Great Grandpa George

George lived in Hamburg in Germany. He had to leave when Hitler was rising to power, because one of his distant relatives was Jewish and because his father who was well known lawyer didn’t want to join the Nazi Party.

One day a strange person Came to George’s house and gave his Mother a letter. She read it quickly then anxiously folded it up and put it in back in the envelope she also slid in another note.

She then told George and his brother Chris to run to their father’s office as fast as they could and to give him the letter.

Chris realised instantly that it was urgent, he told George this. They ran extremely fast, past the school, past the strip of little shops across the bridge over the river to where their father worked.

When George and Chris where inside they gave there father the letter. He read through it becoming more and more concerned.

He then got up from his chair, took each of them by the hand and led them out of the office, he told them they had to run and they all ran all the way to the station.

George had no idea where they were going or why, neither did Chris. When they where on the train George’s Scout Master got on at the last minute. When George’s father saw him he told them to hide. They did.

George had to hide, sometimes under the train seat, all the way to France. When they got off the train his legs where stiff and his back cramped.

They found a hotel in Paris. Only then did George’s father sit them down and explain what was happening.

He told them that they had had to flee Germany because Hitler would have killed them or put them in a camp. He told them that the reason they had to hide on the train was that George’s Scoutmaster was associated with the Hitler Youth.

One day a while later, George was selling papers on the street in Paris and he met a very nice couple who where part of a religious group called the Quakers. These people owned a school in Ireland. They saw how desperate George was and asked if he would like to go to their school. He said YES

George stayed at this school until he was seventeen, then he decided he would like to go to Australia so he save up for a ticket and got on a ship.

When he arrived in Australia He had to go through something called naturalisation.

For the first year he was here George worked on a farm in Gippsland during the day and studied accountancy via correspondence.

After a while he joined the army (no one knows how he did this he just did) and went to round up Japanese soldiers at their camp in Cowra. According to George he spent most of his time sitting under a tree.

Not long after this he met a lady called Patricia while he was on leave in Melbourne. They fell in love and got married. Just before the end of the war (1945) Patty got pregnant with a little girl.

George was just about to leave for Papa New Guinea to fight when he heard that his little girl Margaret had been born so he was given leave to go home to see her.

While he was at home Japanese soldiers killed his entire unit, so Margaret saved his life. The war ended a month later.

He then had four more kids (Brendan, Michael, Joanna and Angela)

Margaret is my Grandma.