After Dr Alfred Strauss is detained at Sachsenhausen in the wake of Kristallnacht, his son Edgar is sent to safety in England.
Edgar Strauss (b. 1927) grew up in the Veddel, a working-class district of Hamburg, as the son of the obstetrician Dr Alfred Strauss (1896–1976). After the latter’s licence to treat insurance patients was revoked by the Nazi regime in 1933, the family moved to the Eppendorf district. Then came Kristallnacht in 1938, when Alfred Strauss was swept up by the Nazis and detained at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. It was during this detention that Edgar’s mother made arrangements for the boy to go on a Kindertransport to England. With his father’s release, both his parents fled to France in 1939, where his mother died in 1942. After the war, Alfred and Edgar Strauss emigrated to New York, where the physician had to redo his medical certification so that he could practice in the USA.