Interrupted Journeys

 AUD $20.00 + Postage

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, leaving behind their parents, families and everything familiar, and sought refuge in Australia. These newcomers were followed by other groups of young people from war-torn Europe whose life journeys were “interrupted”, in fact totally and permanently changed, as a result of Hitler’s Reich.

They included children who escaped to Britain on the famed “Kindertransports” (many of whom came to Australia as young adults after the war’s end), and others who had spent the war years in hiding or in Nazi concentration camps. There were also friendly “enemy aliens” like the Dunera Boys, who were interned in Australia; and the (non-Jewish) Vienna Mozart Boys’ Choir, internationally known child singers, trapped in Australia by the outbreak of war. The book reveals not only their remarkable wartime stories, but also describes how many of these young refugees from Nazism made Australia their permanent home.