In 1916 my father, Manfred Vanson (van Son) was born in Germany, in the port city of Hamburg. His great-grandfather had moved there in 1823 from Deventer in Holland where his family had lived for many generations. My father grew up in a cultured and musical family, surrounded by uncles, aunts and cousins.

When Hitler made life in Germany impossible for Jews, my father managed to find refuge in England in 1939. His fiancée, my mother, Franziska Hirsch, joined him there, and in 1940 they were married. The story of my father’s escape from Germany after what was formerly called ‘Kristallnacht’ but is now known as the ‘Reichspogrom,’ is etched in my memory as I heard it from him several times. At the time, he was a young man of 23, living at home with his widowed mother. In the course of that day, they received phone calls from relatives informing them of what was happening in the city and warning them to stay at home with the door locked. This my father duly did, and eventually heard the sound of boots on the staircase leading to the apartment where he and his mother lived. He could hear the S.S. men approach the door, then decide that the name v. Son was not a Jewish name, and they went away. The next day, his mother, my grandmother, sent a telegram to her cousins in London, asking them to save her son.

My father left Germany, but had to leave his mother behind, hoping that he would manage to bring her over to England, but that turned out to be impossible. For the rest of his life, my father lived with the sense of guilt and remorse at not having succeeded in........

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