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Kino and Kinder

Kino and Kinder tells the fascinating, poignant but inspiring story of one family's survival as the Nazi party's anti-Semitic policies unfolded through the 1930s, leading to the Anschluss and then, world war. Author, Vivien Sieber, describes how her grandmother, Paula, her father, Peter and his stepbrother, Erich, grew up in pre-war Austria before the descent into war forced them to flee for their lives alongside many other members of the Central European Jewish community.

To fulfil her obsession with the cinema, the family had purchased the Palast Kino for Paula to run in the heart of cosmopolitan Vienna.

The rise of the Nazis forced Peter and Erich, to start new lives in the UK, and Paula to abandon her cinema and join them.

She  became second matron in a hostel for young girls taken out of Europe by the Kindertransport.

Set against the backdrop of the holocaust, Kino and Kinder describes how Paula, Peter, Erich and their extended family faced their wartime challenges.

These included Peter's wartime internment; his and Erich's subsequent military service for the British armed forces and Paula's time running the hostel.

After the war, the challenges continued as they traced the fate of their family members while Paula attempted to regain the ownership of her cinema; Erich forged a career in entertainment; and Peter built a business. The book provides many wonderful details about life in Vienna, Austria and Central Europe before the Second World War and in post-war London, where the Paula, Peter and Erich continued to live.

It also features interesting and informative first-hand accounts by a number of the women who had lived in the wartime hostel as young girls, in which they talk about their lives in the UK after they had been saved by the Kindertransport. Kino and Kinder is illustrated throughout with many wonderful, evocative and historic photographs.

Buy: your local book shop Bookshop, Blackwells, Waterstones, Amazon, Kindle.
Look Inside: Kindle preview

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 i2i Publishing, Manchester ISBN: 978 1 914933 17 2 2022

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