Jella Lepman

Jella Lepman, born in Stuttgart in 1891, was the second of three daughters of a Jewish factory owner. She organised an international reading room for children when she was only seventeen. Her husband, a German American, died when her two children ere tiny, leaving her a widow at thirty-one. She became a journalist and in 1928 published her first children’s book. When Hitler came to power, she lost her post in the German Democratic Party and on the advice of friends sought safety in London. This autobiography begins nine years later when she was persuaded to return to post-war Germany.