- Contributed by听
- Isle_Of_Man
- People in story:听
- Hanne and Paul Crailsheimer and Liselotte Brandus-Nathan, daughter Ursula
- Location of story:听
- Isle of Man
- Article ID:听
- A4847321
- Contributed on:听
- 07 August 2005
On May 30th l940 Hanne and Liselotte and Ursula were registered on Isle of Man in an internment camp. They were allocated to Port Erin, Hanne to Hotel Imperial. In April l939 the family came into England as refugees and went to Cardiff to live. They were allowed into the country to set up a factory in Wales to help the unemployment there. Imagine the horror of having settled there and then to be 'shipped' of to the Isle of Man as enemy aliens. Paul and Hanne were separated and Paul ended up on the Arandora Star ready to be shipped off to Canada. Hanne stayed at Port Erin not knowing exactly where her husband was. Her cousin Franz was with Paul and his wife Liselotte was with Hanne. After a short time the Arandora Star was torpedoed and Paul ended up in the water for 8 hours until he was rescued by a destroyer. Sadly Franz perished. Hanne and Liselotte did not know what had happened to their men for several months. After 2 weeks in Scotland Paul was again put on a ship, this time the Dunera, and shipped off to Australia. The voyage took 8 weeks and terrible conditions were endured - most of the day he was locked up with Nazis, Italians and other german refugees. They were only allowed a brief time for exercise each day.
During the two years that Paul stayed in Australia, Hanne did not really know where exactly he was. On top of all this trauma when she was finally released in November l941 she would hear that her mother had been sent to Auschwitz. Pauline Zander, her mother was not able to leave Berlin in time and died in Auschwitz.
When finally Paul and Hanne were reunited they were able to go back to Cardiff where in l946 I, their daughter was born.
漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.