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The School that Escaped the Nazis: The True Story of the Schoolteacher Who Defied Hitler
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About This Book
Named one of Book Riot's BEST BIOGRAPHIES OF 2022 The extraordinary true story of a courageous school principal who saw the dangers of Nazi Germany and took drastic steps to save those in harm's way. In 1933, the same year Hitler came to power, schoolteacher Anna Essinger saved her small, progressive school from Nazi Germany. Anna had read Mein Kampf and knew the terrible danger that Hitler's hate-fueled ideologies posed to her pupils, so she hatched a courageous and daring to smuggle her school to the safety of England. As the school she established in Kent, England, flourished despite the many challenges it faced, the news from her home country continued to darken. Anna watched as Europe slid toward war, with devastating consequences for the Jewish children left behind. In time, Anna would take in orphans who had given up all the survivors of unimaginable horrors. Anna's school offered these scarred children the love and security they needed to rebuild their lives. Featuring moving firsthand testimony from surviving pupils, and drawing from letters, diaries, and present-day interviews, The School that Escaped the Nazis is a dramatic human tale that offers a unique perspective on Nazi persecution and the Holocaust. It is also the story of one woman's refusal to allow her belief in a better world to be overtaken by hatred and violence.
Reviews
"Deborah Cadbury, drawing on her interviews with former pupils, tells this story with admirable plainness...It makes for a devastatingly affecting and moving book...Her chapters alternate between the nightmarish experiences of Jewish children in the Third Reich, and a kind of earthly paradise; this kindly run English institution with hot-water bottles, a vegetable garden, a gramophone club and Sunday violin concerts in the hall — the latter, as one pupil said, providing 'a unique and orderly situation as far removed from the chaos in Germany as it was possible to be'."
"Cadbury has constructed a lively and compelling narrative, although Essinger, deeply compassionate but strait-laced and outwardly rather severe, never quite comes to life as an individual...Many of the attempts to describe the 'Bunce Court spirit' are also a bit vague and idealising but perhaps the most striking is the suggestion of one former pupil that the school was animated by 'a complex amalgam of humanism, the Quaker faith, liberal values and Judaism, brought together by the mind of a woman whose one purpose in life seemed to be to serve children'...Another, who came from an English school where she had just learned about the Tudors and Stuarts, was amazed by a style of teaching that was 'more like a conversation' and required her to write essays on urgently topical issues such as 'American isolation and imperialism'...Cadbury also explores some of the techniques adopted at Bunce Court to try and get through to the more traumatised pupils...On one memorable occasion, gym teacher Hans Meyer was confronted by a boy who, we read, 'responded to his inner turmoil by flying into frenzied rages'...When Meyer tried to restrain him 'with a firm but loving embrace,' he spat in his face...So the teacher told him: 'Go ahead and spit."
"Though Anna Essinger (1879-1960) is largely forgotten, BBC producer Cadbury's compelling, often disturbing narrative will convince readers of her historical significance...In 1926, Essinger opened a progressive school where children and teachers lived together, sharing responsibility for education as well as discipline...It succeeded and received praise from local educational authorities...Most of the students were Jewish (as was Essinger)...When Hitler took power in 1933, most German Jews temporized, but the prescient Essinger immediately determined to move her school to Britain...Remarkably, she was able to bring 70 children to Bunce Court, an impressive if run-down country manor...In addition to lauding Essinger's dedication, Cadbury emphasizes the school's superior education...Students delivered lectures and performed plays, concerts, and operas for the community."
"BBC producer Cadbury delivers a stirring account of a German schoolteacher's efforts to build an oasis for children fleeing the Nazi advance across Europe...Anna Essinger, the headmistress of a progressive boarding school in Herrlingen, Germany, was quick to see the coming horrors of life under Hitler and arranged to bring 70 of her students, some as young as nine, with her to Kent, England, in 1933...Cadbury intersperses daily life at Bunce Court (which closed in 1948) with profiles of Anna's students, including Sidney Finkel, who saw his father die at Buchenwald; Leslie Brent, whose parents put him on the very first Kindertransport out of Berlin; and Sam Oliner, who lost his family in the liquidation of the Bobowa ghetto in Poland and was brought from a displaced persons camp in Germany to Bunce Court in 1946...Impressively researched and vividly told, this is a captivating portrait of courage and resilience in the face of unspeakable horror."
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