In this special evening, organised on the occasion of the UK Holocaust Memorial Day, Anthony Grenville, who edits the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) Journal, will be joined by Otto Deutsch to discuss Jewish life in Vienna at the time of the ‘Anschluss’, the experience of separation from family and homeland, and that of exile and building a new life in Britain.

Otto Deutsch was born in 1928 in Favoriten, Vienna’s Tenth District. His father was arrested during the so-called ‘Crystal Night’ pogrom of November 1938, and in 1939 Otto was sent on a Kindertransport to Britain. He never saw his parents and sister again. Otto was taken in by a Christian family in the small mining town of Morpeth in Northumberland, to whom he feels a lasting sense of gratitude. In London he made a career as a tour guide, building at first on his knowledge of Vienna. He now lives in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, and is an active member of the local Jewish community and of the local group of the Association of Jewish Refugees.

Anthony Grenville will also present his newly published book, Stimmen der Flucht: Österreichische Emigration nach Großbritannien ab 1938. It is the first historical study to focus specifically on the Austrian component of the Jewish emigration from the German-speaking lands to Britain in 1938/39.