FOREIGN RELATIONS

Into this personal account, Oldham weaves a brilliant historical reconstruction of life in a cultured and prosperous Berlin – until the darkening shadows of Hitler’s anti-semitic laws steadily reduced the freedoms that he enjoyed and threatened his very existence.

Why? Alexander’s family was Jewish by birth but generations before, had converted to Lutheranism, an act which was to provide no defence in Hitler’s Germany.

Writing, remarkably, without animosity, Alexander Oldham combines the warmth of his childhood and his intriguing family life with a meticulous and historical exploration of the brutal political processes that forced him, aged twelve, to flee his Berlin childhood to take on a new identity and make a new life in Britain.

Author Biography

Alexander Oldham (ne Oppenheim) was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Berlin in 1925. To escape Nazi persecution, he emigrated in 1937 to England where he completed his education. At 17, he joined the British Army and served in the allied advance into Belgium and the Netherlands, and after the war in the British Mandate of Palestine. In 1947 he took British nationality and lived for the rest of his life in the London area, where he was a successful businessman and, with his wife Jill, raised three children. He died in London in 2010.