Lest we forget the atrocities of the Second World War, retired FCA-qualified accountant Danny Herman continues to promote awareness of the Holocaust by telling his story of narrowly escaping Nazi Germany.

Herman has devoted his life in recent years to educating young people through school workshops about the genocide of Jews. In recognition of his efforts, the 88-year-old was honoured with a British Empire Medal in the 2024 New Year Honours list. “I was very surprised, very flattered and very pleased,” he says.

Herman’s powerful face-to-face workshops, run in collaboration with the charity Learning from the Righteous, relay the story of his life as a child escaping Nazi Germany – thanks to his remarkable mother – and the existence of the Kitchener Camp, a derelict army base on the Kent coast that saved 4,000 men from the Holocaust. “It’s surprising how little these 15-year-olds know about the Holocaust. And somebody has to tell them, so the lessons of history are not forgotten,” he says.

Escaping Nazi Germany

Herman was born in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad in Russia) on 15 September 1935, the day the Nuremberg Laws came into force. “These laws meant that Jews were not allowed to work, travel on public transport, or even visit public parks,” Herman recalls.

As more restrictions were introduced, the family business was soon taken over by the Nazis. Left with no work, his father volunteered for an organisation helping Jews to acquire visas to leave Nazi Germany, in what was becoming an increasingly hostile environment for the whole Jewish community. “But when war was declared, leaving Germany became impossible,” he explains.

In July 1939, Herman’s father was told by friends that he was on a list of people to be collected by the Nazis the next day and taken to a concentration camp. He needed to escape Germany immediately.

Sure enough, the Nazis arrived the next day to collect Herman’s father, “but my mother persuaded them that my father was just on a walk,” he says. If they had searched the flat they would have found him hiding in the back bedroom.

Herman’s mother realised the only course of action was for them to head to Berlin to chase up their missing visa. She collected a few essentials, including a small case for Herman containing his teddy bear and bucket and spade, and embarked on the perilous journey to Berlin via the Polish corridor, with Herman’s father travelling separately.

At dawn the day after their arrival, Herman’s mother went to the British Embassy only to find hundreds of people all demanding to collect their passports or visas. An embassy official came to the front door and announced that diplomatic relations between Germany and the UK had been suspended and that the Embassy would close, with all staff returning to London.

Herman’s mother had managed to squeeze herself to the front and put her foot in the door, demanding that her passport be returned to her. The official pulled her into the entrance hall and after a nail-biting 30-minute wait, he returned not only with the passport but – to her complete amazement – visas for herself and Herman.

“With the stamped visa in hand, we embarked on a train trip to Hamburg and secured a spot on one of the last boats from Germany to England, reuniting with my father at Kitchener Camp on 2 September 1939, the day before war was officially declared,” he says.

Building a new life in England

Herman describes his father’s journey to freedom: “My father travelled 800km from Königsberg to Berlin, then to Hamburg and eventually to England by sea, arriving at the Kitchener Camp as a refugee. Once there he was put to work repairing the camp’s roads and general infrastructure.”

After his stint repairing roads, Herman’s father spent a brief period at a knitting factory. Then he was interned on the Isle of Man for about six months before being transferred to Liverpool. There, he contributed to the war effort by working in an aeroplane factory until the end of the conflict.

After the war, Herman graduated from Manchester University with a degree in commerce in 1956 and in 1959 qualified as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant. Herman proceeded to join forces with fellow chartered accountant Farrell Leon and set up Manchester-based firm Farrell Leon Daniel Herman in 1967.

Herman also had a talent for sprinting and in 1965, ran for Great Britain against the USA. He went on to introduce pioneering training methods that were adopted by Manchester City FC. “From 1967 to 1972, together with Derek Ibbotson [first man to run a mile in four minutes] and [marathon runner] Joe Lancaster we like to think that we helped Manchester City in achieving greater speed and fitness, thereby contributing to their best season ever before their triple success in the 2022/23 season,” he recalls proudly.