History on the Edge

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Factual: History

Professor Iain Hutchison

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Anita Anand uncovers an extraordinary untold refugee story from 1940.

The incredible story of a 19-year-old refugee from Hitler’s Germany who, safe at last in Britain in 1940, was deported in horrific conditions to the other side of the world.

Anita Anand uncovers an extraordinary personal story from the margins of British history which challenges our perspective of the past we thought we knew. At a crucial moment in the rethinking of whose histories we should be telling, History on the Edge challenges some of the conventional assumptions about our past. 
 
It’s 1940 and, amid the chaos of the Second World War, a 19-year-old refugee from Hitler’s Germany, Konrad Eisig, finds himself caught up in a British policy which, just when he thought he was safe, sends him on a hazardous sea journey to Australia in conditions little better than those of the slave ships of a century-and-a-half before. With the help of Eisig’s first-hand testimony from the astonishing diary he left behind, Anita is on an investigation to unravel his story and understand how this apparently cruel train of events came about, and what it was really like for those who lived it.
 
With contributions from Nick Ross, Aditi Anand, Laura Walker, Claudia Cotton, Dr Rachel Pistol and Dr Seumas Spark.  Extracts from Konrad Eisig’s Diary  are read by Gunnar Cauthery.
 
Producer: Anna de Wolff Evans
Executive Producer: Simon Elmes
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

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