is an orphan and a pickpocket with a kitten and instructs him to tell his children, Ruth, Edek, and Bronia, if he ever encounters them, to go to Switzerland. Joseph gives Jan a letter opener in the shape of a small silver sword, which he finds in the ruins of his old home; he remembers that it was a gift he gave to his wife, Margrit.

By chance, much later, Jan collapses outside of Ruth and Bronia’s shelter. Ruth brings him inside and revives him with some soup. The war has finally concluded after a particularly brutal period of warfare in Poland between Polish resistance fighters and the Russian army against the Nazis. Ruth finds out from a Russian soldier that Edek is at the Posen transit station. Soon after, Ruth sees the silver sword that Joseph gave to Jan. Ruth recognizes it; Jan recalls Joseph and his message for his children to join him in Switzerland.

Ruth, Bronia, and Jan (as well as Jan’s rooster, Jimpy) set off on foot toward Posen and Switzerland. They walk for miles and occasionally get rides from passing trucks. They learn in Posen that Edek was being treated in a tuberculosis hospital, but that he left. Incredibly, they find him at a nearby refugee camp. Jimpy, Jan’s rooster, is killed in a scuffle of starving children when Jan drops his soup bowl on the ground.

Despite Edek’s ill health, the group continues towards Switzerland, traveling to Berlin on a train crowded with other refugees. Edek and Jan get in a scuffle on the train when Jan scoffs at Edek’s story of escaping Germany clinging to the bottom of a truck, which Edek claims he froze to after the truck went through a puddle.

In Berlin, they stay in the “Poland” section of a refugee camp, which is in a disused cinema. Jan befriends a chimpanzee called Bistro, which has escaped from the Berlin Zoo and is causing chaos. Jan receives a reward for returning the chimpanzee to the zoo, and the children are invited to dinner with an English officer who is impressed with Jan’s handling of the situation.

The group continues towards Switzerland, stopping for a while to camp when Edek becomes sick again. Edek follows Jan to an attempted train robbery, which is pinned on Edek. Jan goes to the American soldiers and admits that he, not Edek, was attempting to rob the train by tampering with the stop signal. Jan is imprisoned for a week.

They continue when Jan is released. They stay on the farm of a German couple, the Wolffs, in return for helping out. The local Burgomaster receives orders to send all Polish refugees back to Poland, and the children escape by night in canoes belonging to the Wolffs. Ruth and Bronia are almost caught by an American soldier who wades into the river to grab them, but they manage to get away. They realize that the Wolffs’ dog, Ludwig, who is very attached to Jan, has stowed away in Edek and Jan’s canoe. Jan is thrilled.

Jan realizes that he left the silver sword, their talisman, at the Wolffs’ farm. Ignoring Ruth’s instructions to leave it, he and Ludwig sneak off in the night to go back for it. Edek’s health deteriorates rapidly. They flag down a helper, who comes in the form of an American soldier of Polish descent called Joe. Joe reveals that he has Jan and Ludwig in the back of the truck. He drives the group to the Swiss border, where there is a refugee camp. The group is denied entry into Switzerland, which is just across Lake Constance, until the camp administration receives letters from both Kurt Wolff (containing the silver sword and an explanation of the children’s situation) as well as a letter from Joseph Balicki, who still hopes desperately that his children will find their way there. They are granted entry into Switzerland; Joseph arranges to collect his children in a few days.

On the day Joseph is due to come, the children walk along the shore of the lake, looking for a sign of their father’s boat. Edek, who is exhausted, rests against a dinghy on the shore by a stream while the others continue. Suddenly, an immense storm hits. Edek is washed into the lake in the dinghy, and the stream becomes a raging torrent. Ludwig panics and runs into the forest, and Jan climbs onto a high rock to try to see him. Ruth is enraged that Jan is looking for his dog rather than Edek and yells at him that he is selfish. Jan realizes that he cares for Ruth more than Ludwig and accompanies the sisters in a boat they find on the shore to save Edek, who has been swept into the middle of the lake.

Ruth awakens in the berth of a ship. Her father is there. Jan saved Edek, and then the boat bearing Joseph Balicki saved the four children. Margrit Balicki is there too. Ruth is overjoyed. Margrit and Joseph adopt Jan. The family lives in the Polish house of a Swiss boarding school established for war orphans. Ruth becomes a teacher, and Edek becomes an engineer. Jan continues to love animals, and Bronia adjusts well to her new life. Margrit treasures the silver sword letter opener that helped her family to reunite.