Map of Central Europe and David’s Routes

The large map showing Central Europe should be below.The map of Bulgaria should be in the column.

The following is a map of central Europe in the modern day. By searching on the Internet, I found out that “Salonica” is just another name for Thessalonica, Greece (A).  With this information, I believe that the camp that David escaped from was most likely a smaller one in Bulgaria, since it says in the novel that it took David about five days to get there. The camps that were in Bulgaria were transit camps called Dupnitza and Gorna-Dzhumaya, (see map of Bulgaria) and either one could have been the camp that David was in.

From Thessalonica, David would have taken a long ship ride to Italy and most likely have landed somewhere near Taranto or Lecce (see map). I drew these lines showing David’s route because there are parts in the novel where David describes a peninsula and the coastline on his left side.  He also stops in Naples and Milan on his way northwest (he follows the coastline and position of the sun). Eventually he goes north into Switzerland, gets a ride to Frankfurt, and finally goes north to Copenhagen (København on the map), Denmark. 

As I am a visual learner, this helps me better understand how far David had to travel and the route he took to find his mother. The reason I included this map is because before seeing it, I didn’t really understand the route David took, I just knew the names of a bunch of cities and towns mentioned in the novel.  Using the scale, I think that David traveled about 2400 km on land and 1500 km by water (this is an approximation because I do not know exactly what routes he took).

Source: Google Maps. I searched “Salonica” and got “Thessalonica, Greece”.  Using descriptions from the novel, I thought about where the ship from Salonica may have landed, and then looked back through the novel to see towns that David passed through on his way to Copenhagen. I used Google Directions and the included scale for an approximation of David’s journey. The source I used to find the Bulgarian concentration camps was the Jewish Virtual Library. The images of the camp locations are from Google Maps and GeographicGuide.net. (please see my Works Cited lists below)