My grandparents Rudolph and Ida Kormes had a thriving auction and furrier business in Leipzig until February 5 1938 when the Law on the Profession of Auctioneer excluded Jews from the profession and on October 3 the Decree on the Confiscation of Jewish Property regulated the transfer of assets from Jews to non-Jews in Germany. They were therefore not permitted to have an income or property and were forced to move to a so called Jew House which they shared with other Jews. Just before the war broke out Rudolph and Ida managed to obtain visas to send their two daughters Ruth (my mother) and Inge to England on the Kindertransport scheme. They arrived on 23 June 1939.They worked for a short while as domestics in Bournemouth but when the war broke out in September they were interned on the Isle of Man in a requisitioned hotel. Their two brothers Hans and Julius followed later joining the Allies to fight the Nazis. Their parents were hoping to escape from the Jew House and make their way to England via Switzerland in October but the restrictions imposed on them in the Jew House prevented them from doing so. We know from a friend of theirs that they managed to escape to a safe house in early 1943 missing a transportation order to Auschwitz in February. They travelled towards the Swiss border sometime after this but on 20 July 1943 they were arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the Nuremberg Police Station. They had a suitcase each and one rucksack. The next day on 21 July 1943 they were sent to Auschwitz never to be seen or heard of again. My mother and her siblings knew their parents had somehow ended their days in Auschwitz but never knew of their arrest by the Gestapo in their lifetime. Our family only recently discovered this. Meanwhile in Britain, Jewish businessmen had set up businesses in Britain in the early 1930s and, assisted by Lord Nuffield, a great Philanthropist of the time, were able to allocate workplaces for Jewish internees at their factories in depressed areas of Britain. As a result of this Ruth and ...