Life Between the Lines: A Memoir

John Izbicki has an exciting story to tell. Berlin-born, he lived through the horrors of Nazi persecution and, on the day after his eighth birthday, he witnessed the Kristallnacht, and the smashing of his parents' shop windows. On the day Germany invaded Poland and Berlin experienced its first wartime blackout, the Izbickis escaped to Holland and from there on to England. The author describes what it feels like to have been a refugee, unable to speak or understand a single word of English, and how he was persuaded by a kind policeman to change his name from Horst to John. He also leads the reader along the remarkable journey he travelled from school to university, the first of his family to enter higher education, and through his adventurous time as a commissioned army officer during two years of national service spent in Egypt and Libya. But the best part of his life was yet to come when this young refugee decided to make journalism his profession. The boy who, not that many years earlier, could speak not a word of English, became the distinguished education correspondent of the country's leading quality newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. After eighteen years in that responsible position, he was sent to Paris to head the Telegraph's office there. When he left the newspaper to join the Committee of Directors of Polytechnics, he played a leading part in transforming the country's polytechnics into its 'new universities'.

Review :
"As the season approaches for people to choose their books of the year, I would certainly put in my top five a just-published autobiography by former Fleet Street journalist John Izbicki, whom I, also a one time education journalist, knew when he covered education for The Daily Telegraph. It is a fascinating history, not just of newspapers, but of his personal life, fleeing Nazi Germany, as a child in the 1930s." - David Lister, The Independent. "Moving and disturbing at times, this book reflects major historical events from the rise of the Nazis in his formative years to profiling and commenting on more contemporary events. The author unpicks his own life with clarity, dignity and rare insight that put experiences into perspective. This wonderful and outstanding true story will live with me for some time. A fantastic, highly recommended read." - Len Parkyn, The Teacher, journal of the National Association of Teachers. "John Izbicki's autobiography, Life Between the Lines, opens with his memories of running down the street as a five-year-old, exuberantly shouting: "I am a Jew!". As this was in Hitler's Berlin, it gave his parents understandable cause for anxiety. Izbicki later witnessed Kristallnacht from inside his parents' shop, and recalls literally running to the station with them in September 1939, hours after air transport out of Germany to England had been halted. But they managed to make it and he recounts a colourful career in which, demobbed, he progressed from Paris correspondent to Daily Telegraph education editor and back again. While there is humour in the book, there is also much grim and poignant detail. With most of his family having perished, he clearly will never be reconciled with Germany." - Anthea Gerrie, The Jewish Chronicle "John Izbicki has written a characteristically readable and entertaining autobiography. I found Izbicki's depiction of the worlds of journalism, education and politics quite fascinating. He also gives an unusually frank account of his personal life; readers are never allowed to forget the mark left on his family by the Holocaust, and few will remain unmoved by his account of his first wife's early death. Altogether, a memoir to be savoured." - Anthony Grenville, AJR (Association of Jewish Refugees) Journal