One More Border: The True Story of One Family's Escape from War-Torn Europe

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom

One More Border is a unique narrative-cum-historical summary of the
plight of Jewish refugees in Eastern Europe in 1940. Set below
three-quarter-page color illustrations and small black-and-white
personal photographs is the story of how the Kaplan family—10-year-old
Igor; his little sister, Naomi; and their parents, Bernard and
Nadja—escaped from Memel in Lithuania through Russia by train and
thence to Kobe and Vancouver by ship. A companion text with historical
black-and-white photographs accompanies the personal narrative and
occupies nearly as much space. A condensed but clear historical record
sets the family’s experience within the context of the wider events of
World War II, the Holocaust, and the refugee situation.

Author and lawyer William Kaplan is Igor Kaplan’s son. The
life-saving visas that permitted the Kaplans to leave Lithuania were
issued by the now-famous Japanese consul in Lithuania. Mr. Sugihara had
been ordered by his government to return to Japan, and the Kaplan visas
he wrote and stamped in his car as he pulled away with his own family
were the last to be issued in Lithuania.

This impressive, true-life adventure story is highly recommended.