Interrupted Journeys: Young Refugees From Hitler's Reich

As the dark storm clouds of World War II gathered over Europe, some 10,000 young German, Austrian and Czech Jews fled Nazi oppression in their homeland to seek refuge in Britain, America and Australia. Leaving behind their parents, families and everything familiar they fled to an unknown country and future in their fight for survival. Interrupted Journeys reveals the wartime stories of the Kindertransports and other child and teen refugees, also the trials and eventual triumphs of young people who survived the Nazi camps, or were in hiding, and who migrated to the same destinations, sponsored by private and government agencies, in the post-war era. Both groups have added richly to the life of their host countries. Alan Gill has drawn on several years of painstaking research and many hours of personal interviews to bring their stories to a new generation. Some of the accounts are very strange indeed. Like that of the Dunera Boys — low category enemy aliens shipped from Britain to Australia, where they were interned for nearly two years 'by mistake'. Even stranger is the saga of the renowned (non-Jewish) Vienna Mozart Boys Choir, who had the misfortune to be touring Australia when war began. The stories have a common thread of resilience and courage in adversity. In the case of the Kindertransports Gill also reveals the courage and sacrifice of the children's parents in sending their children away to an uncertain future.