"The goodbye scenes, they'll always be there. I don't think I was crying, but lots of the other children were. I had no understanding I might never see my parents again." - George Dreyfus, an orphan from Hitler's Reich
As the dark storm clouds of World War II threatened to engulf Europe, a small number of young German and Austrian Jews fled Nazi oppression in their homeland, leaving behind their parents, families and everything familiar, and sought refuge in Australia.
These young refugees were followed by other groups of young people from war-torn Europe whose life journeys were "interrupted", in fact, underwent total and permanent change, as a result of Hitler's Reich. They included children who escaped first to Britain on the famed "Kindertransports", teenage survivors of the Holocaust who spent the war in hiding or in Nazi concentration camps, friendly "enemy aliens" like the Dunera Boys, who were interned in Australia, and the Vienna Mozart Boys Choir, internationally renowned child singers, trapped in Australia by the outbreak of war.
'Interrupted Journeys' reveals not only their remarkable wartime stories, but also describes how many of these young refugees from Nazism made Australia their permanent home after the war ended and have since added richly to the life of this country.
Alan Gill has drawn on several years of painstaking research and many hours of interviews with the people who escaped Hitler's Reich and made Australia home. Their extraordinary experiences vary greatly, but their stories have a common thread of courage in adversity and remarkable resilience. Alongside their stories is revealed the enormous courage and sacrifice of the children's parents in sending their children away to an uncertain future, as well as some of the daring and inspiring acts of those who helped the young refugees escape Nazism and build a new life in Australia.
