'Extraordinary yet previously untold true story . . . meticulously researched . . . it's also
taut compelling and impossible to put down' Daily Express The police came for Peter
Fleischmann in the early hours. It reminded the teenager of the Gestapo's moonlit roundups he
had narrowly avoided at home in Berlin. Now having endured a perilous journey to reach England
- hiding from the rampaging Nazi thugs at his orphanage boarding a Kindertransport to safety -
here the aspiring artist was on a ship bound for the Isle of Man suspected of being a Nazi
spy. What had gone wrong? In May 1940 faced with a country gripped by paranoia Prime Minister
Winston Churchill ordered the internment of all German and Austrian citizens living in Britain.
Most like Peter were refugees who had come to the country to escape Nazi oppression. They
were now imprisoned by the very country in which they had staked their trust. Painstakingly
researched from dozens of unpublished first-hand accounts and previously classified documents
The Island of Extraordinary Captives tells for the first time the story of history's most
astonishing internment camp and of how a group of world-renown artists musicians and academics
came to be seen as 'enemy aliens'. The Island of Extraordinary Captives is the story of a
battle between fear and compassion at a time of national crisis. It reveals how Britain's
treatment of refugees during the Second World War led to one of the nation's most shameful
missteps and how hope and creativity can flourish in even the most challenging circumstances.
