Out of Nazi Germany and Trying to Find My Way

Irene Matthews's autobiography is the story of a young Jewish girl who had the misfortune of growing up in Nazi Germany. Full of the greatest interest, as well as sadness and joy, this is a tale that readers of all ages and backgrounds would find not only entertaining, but also inspiring. A picture is created that is as clear and colourful as one of the vintage colour films that one sees of Germany at this time.

We learn how she idolised the Hitler Youth as a child and how, as a schoolgirl, she actually saw Hitler and Mussolini at a parade. A tremendous sense of fear and tension develops as she documents the horrors of the Kristallnacht and her subsequent escape through Aachen and Brussels to a safer life in England.

There she experiences great loneliness as a German refugee in wartime England. When she visits Berlin after the fall of the Wall in 1989, the essentially positive character of the book - a strong sense that humanity will always triumph in the end - shines through the epilogue. Affectionate, heart-warming and touching by turns, 'Out of Nazi Germany and Trying to Find my Way' is a frank and poignant collection of memories made even more vivid through a startling recall for detail that is undiminished by time or distance.