Holocaust Memorial Day: 'An embassy official saved me from the Nazis'

A man who fled the Nazis on the last peacetime boat to leave Germany for England, when he was three, has said he owes his life to an embassy official.

Danny Herman, who now lives in Greater Manchester, said he arrived in England a day before World War Two started.

Mr Herman, who lost more than 20 Jewish relatives in the Holocaust, said his mother's passport was stamped with one of the last visas issued.

He said the Holocaust should never be forgotten.

"We don't want it to be confined to one line in history - so that it doesn't happen again," he said.

Mr Herman, who is originally from Konigsberg, East Prussia, and now lives in Bowdon, told BBC North West Tonight he often thought of the members of his family who died.

Now 88, he said this included his grandparents.

"They ended up in Sobibor," he said. "It was an extermination camp rather than a concentration camp."

He said his aunt and uncle were also killed.

They "perished" in the Auschwitz labour camp, he said.

Unwilling to leave his family, Mr Herman's father stayed but only avoided capture by hiding from the soldiers upstairs.

Mr Herman said his father, who was originally from Germany, escaped to England the next day after the organisation he volunteered for told him the soldiers were going to come again for him and take him away to a concentration camp.

His mother resolved to follow him, too, but having already sent off for a visa, her passport was inside the British Embassy in Berlin.

He and his mother set off for Berlin, which he said was an 800-mile trip.

"She had a friend in Berlin so we stayed with the friend and first thing the next morning she went to the embassy," he said.

"When she got there, there were hundreds of people, and an official came out of the embassy and said, 'I'm sorry, folks. That's it'.

"So my mother literally put her foot in the door and said, 'Well, you've got my passport. I've applied for a visa so at least give it me back'.

He added: "So the official pulled her in, sat her down in the entrance hall of the embassy and said, 'Wait there. I'll see what I can do'.

"Half an hour later, he came back with the passport and to her great delight, she had this visa stamped in the passport."

They arrived in Kent on the eve of World War Two.

Mr Herman said they joined his father in Kitchener Camp, the pre-war transit camp set up for Jewish refugees on the outskirts of Sandwich, Kent.

The family spent the war in Liverpool where his father worked building aircraft for the RAF before they moved to Manchester and became British citizens.

Mr Herman qualified as an accountant and was also an international sprinter - and even spent several years helping to train Manchester City.

In recent times he has shared his story in talks to schoolchildren about the Holocaust.

He said having a Holocaust Memorial Day "keeps it in the public eye".

"Otherwise it just descends into one line in a history book. It's too important for that."

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