Anneliese Katz was born on 2 October 1925 in Essen , Germany , to a Jewish family . A victim of Nazi Germany 's atrocities against Jews , she witnessed the '' Kristallnacht '' ( night of broken glass ) , the burning of the Essen synagogue . In 1939 , her parents sent her to England to an aunt she had never seen before . Within a week she was sent to a school 140 miles away to live among strangers and to learn English , a new language to her . Within six months World War II broke out and much later she learned that her parents had been murdered by the Nazis
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Anne Ranasinghe