During the 1930s, the USA had no designated refugee policy; it only had an immigration policy. American public opinion did not favour increased immigration as many Americans feared that immigrants would 'steal' their jobs. In order to prove that they would not be an economic burden on the state, prospective immigrants had to find an American sponsor who would guarantee their financial resources in an affidavit. The immigration process was slow, with strict quotas limiting the number of people who could immigrate each year. The immigration laws were never revised or adjusted between 1933 and 1941. As in Europe, there were Americans who believed that the rapid military success of the German army in May 1940 could be attributed to the work of spies, and there was concern that Germany was then taking advantage of the masses of Jews trying to flee by sending spies abroad. So, consular officials were urged to take extra care screening applicants for immigration, and in June 1941 a 'relatives rule' was also issued, denying visas to prospective immigrants who still had family members in Nazi-controlled territories. On 1 July 1941, the American State Department centralised all visa control in Washington DC. A new review was ordered for each applicant and extra documentation was required, including a second financial affidavit. From that date, emigration from Nazi-controlled territory became virtually impossible. As a result, many thousands of Jews who had applied at American consulates in Europe no longer had any chance to immigrate. Many of them were subsequently murdered in the Holocaust by the Nazis. Henny and Hermann Hartog were clearly aware of these developments and the new regulations. During the rest of that summer, they both had to come to terms with the likelihood that their emigration would not happen. They were intensely sad at this turn of events and Hermann wrote about his bitter disappointment that their relatives in America could not manage to raise the (very substantial) sum of money they needed for the fare. To have come so far in the emigration process, and to be denied success because of a lack of resources and an extreme tightening of the regulations over which they had no control, was a very cruel blow. As Hermann wrote to his daughters on 6 July 1941, 'We hear that more specific regulations are again coming from America, so all of our work was probably over and we start again from the beginning. So we have little hope that we can go to America. And whether we survive the war lies in God's hand, because no-one knows how long this war will last, and what will become of us.'  (photo shows the original affidavit for the Hartog family)

During the Second World War, the main way that people who were separated from each other could connect was through letter-writing. In our own family, letters that we discovered gave us a new understanding of a time and experience that our parents had never wished to discuss. Fragile bits of paper, with almost undecipherable writing in a foreign language, took us on an intense journey of family discovery. My husband's grandparents, Henny and Hermann Hartog, had lived in Germany with their two young daughters. Both of them were from Jewish families and he was a teacher and cantor in the synagogue. During the 1930s, they sent their elder daughter to England for the education that was denied to her in Germany, and their second daughter arrived in England on the first Kindertransport in December 1938. Henny and Hermann fled to Belgium and then lived as refugees in France before they were deported. Throughout this time, their only family contact was through letters. At first, these letters were frequent and long, with the parents trying to bring up their children from afar, checking out their clothes, their school reports, giving advice about behaviour and education – and confident for a future where they would all soon live together again in America. In May 1939, they even agreed with their children that the girls would write on a Saturday so that this letter was received by their parents on the following Tuesday and an immediate reply could arrive in England by the end of the week, on the Sabbath. This efficient plan could not survive war. When Henny and Hermann became refugees in France, they found themselves anxiously awaiting letters in a deteriorating postal system. France had become an enemy of Britain, so it was difficult to send or receive mail between the two countries. Henny and Hermann continued to write once a month to their daughters and waited anxiously for replies that never came. They suggested new routes for the post. These included writing through a mutual friend – a fellow Jewish teacher, Max Ruda, who lived in Zeurich, in neutral Switzerland. The International Red Cross helped with some postal arrangements, and there were suggestions about sending letters with a reply slip via organisations in Lisbon, but it was a rare occasion when a letter got through – and a time for celebration when a bundle of several very occasionally turned up all at the same time. As Henny wrote, 'It was a great joy and surprise for us when finally a letter from you arrived, and we are even happier that you received the six letters from us! In any case, we have many worries but our greatest joy is when we receive good and frequent letters from you.' In France, people increasingly recognised the presence of police terror, informers and collaborators in their communities. They shared less with each other in their conversations, and letters became comparatively bland. Henny and Hermann no longer mentioned the names of any of the people who were helping them. Everyone was beginning to wall themselves into a silence that they hoped would give better security. By 1942, everyone was grateful for any letters because they showed that the people who mattered to them were still alive. These letters came ultimately to tell merely the often trivial details of their daily lives, and remembrances of happy times that they had once spent together. In the end, it mattered only that a letter confirmed that the correspondent was still alive, that they sent a message of reassurance that they still deeply loved the recipient, and the affirmation that they all continued to hope and pray for better times. For Henny and Hermann's daughters, letters from their parents had been arriving increasingly infrequently and always delayed, and then they just never came at all.  (photo shows a postcard from Henny and Hermann to their daughters, October 1939)

Two very different Jewish women, who never knew each other but who had both fled Nazism in Germany, found themselves interned in June 1940. Beate Sulzbach was 43 years old and had been living as an emigré in London for just two years when she was arrested and interned – first in Holloway Prison and then on the Isle of Man. She married Herbert Sulzbach in 1923 and during the 1920s she enjoyed her professional life as an actress in the Expressionist theatres in Berlin. She had no children. Henny Hartog was 42 years old and had been living as an emigré in Brussels for only seven months when she was arrested and interned – first in Paris and then at Camp de Gurs in south-west France. She married Hermann Hartog in 1921 and was his support and home-maker while he worked as a Jewish teacher and cantor in synagogues in north-west Germany. They had two young daughters who had been sent to safety in England. For both women, the rapid advance of the German army in May 1940, followed by the fall of Belgium, the Netherlands and then France brought confusion, alienation, and threat to their lives. There were people throughout western Europe who believed that the speed of the attack had only been possible because of insider help. A very public outcry was raised that there must be spies everywhere. Suspicion was directed first at any people of German origin. It was seen as irrelevant that those same people had themselves fled the regime in Germany, and had been either targets of that regime or fighting against it. Fear and distrust were intensified by the actions of national newspapers that whipped up hatred and xenophobia amongst their readers. For both Beate in London, and for Henny in France, this was a frightening, bewildering, and extremely upsetting time. Their husbands were interned at the same time as them – but in separate places. Neither of them knew their whereabouts for several weeks. Beate stayed in Holloway prison for four weeks before being transferred to Port St Mary on the Isle of Man. There, she was under house arrest in a large boarding house with several other women, required to share this space (and also her bed) with a complete stranger. She was released eight months after her initial arrest. She tried to find beauty and positivity in her experience and wrote to her husband, 'We can walk, and walk without seeing any barbed wire. My boarding house is by the beach. I am sitting in the window and looking over the sea and the sun is shining.' Henny stayed in Camp de Gurs for over four weeks until her husband found her after his own release. They were then both given refuge in a nearby village where they lived under house arrest for the next two years until they were deported to Auschwitz. Henny tried to stay strong and positive throughout her experience, writing to her daughters, 'Now we are in a little village in the mountains near the Spanish border. We are together with other refugees and we are in good health.' Beate survived internment and the war largely because she had found refuge with the victorious nation. Henny was murdered in September 1942 because the French government collaborated with their German occupiers to deliver the required quota of Jewish people to the extermination camps and she was included in that number. Both were victims of the racism, intolerance, and cruelty of those times. (photo shows the boarding house where Beate was interned on the Isle of Man)

In May 1940, Germany combined attacks with tanks, infantry and artillery to overwhelm the defences of Belgium and Holland before deploying the same tactics against France. German forces invaded France through the rugged terrain and dense forests of the Ardennes – an area thought to be impenetrable by French and British generals. The Maginot Line defences built in France were totally ineffective against the rapid German onslaught. On 9 June 1940, the French government fled from Paris and moved to Tours. The German forces advanced towards the northern French coast, forcing the British forces to retreat from Dunkirk. They also quickly turned towards Paris and entered the city on 14 June. French forces and many of the citizens of Paris had already left and the German soldiers entered a silent place. Two million Parisians had departed and all the shops and businesses were closed. Paris was formally declared an 'open city', meaning that it would not be defended so that its destruction could be prevented. Meanwhile, those Parisians who had left their homes, together with people who had fled from northern France, Holland and Belgium ahead of the advancing Germans, escaped southwards for safety. They piled their belongings high into carts, wheelbarrows and prams as they joined the flood of people trying to move along the roads. Those with cars and lorries soon ran out of fuel and abandoned their vehicles to continue on foot with this huge wave of humanity trying to escape the Germans. Meanwhile, those same German invaders strafed the columns of people from planes above them as they made their slow way south. It was chaos. Absolute chaos. People travelling south slept wherever they could – under the hedges alongside the road, in empty barns along the route, in the corners of fields. When the food supplies that they had brought with them ran out, they raided abandoned homes and farms for something to eat. Shopkeepers along the way were often generous with offers of food, but there was not enough for everyone to eat. When war had been declared nine months previously, the French authorities had put in place schemes for a fair distribution of food and a rationing of resources, but the rapid turn of events of June 1940 had not been anticipated and the tidal wave of thousands of refugees from northern France towards the southern towns and villages was far greater than anyone had expected. There was panic, chaos, and confusion everywhere. (photo shows people fleeing Paris in June 1940 © LAPI/Roger Viollet)

Eighty seven years ago, on 16 June 1938, Arthur Bodenheimer and his new wife, Sitta Siesal, sailed from Hamburg to the United States of America. They arrived eight days later, on 24 June, in New York and went through the usual immigration process at Ellis Island. Arthur was 29 years old and Sitta was 24. They travelled to their new home with Sitta's parents, Moritz and Selma Siesal who were then 55 and 52 years old. Arthur's parents, the slightly older Louis (62 years) and Hedwig (65) remained in Germany where Louis still had a business in the selling of second-hand clothing. Louis Bodenheimer had already sold part of his business to finance the emigration of his son. Leaving Germany was an expensive undertaking, with taxes and extra payments required at every turn by the Nazi authorities. The Reichsfluchtsteue r (Reich Flight Tax) was a stringent tax to limit the amount of currency and property that Jews could take out of the country with them. When Arthur Bodenheimer emigrated from Frankfurt to America, his father paid 5,000 Marks in Reichsfluchtsteuer . In order to find the money to do this, he had to sell one of his properties. For many people, the tax was such a prohibitive restriction that it actually made emigration impossible. Hermann Hartog knew about Arthur and Sitta's plans to emigrate. In August 1937, he had travelled from Wilhelmshaven to Frankfurt to officiate at their marriage at the Pension Rosiner. Arthur continued to hope that his parents would be able to join them in the USA. In April 1941, he wrote to Henny and Hermann, 'Six weeks ago, I paid for the tickets for the ship for my dear parents, and I still have to pay for their journey from Germany to Lisbon.' Six months later, on 20 October 1941, Arthur Bodenheimer's parents were taken on the first deportation from Frankfurt to Łódź. According to a note in the Reich currency files, Louis' considerable fortune was used 'for the benefit of the Reich'. He was 65 years old and Hedwig was 69. Hedwig died in Łódź seven months later on 17 May 1942. Three months afterwards, in August 1942, Louis died there of a weak heart. Many years later, Henny and Hermann's younger daughter, Inge, won some lottery money and chose to use it to see her relatives in America. She was extremely pleased to meet those few members of her family who had managed to make a new start in America. (the photo shows Arthur and Sitta on their wedding day on 8 August 1937)

'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) 

In the late 19 th century, Herbert Sulzbach's parents joined the flow of other well-to-do families – many of them liberal Jews like themselves – who moved to the western part of Frankfurt. Emil Sulzbach was a wealthy banker and their neighbours were mainly other rich bankers, lawyers and jewellers. Emil and Julie had a huge villa built in Friedrichstrasse and this became the much-loved family home for Herbert and his brother and sister. The Sulzbach family bank, Gebrüder Sulzbach, had been founded in 1856 by Herbert's grandfather, Rudolf, and his brother and it was the source of the great wealth that was passed on to future generations. Members of the Sulzbach family lived in opulence in Frankfurt during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But this wealth was also shared with the city. For example, the Sulzbachs contributed to the cost of the creation of the Palmengarten with its exotic plants and greenhouses which was built for the use and enjoyment of the people of Frankfurt. In winter, the lake in the garden often froze over and local people enjoyed meeting there to skate. When Rudolf Sulzbach died in 1904, his sons (Herbert's father, Emil, and Karl) used part of their inherited fortune to establish a foundation of 100,000 marks for the education and training of talented young businessmen and for the benefit of those in need of help. Rudolf had already supported an endless number of other philanthropic ventures. Emil Sulzbach had resigned from the family bank in 1894, just a few weeks before Herbert was born, in order to devote himself to music. He was then 38 years old and an accomplished pianist, as well as a composer. From 1904 until 1923, he was also the chair of the governing body of the Frankfurt Konservatorium when, with teachers such as Clara Schumann on the faculty, it became internationally known. He was also actively involved in science, the arts, and various social institutions in the city and was generous in his patronage. He was on the board of the widows' and orphans' fund of the opera house, provided funds for student musicians, and was on the board of directors of the Senckenbergianum – Frankfurt's natural history museum. As Herbert said of Emil Sulzbach, 'I have often described my father as the most modest millionaire. He lived only for others, spending millions for music and poor musicians, helping thousands without ever mentioning his name.' After his death in 1932, the city council honoured Emil Sulzbach with the naming of a street in Frankfurt in gratitude for his charitable works. (photo shows Emil Sulzbach outside the gates to his villa in Friedrichstrasse, Frankfurt)

'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)