Trudi Kanter was born in Vienna in the early 1900s, the only child of prosperous parents; her father was a well-known silversmith. As an adult, Trudi set up a smart millinery business in the most glamorous quarter of the city. When the Nazis marched into Vienna in 1936, Trudi alone realized the danger she and her family were in; as Jews, they had to get out of Austria. Despite the obstacles placed in her way - the relentless bureaucratic hostility, the persecution at home and the unwillingness of other countries to accept Jewish refugees - she succeeded in escaping, with her beloved husband Walter, first to Prague, then to the UK, just as Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement. A few months later, she also succeeded in rescuing her parents. Shortly after their arrival, both Walter and her father were interned in a camp for enemy aliens in Huyton, Liverpool; again, it was Trudi's valiant efforts which secured their release. She began working in London, again in the millinery business, and she and Walter settled there permanently after the war, Walter having lost all of his family in Theresienstadt, the notorious Czech concentration camp. In the 1980s, still living in the UK, Trudi wrote her memoirs, Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler, which she self-published in 1984. She died in the early 1990s.

Select Guide Rating