This is a unique first-hand account of what it was like to be a Jewish refugee imprisoned in Britain and Canada during World War II. Its immediacy is what makes it such a valuable eyewitness account. While there are other memoirs written decades after internment, Walter W. Igersheimer wrote this memoir shortly after he was deported from Canada because the Liberal government in the 1940s did not want Jews to become Canadian citizens. Igersheimer’s only “crime” was that he was Jewish.

Grossly unsanitary living conditions, cruel and abusive treatment by camp officials, the withholding of medical treatment - these were common experiences for refugees imprisoned at internment camps in Britain and Canada. Walter Igersheimer's memoir exposes this bleak period in the British and Canadian war record.After escaping from Nazi Germany with his family, Igersheimer was completing his medical studies when he was caught in the panic that led to the internment of 30,000 German...