BY EMMA COONEY

11:00 - 01 July 2004

A Man who fled Nazi Germany and fought against his country with the British is celebrating his 90th birthday tomorrow. In the 1930s, Oscar Sorell was frequently put in solitary confinement because he disagreed with the Nazi regime, and his suffering is reflected in the wood carvings he has made since his retirement.

His journey to Britain was fraught with danger and he was eventually found by the British fleet in a small boat off the coast of Gibraltar.

After initial suspicions that he was a German spy, he was allowed to join the British Army and fought against his countrymen, working mainly as a translator interrogating German prisoners.

His allegiance with the Allies meant that he could never return to his homeland, and he settled in Bradford on Avon.

Mr Sorell has attributed his survival to two things.

"If you are in the hands of an authoritarian regime, play the simpleton and never try to be clever," he said. "Do not contradict them, they are always right.

"I had some very good close friends whom I trusted, so I never felt alone."

Mr Sorell, originally called Sulz, was born in a small village near Frankfurt in 1914.

He was a member of various youth groups throughout his childhood.

His troubles began in 1933 when his youth group was banned by the Nazi Party, which tried to make all young people join the Hitler Youth.

The following year a meeting was broken up and many members arrested.

Hitler Youth members also intimidated the group by standing outside their homes watching who went in and out.

Mr Sorell said: "We knew that trouble had started to brew, either from the communists or Nazis, and we were against any dictatorship."

The group founded another organisation for people aged at least 18, but the Nazi Party was still not happy.

In 1936 about 150 members of the group were rounded up and put in solitary confinement.

One of the group's founders was sent to a concentration camp where he died in 1941.

Mr Sorell, who worked in commerce and exports, worked tirelessly to leave Germany and managed to get a permit to Sweden in 1939.

From there he got a transit visa for Shanghai, via Portugal and Angola, with the aim of reaching friends in South Africa.

With the help of Catholic Action in Portugal, he travelled by cargo boat to Angola. His German passport had expired and the journey was incredibly dangerous.

There he stayed at a Jewish hotel, but the authorities realised something was amiss and Mr Sorell was imprisoned in an Angolan jail before being sent back to Lisbon.

After being collected by international police officers and imprisoned in semi-darkness in a Lisbon jail, he eventually made his way to the Portuguese Algarve.

When he was arrested again and sent back to Lisbon, Catholic Action stepped in once more to save him and he travelled by cargo ship to Gibraltar.

He had to leave the ship before it reached the island to avoid trouble and narrowly missed being picked up by a Spanish shipping fleet.

"They wanted to rescue me, but I thought I would rather drown than go to Spain and be handed over to the Gestapo who would have killed me."

He was eventually picked up by a British ship and jailed in Gibraltar before being interned in this country.

A year later he joined the British Army, fighting in France in 1942 and then working for British intelligence in Berlin.

Mr Sorell later became a British citizen and worked as a senior lecturer in behavioural science at Greenwich University until he retired.

He lives with his wife Molly in Bradford on Avon surrounded by old photographs and numerous carvings based on his time as a prisoner of conscience.

 

http://www.fcsworld.com/main.htm

There was also a vice-versa story about Brits fighting in SS uniform for Hitler. Weren't many though, 20 - 40 at most.

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THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

Coming to a Theatre of War soon...
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Yeah the British Freikorps(?) i think, though i think the numbers were nearer 150.Dont think they saw any action though.



"Garlic......and bread?? Garlic bread??"


Francia seo mæs idel folclond god æfre gescieppan.

It was on one of those channel 5 documentaries. I'm pretty sure they never got up to as many as 150. They did go to the Eastern front nearer the end of the war on the front line but i don't think actually fought. They then went back to Dresden or sumtin to clean up bombing rubble.

http://www.feldgrau.com/gb.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

Coming to a Theatre of War soon...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yeah the free korps was a joke from the begining rearly, they were not ideologicly motivated at all

This guy however apears to have just hated the Nazies

http://www.fcsworld.com/main.htm

There were actually a fair number of Germans (in the broadest sense of the word) fighting against Nazi Germany.

In the Czech exile brigade, fex, one in eight were Sudeten Germans. There were Germans in Commando no. X in the British army, the Yugoslav partisans fielded 5 battalions of Austrian Germans, the Albanian and Greek partisans did something along the same lines, the Soviets sent small squads of Germans in to infiltrate German lines, and even the US army initially had an Austrian battalion.

The latter was part of a program that never really got that far - there were separate battalions created for Austrians-Americans, Norwegian-Americans and Japanese-Americans. Others, for fex Greek-Americans were planned, but eventually not formed.

Henrik