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

by Deborah Cadbury

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 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.

464 pages, Paperback

Published February 20, 2024

About the author

Deborah Cadbury is an award-winning British author and BBC television producer specialising in fundamental issues of science and history, and their effects on modern society.
After graduating from Sussex University in Psychology and Linacre College, Oxford she joined the BBC as a documentary maker and has received numerous international awards, including an Emmy, for her work on the BBC's Horizon strand.

She is also the highly-acclaimed author of The Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, The Feminisation of Nature, The Dinosaur Hunters, The Lost King of France and Space Race.

(Source: Wikipedia, HarperCollins)

Reviews

[Sharon Healy-Yang · Rating 4 out of 5]

In these days when people seem to be so causal about fascism and adoring of dictators, Cadbury's book is one that everyone needs to read. The author recounts the true story of Anna Essinger (Tante Anna) who could see where National Socialism was going as early as 1933 and successfully executed the transport of the students in the school which she ran from Germany to England. As the cancer of Hitler's regime devoured more of Germany, and then the world, she managed to bring numerous children of Jewish and other persecuted families to England to safety and learning in her school. Even after the liberation of Europe, she continued to provide a haven of learning and family for children survivors of war and concentration camps. Cadbury deftly details the difficult times Anna Essinger and her German and English allies had in creating a school that cherished creativity, intellectual rigor, compassion, critical thinking, self-sufficiency, and integrity in her students. In contrast, she also alternates these passages with details of the horrific persecution of Jewish people and other "outcasts" within the Nazi empire. Those details, though not sensationalized, are not for the faint of heart. You will feel anger, you will want to cry. You will also feel anger for all the nations (ours included) that turned their backs on this suffering until it was too late. I hope you will feel determined not to allow this viciousness to live on now. I hope we can all be inspired by the courage, compassion, and wisdom of Anna Essinger, her comrades, and her children.

[Margaret Wray · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book tells the story of a teacher who through determination saved and took care of Jewish children from the beginning of the rise of Nazism and the war years. What an amazing woman she was. To find safety from Germany and move to England was no mean feat for that era. Interesting stories of the Kinder transport and how they evolved. The fear of the children and the not knowing if the Nazi’s would let them leave would have been scary. To establish a school and battling the system would have been daunting.
A must read for those wishing to understand more of this remarkable woman named Tante Anna.

[Alex Foxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

We back baby! This was a great read for both my research interests and for my profession. Cadbury crafts a beautiful winding narrative with many moving parts that left me wanting to know more. As an educator, I can learn a lot about the approaches and pedagogy of the school in question.

[Mary Chapman · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s about a teacher who took in children to try and save as many as she could from the Nazi and how she also took in refugees after the war. Great book.