In the same year, Germany annexed a significant part of the former Czechoslovakia, again resulting in a large number of refugees.

I miss him every day and always enjoy giving “his talk” to groups around Norfolk, sharing tales of his childhood in Nazi Germany, his freedom walk through Europe and his achievements in later life, so many recorded in my biography Escaping Hitler (Pen and Sword Books 2016). My father got up and saw these brown shirts, not people from our village, they might have been from Andernaach or other nearby town.They were gripping at times, a nice variety of accounts from different survivors/saviours, and some horrors of the war described in this book are hard to fathom as well! I show original photographs (some shown here), all illustrating personal moments of “Can this really be happening? Please Note: By their very nature, all signed books will have been handled several times before they get to you.

We were not fleeing the Luftwaffe’s Blitz in British cities, but primarily the likely prospect of a Nazi invasion of Britain. Many of these have subsequently gained credence by virtue of their constant repetition – however bizarre they may be. If you are considering gifts for the relative or friend who has everything, or someone who loves to read, especially if they are or have been Norwich residents, then Joe Stirling’s biography should be well received…. Joe was over seventy years old when, quite by chance, he learnt the truth about his parents' demise.One of the consequences of this continuous flow of stories is that, over time, increasing numbers of falsehoods and fabrications have emerged about Hitler. Equally, what became of those who escaped, where did they go, and what happened to those who did not get away? During this wave of violence organized by the state against the Jews, more than 100 Jews were murdered and 30,000 Jewish men were imprisoned in concentration camps.

But best of all we’re the reunions/meetings of escapees or their children, with the people who helped, at great risk to themselves. During an emotional ‘foot-stepping’ journey in September 2013, Scrivens also visited Günter’s birthplace, met with a school friend, discovered the apartment in Koblenz where he fled following Kristallnacht in 1938, drove the route of Günter’s walk through Europe, and retraced the final steps of his parents prior to their deportation to a Nazi death camp in Poland during 1942. In March of that year Germany annexed Austria; it was presented to the world as an “Anschluss”, a sort of merger of the two countries. They came across those dedicated to Joe’s parents, Ida and Alfred Stern, who both perished in Sobibor in the summer of 1942.In 1938 the deteriorating situation in Germany and the enormous increase in the number of people who had been made homeless led the American president Franklin D.