OVER THE OCEAN

The extraordinary true love story of a couple who were separated during a shameful and fascinating chapter of British history. Erica Fischer tells the extraordinary story of her own parents and sheds light on a little known and little discussed incident. Her parents met in Austria in the early 1930s. Her mother Irka was a Polish Jew and her father Erich was a Viennese lapsed Catholic. Faced with growing unrest in Europe, Irka fled to the United Kingdom in 1938 and her husband followed a year later. However at the outbreak of war, Erich had been arrested as an 'enemy alien', and having been interned was deported on a transport ship heading to Australia where conditions were horrific. Having sought a new life safe from the persecution of Nazi Germany, instead the couple found suspicion, hardship and deportation. The deportees were banded together in solitary to face their new life in Australia and Erich was against the odds able to make contact with Irka. Their letters established a lifeline between continents. Erica Fischer writes of her parents enduring love and even provides a full list of German and Austrian internees landing in Sydney, page after page of names. 288pp, paperback.