The School that Escaped the Nazis: The True Story of the Schoolteacher Who Defied Hitler

by Deborah Cadbury

Overview

Named one of Book Riot's BEST BIOGRAPHIES OF 2022

The "devastatingly affecting and moving" 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 (The Times of London)
 
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 plan: 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 hope: 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541751187
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	02/20/2024
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	82,842
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Deborah Cadbury is the author of ten acclaimed books. As a BBC TV producer and executive producer, she has won numerous international awards, including an Emmy. She lives in London.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Introduction 5

Part 1 1933-September 1939

1 'I could no longer raise children in honesty and freedom' 13

2 '[Bunce Court] school falls short of the usual requirements' 43

3 'No match for the Raging Mob' 61

4 'The Gestapo arrived early one morning' 82

5 T did not trust a soul' 106

6 'The children were used to having everything taken away …' 128

7 'The only important thing was to save life' 148

Part 2 September 1939-July 1948

8 'How stupid to cry when the next minute I would be dead …' 183

9 'We were shocked when they came for the cook …' 200

10 'Everyone knew not to get on the death cars' 224

11 'It wasn't enough just to know …' 248

12 'What kind of animal had I become?' 285

13 'This was something the children should not see' 311

14 'The school turned me back into a human being' 340

Epilogue 365

Notes 381

Further Notes 416

Acknowledgements 422

Picture Acknowledgements 426

Index 428

Photo insert between pages 284 and 285

Editorial Reviews

"In The School that Escaped the Nazis, the British author and BBC television producer, Deborah Cadbury, provides a persuasive portrait of Anna Essinger as a lesser known heroine of the Holocaust and someone who deserves broader recognition…With her mix of idealism, pragmatism, determination and hesed – the Hebrew word for loving kindness – Essinger continues to set a compassionate example as we go about healing the newest generation of traumatised youths…"—Wall Street Journal

“[A] devastatingly affecting and moving book.”—The Times UK

“Deborah Cadbury tells the story of Anna Essinger and her extraordinary school very well. To one pupil, who had witnessed shocking violence in Germany, Bunce Court seemed like ‘paradise’. Cadbury’s book shows just why he thought that.”—The Daily Mail

“[F]ascinating and moving.”—The Guardian

“This is a thrilling and fascinating biography readers will no doubt find inspirational.”—BookRiot, “Best Biographies of 2022”

“A stirring account of a German schoolteacher’s efforts to build an oasis for children fleeing the Nazi advance across Europe. . . .  Impressively researched and vividly told, this is a captivating portrait of courage and resilience in the face of unspeakable horror.”—Publishers Weekly

“An inspiring, well-researched life portrait of a spectacularly heroic teacher.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Cadbury (Princes at War, 2015) tells the story of this remarkable school and its courageous leader as she details the lives of many of the children who made their way out of horror to a safe haven.”—Booklist

“This is an atmospheric portrait of an inspiring moment in dark times.”—The Sydney Morning Herald

“Quaker educators will value this historic account of Anna Essinger and colleagues who met the crisis during a dark moment in history and kept the lights on. The School That Escaped the Nazis illumines how a prepared group of adults transformed the hearts and minds of traumatized children.” —Friends Journal

“[Cadbury] does justice to this moving tale, whose narrative twists and turns and colorful characters would make a great movie.”—Forward

“What gives this book its immediacy and freshness is the fact that Deborah Cadbury has spoken to so many of the witnesses to a phenomenal story. The woman who brought an entire school to Kent from Germany, and saved so many children from the Nazis, was a completely heroic figure. This story is an uplifting reminder of how courage, high virtue, and intelligence can overcome even the most appalling odds. At many points, with tearful eyes, I cheered—it is a book which stirs up deep emotion, and high admiration, for the author as well as its subject.”—A. N. Wilson, author of The Mystery of Charles Dickens

“Anna Essinger’s wartime school for Jewish refugees reminds us of the lifelong impact which one person’s compassion and imagination can make on others—even in the darkest of times. Cadbury’s story packs a real emotional punch.”—Caroline Shenton, author of National Treasures

From the Publisher

04/04/2022

BBC producer Cadbury (Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking) 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. With help from local politicians and Quaker and Jewish groups, Anna transformed an old manor house called Bunce Court into a new school and eventually began accepting “waves of increasingly traumatised children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and then Poland.” 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. These and other youths ultimately found healing at Bunce Court, where students built greenhouses, grew their own food, and maintained the buildings and grounds. Impressively researched and vividly told, this is a captivating portrait of courage and resilience in the face of unspeakable horror. (June)

Publishers Weekly

05/01/2022

By now, almost everyone has heard the Talmudic teaching "whoever saves one life saves the world entire," famously repeated in the movie Schindler's List. During the grim years of World War II, stories such as Oskar Schindler's are the small bright lights in a world of death and destruction. The story of Anna Essinger and her school, relocated from Germany to England, saved the lives of dozens of Jewish children fortunate enough to have been sent there by their parents. Her dedication, resourcefulness, and deep sense of morality kept the institution she founded going through the very worst of times. In Cadbury's book, readers come to know in a very real way a woman whose dedication was not merely to educating but healing young lives. She seemed to intuit in the 1930s and '40s how to care for children and young people we would now say suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is a stunning read. VERDICT Cadbury's captivating book enhances an already voluminous body of WWII writing and is a testament to the best humanity has to offer. It has the potential to be a book club favorite.—Brett Rohlwing

Library Journal

Julie Teal carefully narrates the story of principal Anna Essinger, a woman of unflinching spirit who was determined to save the children in her school in Nazi Germany. With impeccable English that shifts effortlessly to flawless German, Teal creates a well-paced depiction of “Tante Anna,” whose prescient decision to move her school and students beyond Nazi reach—from Herrlingen, Germany, to Kent, England, in the early 1930s—proved to be a salvation for many. Letting each unsparing detail of Nazi cruelty land with listeners, Teal also weaves in accounts of other students across Europe, including Jewish boy Sam Oliner of Poland, who hid “in plain sight” until he finally made his way to England and to Essinger—the principal whose love of children never wavered. D.H.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2022 - AudioFile

Julie Teal carefully narrates the story of principal Anna Essinger, a woman of unflinching spirit who was determined to save the children in her school in Nazi Germany. With impeccable English that shifts effortlessly to flawless German, Teal creates a well-paced depiction of “Tante Anna,” whose prescient decision to move her school and students beyond Nazi reach—from Herrlingen, Germany, to Kent, England, in the early 1930s—proved to be a salvation for many. Letting each unsparing detail of Nazi cruelty land with listeners, Teal also weaves in accounts of other students across Europe, including Jewish boy Sam Oliner of Poland, who hid “in plain sight” until he finally made his way to England and to Essinger—the principal whose love of children never wavered. D.H.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2022 - AudioFile

2022-04-05
A Holocaust-era biography about a courageous educator who, like many, found it impossible to see “how humanity could progress in the kind of society Hitler was making.”

Though Anna Essinger (1879-1960) is largely forgotten, BBC producer Cadbury’s compelling, often disturbing narrative will convince readers of her historical significance. Traveling to the U.S. at age 20, Essinger obtained a degree in education and inspiration from Quaker humanitarian values. Returning to impoverished post–World War I Germany, she worked in famine relief and visited schools, which employed almost militarily strict methods. 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. After much labor from staff and students, the school took off, as Essinger was able to integrate the school “into the British educational system while retaining its essential uniqueness.” Soon, desperate Jewish families inside Germany were pleading with Essinger to accept their children. Although always near bankruptcy, she kept the school open against overwhelming odds. 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. After the end of the war, the school accepted survivors from Nazi-occupied Europe, and most thrived. Cadbury devotes a few chapters to their experiences, passages that emphasize the loathsomeness of Nazi behavior. Elderly and infirm, Essinger closed the school in 1948, but graduates continued to relish their experience and hold reunions. Mused one former student, “I can never understand why more schools are not run on a similar basis.”

An inspiring, well-researched life portrait of a spectacularly heroic teacher.

Kirkus Reviews