Over the ocean
By: Erica Fischer
Publisher: Hesperus Nova; Hesperus Press
Published: 2014
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9781843915041
Subjects: Family; Austrian Jews; History; Married people; Biography; Refugees; World War, 1939-1945; Personal narratives; Jews; Ethnic relations
Other titles: Over the ocean :
Description: In July 1940, Erich Fischer found himself in Liverpool being herded onto a British transport ship bound for Australia, along with 2,500 other men. Conditions on board were horrific, with men locked below decks with overflowing latrines and only seawater to clean themselves. Separated from family, friends and removed from any semblance of a normal life, Erich is unsure whether he will ever see wife and child again. Erica Fischer's Over the Ocean tells the extraordinary story of her own parents and at the same time sheds light on a little-known and little-discussed chapter in British history. Fischer's parents met in Austria in the early 1930s. Her mother, Irka, was a Polish Jew and her father, Erich, was a Viennese lapsed Catholic. Faced with growing unrest in Europe, Irka fled to the United Kingdom in 1938, her husband followed a year later. However at the outbreak of war, Erich had been arrested as an 'enemy alien', and having been interned was deported to the opposite side of the world.Faced with unimaginable hardships, the deportees banded together in solidarity to face their new life in Australia and Erich was, against the odds, able to make contact with Irka and their letters established a lifeline between continents. Over the Ocean is an astonishing true tale dealing with an unexposed and unexplored period in British history but also a story of the resilience of love.