The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A True Story of an Artist, a Spy and a Wartime Scandal (Hardback) - Simon Parkin Book

A gripping untold war story: using exclusive new archive material, letters and diaries, this is the story of the prisoners of war in internment camps during the Second World War. *An OBSERVER , TABLET, NEW STATESMAN and GUARDIAN SATURDAY MAGAZINE "Books of 2022" pick * The police came for Peter Fleischmann in the early hours. It reminded the teenager of the Gestapo's moonlit roundups he had narrowly avoided at home in Berlin. Now, having endured a perilous journey to reach England - hiding from the rampaging Nazi thugs at his orphanage, boarding a Kindertransport to safety - here the aspiring artist was, on a ship bound for the Isle of Man, suspected of being a Nazi spy. What had gone wrong? In May 1940, faced with a country gripped by paranoia, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the internment of all German and Austrian citizens living in Britain. Most, like Peter, were refugees who had come to the country to escape Nazi oppression. They were now imprisoned by the very country i