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Lilly has asked that her family name and other names in her story be changed to protect the individuals mentioned therein. The original typescript of Lilly’s story has been deposited in Shropshire Archives. For Lilly's own story, see: A3694980. For her mother's story, see A3695682.

In November 1938 the Nazis staged the ‘Kristall Nacht’ which meant the Gestapo went from house to house rounding up the remaining ‘suspects’ and Jews and taking them away. Everyone was endangered but young men in particular. It was time for my younger brother, Edgar, to leave Vienna.

His first attempt was to travel to Hamburg where he hoped to get on a ship and work his way abroad. He was very slight in build and unsuccessful in being hired. He then tried the way over the Austrian mountains into Switzerland. He was of course dependent on local guidance and in that part of Austria there were quite a lot of sympathizers with the Nazi regime.

Edgar was ill equipped for serious mountaineering and when he finally got over the Swiss border there was still bureaucracy to overcome until he was finally allowed to stay. He actually gave a long description of his journey, which must have been hair raising, in a letter to me. Edgar was looked after by the refugee organisation in Switzerland and had to do roadwork. However it did not take to long before he joined the administration.

He spent the whole wartime in Switzerland and was even offered Swiss citizenship after the war but took the chance to emigrate to the USA. One of the hardships was for families to be split up and during the war one could not even correspond in the normal way. Everything was censored and a lot of mail had to be sent via the Red Cross.

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