The School that Escaped the Nazis: The True Story of the Schoolteacher Who Defied Hitler

By now, almost everyone has heard the Talmudic teaching “whoever saves one life saves the world entire,” famously repeated in the movie Schindler’s List. During the grim years of World War II, stories such as Oskar Schindler’s are the small bright lights in a world of death and destruction. The story of Anna Essinger and her school, relocated from Germany to England, saved the lives of dozens of Jewish children fortunate enough to have been sent there by their parents. Her dedication, resourcefulness, and deep sense of morality kept the institution she founded going through the very worst of times. In Cadbury’s book, readers come to know in a very real way a woman whose dedication was not merely to educating but healing young lives. She seemed to intuit in the 1930s and ‘40s how to care for children and young people we would now say suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is a stunning read.