In 1933, the same year Hitler came to power, Anna Essinger voluntarily exiled her small, progressive school from Germany. Anna – a pioneering German-Jewish schoolteacher – had read ‘Mein Kampf’ and knew the terrible danger that Hitler’s hate-fuelled ideologies posed to her pupils. And so she hatched a courageous and daring plan: to smuggle her school to the safety of England. The school she established in Kent, Bunce Court, flourished despite the many challenges it faced, but the news from her home country continued to darken and Anna watched as Europe slid towards war, with devastating consequences for the Jewish children left behind in Germany and Nazi-occupied territories. Anna was compelled to head a rescue unit at a requisitioned Butlins camp, receiving the children from the horrific events that followed Kristallnacht.