The Child in the Tree

Titti Marrone & Daniela Vizzino

In 1945, in a small cottage outside London, Julius lives up in a tree. He doesn’t trust anyone except the four little girls he protects, just as he once tried to protect others during their time in the concentration camp. He climbs down only when Alice Goldberger brings him food each day. Julius is one of the twenty-five children of Lingfield House, all survivors of the camps and of war-torn cities. Alice, together with Anna Freud, takes on the immense task of helping them rebuild their shattered childhoods. “With care, love, and patience you can even loosen stones,” she says.

With tenderness and a thousand small gestures, including planting tulips with him, Alice slowly earns Julius’s trust. When he finally dares to come down from the tree, he also finds the courage to tell her about his terrible past, beginning his journey toward healing and living again.

As moving as it is true, this is the story of one of the twenty-five rescued children whose deep inner wounds were tended in the cottage laboratory of Lingfield House during the earliest days of child psychoanalysis.