'Operation Dynamo', 'The Dunkirk evacuation', or simply 'Dunkirk' took place between 26 May and 4 June 1940. It was the rescue of more than 338,000 Allied soldiers who needed to retreat from the beaches of Dunkirk in northern France as the German army advanced rapidly, surrounded them, and cut them off from further military activity. During that period, a fleet of more than 800 vessels was hastily assembled to rescue the soldiers. Small vessels with a shallow draught were particularly required to take the men standing shoulder-high in water from the beaches. Pleasure boats, launches, and private yachts set off from the banks of the River Thames and from moorings on the south and east coasts for Ramsgate. There, they had to be verified seaworthy before making the crossing over the English Channel to Dunkirk. The smallest of them was a fishing boat called 'Tamzine', which is now displayed in the Imperial War Museum in London. As Britain's Prime Minister, Winston Churchill recognised, 'Wars are not won by evacuations'. Dunkirk was, as he said, 'a colossal military disaster' in which 68,000 soldiers died and in which tanks, vehicles and equipment were lost. Meanwhile, during those days of chaos on the beaches of northern France, there were other chaotic scenes and disasters elsewhere as people streamed across the French countryside to escape the invading army. Henny and Hermann Hartog were amongst those travelling under arrest from Brussels to Paris, to internment, and to continuing lives as Jewish refugees from the threat of Nazism and from their own native country of Germany. In separate camps in Paris, they had no idea where the other was, and Henny feared for her safety every time a German plane flew over the glass dome of her place of internment. Yet another 'Kristallnacht' seemed imminent. Her young daughters were in England, she was herself in a foreign country, and she was apart from her husband for an unknown time. Herbert Sulzbach and his wife, Beate, also experienced internment during this time – by the British government. Even though they were Jews who had escaped from Germany, they were seen as a possible threat and interned in separate camps on the Isle of Man. As he was marched between the fixed bayonets of soldiers in Liverpool, Sulzbach was immensely saddened as the civilian population turned away from them – from Jewish people who had tried to escape Nazism and who were themselves fighting against it. Chaos, confusion, disaster. This had become the norm for ordinary people whether they were serving soldiers, citizens in a new country, or refugees trying to escape an evil regime. Writing to his non-Jewish friends in Switzerland after the end of this war, Sulzbach wrote, 'My diary of this period is dramatic. After Dunkirk, we conquered only with spirit and the conviction that justice was on our side.' (photo shows 'Tamzine' in the Imperial War Museum. Photo: Jonathan Cardy 20.12.2016) 

'Dear children, since Sunday evening Mutti [mummy] and I have been brought separately to these two camps. We have no idea what will happen next. Please write to this address and I will write to you. Write also if you get news from Mutti. Stay brave in life, and if the dear God wills, he will bring us together again.' Hermann Hartog wrote this note on a postcard to his daughters in England in May 1940, after being taken from Brussels into an internment camp at Stade Buffalo in Paris. At this time of chaos and confusion, French officials used the large spaces of sports stadiums as places to intern suspect people arriving from Belgium and the Netherlands after the German invasion. These people included anti-Nazis and Jewish refugees fleeing Germany. Stade Buffalo was a huge velodrome that could accommodate 30,000 spectators for different sporting fixtures. (It is now a housing complex). On his arrival from Brussels, Hermann was separated from Henny and taken there with thousands of other men. Henny was taken to a different velodrome about three kilometres away from Hermann's. The women's holding centre was at the Vélodrome d'Hiver, close to the Eiffel Tower. This was an enormous glass-roofed stadium and as the women waited on the stone benches normally reserved for sports spectators they cringed nervously as German aircraft flew overhead – expecting any moment for the building to be bombed and for the roof to shatter in yet another 'Kristallnacht'. The weather was very warm that May and the stadium became very hot. Neither Henny nor Hermann knew where the other was, nor what was going to happen to them. Their separate short letters to their daughters over these few days show - perhaps for the first time – a faltering in their optimism for the future. As Henny wrote to them, 'I am sure that you are very happy that your parents are alive. I think about you very often, my dear children, but I do not think that I can write very often. I kiss you a thousand times!' A few days later, on 23 May 1940, Henny and Hermann were taken separately – probably in cattle carts on trains – to different internment camps further south in France. Hermann found himself at a camp in Bassens, not far from Bordeaux, and Henny was taken to Camp de Gurs, about 250kms away from Hermann. (photo shows the site of Stade Buffalo today, now a housing complex)

'My dearest children, I am in a great hurry to say to you that Vati [Daddy] and I are quite well. Please don't worry about the war, and if you don't get letters from us, don't be sad.' Henny Hartog wrote these few lines on a postcard from Brussels on 10 May 1940, as bombs rained down on the city and panic and confusion erupted around her and her husband, Hermann. She was writing to her two young daughters who were, mercifully, safely in England – Lore (aged 15) and Inge (aged 13). Henny and Hermann were Jewish refugees from Germany who had been living in Brussels for the previous six months in the hope and expectation of being able to emigrate from there to the USA, where Henny had relatives who were willing to give them shelter. But political events overtook their plans, and they now found themselves living in a city that was being invaded by the Nazis who had already destroyed their previous life in Germany. The German assault was swift and efficient, leaving the Belgian government overwhelmed by the turn of events. Within hours of the invasion on 10 May, the radio announced that all Germans living in Belgium faced internment and should report to the nearest police station. There was fear that all Germans might be Nazi sympathisers – when in fact most of the Germans in Belgium were refugees fleeing Nazi aggression. After reporting to their local police stations, these refugees (many of them Jewish) were directed to large halls where they were detained. A planned and organised evacuation of citizens was impossible and by 12 May Brussels was largely deserted and in chaos as people fled westwards to escape the advancing invaders. As refugees, Henny and Hermann Hartog had registered with the authorities when they first arrived: their names, religion, addresses and other details were already recorded. It was not difficult for those same authorities to find them and decide that they were no longer welcome in Belgium. Along with thousands of others, they were detained before being moved out of the country. Their belongings which they had managed to bring with them from Germany were all left behind. In this way, on 15 May 1940, Henny and Hermann were taken from Brussels and on 19 May they arrived in Paris. As Henny wrote to her daughters,  'It is impossible to tell you about all that has happened. I think that all our things have been lost.' (photo shows a newspaper report of the German invasion of Belgium 10 May 1940)

In May 1945, Herbert Sulzbach was working as a British officer in a camp for German prisoners of war in Scotland. He was the interpreter at the camp because he spoke fluent German. Fifty years previously, he had been born into a German Jewish family in Frankfurt and had fought for Germany in the First World War. But he viewed this defeat of Nazism with joy – and pride that he had fought for Britain in the Second World War. He had four days leave due at the beginning of May so he took the train to London to join in the celebrations for the end of the war in Europe. He was overwhelmed by the joy he felt in this 'great and glorious event' and when he returned to Scotland he wrote to his older brother, who had taken refuge in Sweden: 'On 8 May I stood in Piccadilly Circus. It was hot and sunny, just as it had been on 3 September 1939 when war was declared. The crowds were singing, dancing, cheering, and were very high-spirited.' He watched with amusement as three young British officers ran out of a restaurant and attempted to scale the protective boarding around the fountain of Eros, in the centre of Piccadilly Circus. When they finally reached the top, the crowd cheered and men and women from all the forces and countries that had fought for this victory continued the day with dancing and singing, hugging and kissing. That evening, Sulzbach wrote a letter to the woman who had been his English governess in his Frankfurt childhood. 'No words exist to express the atmosphere of these days. It is a mixture of joy, deep emotion, and highest pride.' What Herbert Sulzbach wanted now – more than ever – was to forge a spirit of friendship and reconciliation between Germany and Britain. When he returned to the camp in Scotland, he was aware of the changed mood amongst the prisoners there. 'They began to see how much their 'Führer' had lied to them, and that what they had taken to be propaganda was the truth, and what they had taken to be the truth was lies and invention.' But there was still a lot of work for Herbert Sulzbach to do amongst these young men, who gradually grew to admire him. ( photo shows Herbert Sulzbach in 1945)

On Monday 19 April 1880, Emily Louisa Brown started her first day at school. She walked from her home at 45 St Alban's Street to Walnut Tree Walk School, which was just a few yards away round the corner in the neighbouring street. She was 5 years and 10 days old. 45 St Alban's Street was a two-storey house and the Brown family occupied one floor, with the Apps family living in the other half of the house. Both Emily's father, Benjamin, and Maynard Apps worked as carmen, possibly for the nearby Bethlem Lunatic Asylum (now the Imperial War Museum). Maynard's wife, Caroline, worked – probably from home – making artificial flowers. On the day that Emily first went to school, she left her younger sisters, Sarah and Mary Ann, at her home with their mother, and joined Alfred and Arthur Apps (7 and 5 years old) at school. There were children of a similar age in every house in the street so she must have already known many of her fellow pupils. Four months later, on 19 August 1880, she was joined at school by her sister, Sarah Maria, who was then just a few weeks away from her fourth birthday. The school was a typical three-storey building built in red brick, similar to many others built by the School Board in London. In most such schools, the youngest children were taught on the ground floor and the top two floors were used by the older boys and girls. There were estimated to be about 100,000 poor working-class children in London at the time that the Board was set up in 1870 and it was hoped to create enough school places for them. Although schooling was not compulsory nationally until 1880, the London School Board passed a by-law in 1871 requiring parents to send their children to school between the ages of five and thirteen. The Board aimed to provide modern, high-quality schools and it was partly due to the provision of such schools that by the end of the 1880s, there were school places in London for more than 350,000 children. Nationally, the curriculum for the teaching in schools could be quite narrow. The government's requirements very much focussed on the traditional 'three Rs', but the London Board attempted a more liberal standard of education and included elementary science, history, singing, geometry (for boys) and needlework (for girls) amongst those subjects taught. After leaving school, Emily put her needlework skills to good use and worked as a mantle maker, sewing women's outer garments similar to a cape. (photo shows the school logbook entry for Emily's school admission)

A few years after Ethel May Smith was escaping on her bicycle from the family and societal pressures of the east of London, a young man in very different circumstances was grateful for the two wheels of his bicycle to be able to get away into the countryside with his friends. Herbert Sulzbach – unlike Ethel May – was born into a very rich family. He was the son of a banker in Frankfurt, Germany, and benefited from a privileged home life, an excellent education, and an assured lifestyle. But this brought its own expectations of success that he did not always feel able to meet. In April 1911, when this photo was taken, Herbert was seventeen years old. His father already owned one of the first Adler cars and Herbert was entranced by the possibilities of travel. He thoroughly enjoyed the car rides into the neighbouring forests with the family's chauffeur, Herr Blank. Later, Herbert would himself own cars that he would drive with great enthusiasm through Germany and Italy. (And in the First World War he would hanker after being able to fly aeroplanes.) But in 1911 he was just pleased to get out of Frankfurt on his bicycle and enjoy the nearby countryside. He and his friends would get up early and by five o'clock in the morning they would be ready to cycle into the surrounding woods. Herbert was not an academic scholar, and he did not enjoy banking, so cycling into the localities where he and his friends could enjoy the flowers and the healing powers of nature was a welcome and powerful release from family expectations. He particularly remembered his early morning forays into the forests in May, listening to birdsong. Herbert would ride also to school at the Goethe Gymnasium on his bike, and many years later he recalled first the anxiety, and then the thrill, that he felt at the time seeing his girlfriend, Mieze Kindervatter, riding her bike towards him from the opposite direction. In later years, after he had fought in the First World War, he felt trapped in the world of banking where he then found himself – so got on to his bike to visit his parents and talk with them about his future employment prospects. For young people in the early years of the twentieth century (in different countries) a bicycle represented an existence independent of their family, the possibility of different – and more radical – prospects, and an exciting new future. (the photo shows, left to right, Hans, Hedwig, Hertha, Karl, and Herbert Sulzbach in Frankfurt April 1911)

The bicycle became a powerful symbol of independence and liberation for many young women in the early years of the twentieth century. I will never cease to be amazed that my grandmother, Ethel May Smith, chose to have a studio photograph taken of herself standing proudly at the side of her bicycle – which she presumably wheeled into the studio. But this picture speaks volumes of the young woman that she was – and the example that she gave to her granddaughters. Ethel (later called Hettie by her husband, but I don't know what she was called as a girl) left school at the age of about twelve and worked as a shirtmaker – specifically as a collar-maker. When she was 15 years old, in 1901, she was working as a 'shirt machinist' and living at 57, Commerell Street in Greenwich. The following year, the pedestrian tunnel under the Thames was opened, connecting Greenwich to the Isle of Dogs. Although cycling in the tunnel was prohibited, Ethel rode her bicycle under the river - from her home near the entrance, to her work in a factory on the north side, where she eventually rose to supervise machinists in the collar-making section. In her occasional free time from the factory, Ethel rode her bike away from the poor streets of Greenwich into the nearby Kent countryside, where she no doubt met with other bicycle enthusiasts. Cycling was an absolute craze during the early years of the twentieth century – and Ethel relished the freedom that her bicycle gave her, as well as the freedom of the clothes that had been adapted for the female cyclist. Although an extravagant hat seems to have always been part of her outfit. Ethel's enthusiasm for two- or four-wheeled vehicles met that of a young police officer from the area, Wilfred Percy Reeve. I do not know whether or not they belonged to any of the many cycling clubs that sprang up on the edges of south-east London at that time but they both had an energetic approach to life and a dashing bravura that challenged many of the accepted conventions of society. Bicycles – and later cars – were a way whereby they each tried to escape the restrictions of their lives. Ethel May Smith and Wilfred Percy Reeve were married on 22 January 1910 in Ethel's local church – All Hallows, East India Dock Road, in the heart of London's dockland. (the photo shows Ethel with her bicycle, posed for a studio photograph)

They had arrived in Aix in a hurry – by train from the south-west of France. As soon as they were given permission to leave their refuge in the little village of Arette, Henny and Hermann had made arrangements to travel to Marseille to try to expedite their emigration to the USA. It was April 1941 and they were very apprehensive – partly because of the enormity of the possibilities and partly because they feared that their paperwork was incomplete. They had not even had the chance to inform their young daughters in England about what they were doing. They decided not to try to find accommodation in Marseille because the city was already crammed with others trying to leave, and also because of the extra expense there. Instead, they found a room in Aix en Provence, at 16 rue de la Couronne – about half an hour away from Marseille, and close to the Jewish community and synagogue there. They had permission to be away from their refuge for four weeks but this extended to seven as Henny went from one official to another, from one committee to another, to gather the required documents. Meanwhile, Hermann took his place at the synagogue, taught and gave lectures, and played the harmonium there. Henny was eventually successful in acquiring the many necessary papers, and was given a provisional visa for herself and Hermann to travel to America – provisional on obtaining the tickets for the ship from Marseille to the USA. Neither of them had any money for the fare (which was hundreds of dollars), fewer ships were risking the journey across the Atlantic, and America was just announcing completely new rules for immigration. So, for Henny and Hermann, emigration had become an impossibility and they made their way back to Arette. Hermann recognised what was at stake during their visit, and on the first day that Henny left Aix to go the American Consulate in Marseille, he wrote to his daughters, 'Your mother is so courageous and has supported me so well and strongly in every emergency. She never despairs and bears all difficulties and emergencies with me. You must never forget that, no matter what fate brings, and what else happens with us and you.' Henny and Hermann returned to their good friends in Arette but they were never able to emigrate, and they never saw their daughters again. (photo shows the front door to 16, rue de la Couronne, Aix, where they rented a room)

It wasn't an April Fool's joke. Part way through Adolf Hitler's speech to a massed crowd of 80,000 people in front of the City Hall in Wilhelmshaven, the radio transmission abruptly failed. Those listening throughout Germany on their radios feared that their Führer had been assassinated but the truth was more prosaic – Hitler was delivering such a vitriolic speech that the radio engineers and their superiors considered it would be better if the rest of the world did not hear it in case foreign nations viewed it as war provocation. It was 1 April 1939 and Hitler was in Wilhelmshaven to launch the new German battleship, ' Tirpitz '. Named after Grand Admiral Alfred Tirpitz, who was the architect of the German Imperial Navy, the hull of the battleship was launched by his grand-daughter with great ceremony at the Wilhelmshaven navy dockyard. On the same day, Adolf Hitler was awarded the Freedom of the City at a grand ceremony in the City Hall after his speech in the square outside. Henny and Hermann Hartog were not in Wilhelmshaven during Hitler's visit. Hermann no longer had a job as a Jewish teacher there, and since ' Kristallnacht ' they had not been allowed to live in their apartment in the city because it was not owned by a Jew. So, they had returned to Hermann's home town of Aurich, where his sister owned the family home, and they were busy doing everything they could to escape from Germany. Later that month, Henny travelled to see her family in Frankfurt – partly to say goodbye before leaving the country, and partly to prepare a new home for her father in her uncle's house. The battleship ' Tirpitz ' was sunk by the British Navy on 12 November 1944. On Thursday 6 February 2025, almost 86 years after the City's award to Adolf Hitler in the Main Aula of the City Hall, I stood in the same building and the same place as him – at the invitation of the City of Wilhelmshaven - to tell the story of Henny and Hermann Hartog. There was a maximum capacity audience and the empathy from the people of Wilhelmshaven was heart-warming. (the photo shows Hitler outside Wilhelmshaven City Hall on 1 April 1939)