A new book reveals a WW2 secret found hidden in Heacham

Mischlinge are the Holocaust victims you and I have never heard of - until now.

Sharon Ring tells a true and terrifying story; some passages are difficult to read, but I urge you to persevere for she uncovers a part of the Holocaust story that has, until now, remained untold.

The book launch took place at Drove Orchards last evening (30th March) at Drove Orchards when friends gathered to hear Sharon talk about how it all came about and celebrate the publication by Harper Collins. 

She began by saying: "No one knows the word 'Mischlinge', but that is rather the point; it's a German word meaning mongrel, or half-breed dog used in Nazi Germany to legally define not dogs, but men, women and children of mixed Jewish and Arian ancestry like my mum Edie who was five years old and her brother Heini who was just nine when they were persecuted as Jews because they had two Jewish grandparents.

"I knew my mum was born in Berlin, and my dad, a British soldier had rescued her, as she put it, at the end of the war, but I knew little of her story until she was elderly and as she showed me where her will was kept, I stumbled cross a yellowing manuscript in German.

"When I asked her about it she said simply, 'Oh that's my bother Heini's memoir, it's been in that strongbox for thirty years, and I've never read it'; when I asked why not, mum said simply 'I decided long ago that all our happiness lay in looking forward and not back'.

"A little reluctantly she agreed to its translation and to talk for the first time about her working class family life in Berlin, throughout the Holocaust and World War Two."

The memoir was a revelation, Sharon learned about Heini's participation in the Berlin Olympics, how he had been interrogated at Gestapo HQ, and imprisoned at a concentration camp. She described feeling that,"he was like a tragic Forrest Gump, he kept popping up at major historical events of the century."

Wen Edie told Sharon about her experiences for the first time it was emotional for them both, and when Edie died Sharon stopped writing for a while, then it took several years of researching the family in archives, on the web, then writing and re-writing the 70,000 words to complete the book.

Sharon continued: "Let me assure you, dear reader, this story is not entirely grim, I know now why my mum spent her time telling me that the world is full of more good people than bad, because she met a lot of them; she tells of neighbours who risked their lives, of the kindness of strangers and the support of her loving family, which she often said gave her the happiest of lives."

The story begins with the day the secret police knock on their door in 1935 and Edie heard the word Mischlinge for the first time. It ends with her funeral in a Norfolk church on her 87th birthday with a nod to her Jewish roots the Menorah placed on the alter and the reading of the Mourner's Kaddish, as Sharon says on page 319, 'Always one foot in each camp to the end.'

Having been a journalist on several national newspapers and then editing magazines like OK, it should come as no surprise that Sharon writes an amazing story that will keep you turning pages well into the night. 

At the end of it all I am left with just one question: who is going to write the screenplay?