CHAPTER 1

A Time to Learn

In many ways my life growing up in England was unremarkable. I was a normal suburban kid and the product of a Mum and Dad who I assumed to be normal and boring. I was a typical middle-class kid growing up in post-war Britain of the 1950s. My name is Matthew (Matt) Chandler, and I was born on August 16th, 1944.

I have a brother a twin named Simon (Nomis). The derivation of his nickname is that it is his name, ‘Simon’ is spelled backwards, something that I made up and am still rather proud of to this day! Simon and I were sent away to preparatory school, (prep school) an austere private boys boarding school named Hydneye House near Hastings in Sussex, after which we both having done reasonably well in our entrance exams were accepted to our public school, Harrow, my Dad’s alma mater, along with other notable alumni throughout history, Winston Churchill, Lord Byron, and Robert Peel to name a few. I started there when I was thirteen. Harrow is what is known in England as a public school, which in upper-class lingo translated to "very expensive boarding school.” 

My mother, Elizabeth (Lillibet) Chandler is a housewife, and my father Robert Chandler is a civil servant who works for the British government; the Public Records Office (PRO) if I remember correctly. He was, by all accounts a successful man who I remember leaving the house every morning dressed immaculately in a 3-piece suit with a copy of the Times under his arm, an umbrella neatly furled by his side and a bowler hat on his head for his 7-minute walk to the train which would take him to Waterloo station and his job in Whitehall. He was a typical middle-class British “gent,” and the true definition of a bureaucrat. And I loved him. He was my father. Like me, Mum and Dad were educated at Oxford.

Located in the north London suburbs, Harrow is only about 2 hours from Esher, where I grew up. Nomey had done well at Harrow and had made a ton of influential friends. Of course, the fact that he was such a good athlete helped enormously. He excelled at Cricket and because he was so good, quickly was promoted to the first eleven which in turn made him extremely popular with all the students and faculty who followed his batting and bowling averages religiously. I sadly wasn't much good at sports at all, preferring to spend my time in the library with my head stuck in history books. I’m glad I was considered a swat.

One of my areas of interest was World Wars 1 and II. Ever since I'd been a small boy, I had been fascinated in anything and everything about how and why those wars had started and who the people were who started it. Id become something of an expert on Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Herman Goering, and Martin Boorman on the German side and Sir Winston Churchill, Great Britain's Prime Minister on the British side.

My Dad was clearly a successful man. He excelled in everything he did, but as a father was a distant and sometimes indifferent man, and I never understood what "Nomis,” and I had done wrong to merit his indifference toward us. My school, Dads’ too by the way, Harrow on the Hill, is one of the best schools in the UK. The school was founded in 1572 by John Lyon, a local landowner and farmer, under a Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth I. Harrow's history and influence has subsequently made it one of the most prestigious schools in the world. The school has an enrolment of about 820 boys, all of whom board full-time, in twelve boarding houses. It is one of the original nine public schools listed in the 1868 parliament act. Harrow's uniform includes morning suits, straw boater hats, top hats, and canes. It was in my third year at Harrow that one afternoon while reading a book on World War 2 and wearing my school uniform while sitting in the well-stocked school library, I saw a picture that changed my life forever.

Standing beside Adolf Hitler at the Berghof, his Bavarian Mountain retreat that he had purchased with money earned from his bestselling novel Mein Kampf written in 1933 stood four men in military uniforms. Below the photograph were identifying names of the men and their rank in the SS, the Nazi secret police unit that Hitler created in 1935. To the left of Hitler stood Heinrich Himmler his chief architect and next to him stood Albert Speer, a colonel sporting enough medals to sink a battleship. Adolf Eichmann was next in line and on the very end of the line was a picture of a man, with his name written below, unknown to me called Otto von Braden. When I first saw the picture, I did a double take. The quality of the picture was grainy but after inspecting it carefully I determined the likeness to be uncanny. Maybe, I thought to myself, the man in the photo was simply someone who looked a lot like my Dad. They always say there are twelve faces of man but looking into the eyes of this stranger I saw the vacant, distant, cruel look that I had seen my whole life. I knew that look well because I had been on the receiving end of it. I was staring directly into the eyes of my father. I gasped, momentarily taken aback. This man was the spitting image of my father. But how could that be, I asked myself? Right then I promised myself I'd get to the bottom of this amazing coincidence. But how, I wondered, would I go about finding who this man was. Could it be that he was a German relative I wondered, or could he in fact be my father? When I saw the picture, I was in shock and my brain kept denying that possibility. But then, thinking about it I realized that I knew very little about my Dad, and so it was about time I learned all about him, or whomever the man was in that picture.

But forgive me, I'm jumping ahead of myself. Let me slow down and start at the beginning. I'm currently "reading" (brit speak for studying) Criminology at Oxford university. The year is 1965 and I'm a first-year student and share rooms with my cousin “Tiki” (Adrian Martin) at Balliol College Oxford, and it had been 2 years since I had first seen that photo. A lot has happened since then, mainly to do with my graduating high school and being accepted into university.

Initially when I'd first seen that photo at Harrow, the first thing I'd done was to jot down the name of the man who had been displayed prominently below his picture, and then approach the Harrow librarian, a small mousy man named Mr. Daltrey and ask him how I could find out about a Nazi named Sturmbannfuhrer Otto von Braden. Mr. Daltrey, the librarian rifled around in his box of tricks for a moment or two, and then with a triumphant kind of harrumphing sound beckoned for me to follow him to a corner in the library where he laid his hands on a volume named "The Gestapo. An anthology of the world’s most dangerous men." I thanked Mr. Daltrey and began my research. 

"Otto von Braden was born in Munich in 1914, the son of an army officer and clinical psychologist," the book began. "He was an only child who was educated at private schools in Germany, but in 1932 he was offered a place at Cambridge university to study philosophy. In 1936 he graduated and returned to Germany and shortly after joined the Nazi party rising to the rank of major by the start of World War 2. In 1939 he organized the deportations of Jews from France, Greece, Slovakia, and Austria and in 1940 became the Commandant of the Drancy internment camp, in Paris."  At that point Otto von Braden's resume ended abruptly. I promised myself I'd look into the life and times of this man who bore such an uncanny resemblance to my father.

Tiki Martin is my cousin. We've always been a close family and Tiki was the oldest son of my Aunt Ruth, my Mum’s older sister. Aunt Ruth is a professor of Linguistics at Oxford and when Tiki applied to university, he was accepted to both Oxford and Cambridge. Currently he was in his first year at Oxford reading (Brit-speak for studying) PPE (philosophy. politics and economics). Tiki was my roommate at Oxford, and we were both in our first year. I was reading criminology with a somewhat romantic notion of becoming a crime writer and becoming a biographer of well-known figures throughout history. I had toyed with the idea of becoming a journalist but had dismissed that idea quickly as I realized I wasn't aggressive enough to fight for the headlines and was happiest being a solitary man. And so it was that I found myself sharing a room at university with my best friend in the world, and my twin brother Simon at the same establishment my father had been educated at.

Balliol college is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford and is one of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the foundation and endowment for the college. 

CHAPTER 2

Brompton Hospital

I realized that I knew truly little about my father’s background, except that he'd been an only child and that sadly his parents, Eric and Susan Chandler, my grandparents had been killed in an air raid in 1940 in the Blitz during the Battle of Britain, when a bomb landed on their house in Chelsea dropped by a Heinkel, HE 111 destroying the house, and killing my grandparents instantly. Dad had told us about that terrible night one evening after my other grandparents had visited us for Christmas. Mums’ parents however were very much alive and represented all that was good and honorable in my life. I adored them. They're wonderful grandparents and Simon and I couldn't have wished for kinder and more loving relatives. Mum came from a large family and had two older siblings, my Uncle Nicholas a successful stockbroker married to my Aunt Jenny, and my Aunt Ruth, the aforementioned Professor of linguistics at Oxford. Uncle Nick and Aunt Jen have three kids, our cousins, Martin, Katherine, and Scott who are all around the same age as me and my brother, and Aunt Ruth is married to our Uncle David who is also a don at Oxford, but I'm not exactly sure what he teaches. What I do know however is Uncle David is wickedly funny and has us all in stitches every time he visits. Tiki their son, has a sister, Michelle (Shelly) 2 years younger than him who is currently "serving time" at Roedean an all-girls boarding school near Brighton on the south coast and in her senior year. Shelly and Tiki have always been close, and she intended to head to Oxford and join him next year. Aunt Ruth and Uncle David were pleased that Shelly had chosen her grandfather’s university even though it would be costing them quite a lot of money, they felt that Shelly would benefit greatly from her experience.

I was working on several things concerning my investigation into that picture I had seen. I knew my grandparent’s names on my father’s side had been Eric and Susan Chandler and knew roughly where they had lived in Chelsea, so one afternoon, I went to the tax office at the Royal Borough of Kensington records dept. and looked up their address. Sure, enough after a couple of hours of ferreting around the records I found the address I was looking for. The Chandler’s had lived at 37 Eaton Terrace Chelsea SW3. I jotted down the address and, on a whim, decided to head over there to see what had been built in its place after the war. I'm not sure what I was expecting, maybe a row of ugly houses, or a gleaming modern monstrosity full of glass and steel beams had been built on the same footprint where the houses had been destroyed by German bombs? When I arrived, I didn't expect to see what I found. I know I'm young, but my Mum had always instilled her love of architecture on us boys and from an early age we’d been dragged to old homes and estates, so I was well versed in the authenticity and magnificence of old buildings. What I found in Eaton Terrace was house after house of splendid Georgian homes dating back to King George IV that had all been built around 1830. I walked up to number 37 and looked up at its facade. While I was no expert, I frankly saw no signs of damage to the original structure. Surprised, I steeled myself, and with false confidence walked up the steps and knocked on the front door. After a moment the door opened and standing before me was a frail old man of around eighty-five years of age, I guessed. "Good afternoon, sir, my name is Matthew Chandler, and I was wondering if you could help me?" I began. The old man looked at me and with a look of surprise his face suddenly turned ashen gray and without warning he fell to the floor making a loud thump as he fell, while I stood on his doorstep. I ran towards him and attempted to revive him, but he was out cold and so I knelt down on the floor beside him and seeing that he was unconscious began to panic. I looked around the dimly lit hallway and noticed a hall table on the left and then saw a phone sitting on it. I jumped up and ran over to the phone picked it up and dialed 999 and was immediately connected to an emergency operator. I quickly told her what had happened and said I needed an ambulance at 37 Eaton Terrace, SW3, hung up and waited for it to arrive. After a few minutes, the old man opened his eyes but didn't seem to be aware of anything and appeared to me to be non-compos mentis and just lay there looking confused. I felt awful and so guilty that I'd done something to scare this nice old man but a voice inside me told me to stay focused and stay with the man until the ambulance arrived and then find out what hospital they would be taking him to and leave a note on the hall table explaining what had happened if by chance the man had a wife who was perhaps out, maybe shopping. I intended to accompany the old man to the hospital if I was allowed. Ten minutes later the ambulance arrived, and two men jumped out and dealt with the old man, finally putting him on a stretcher to carry him to the ambulance where they were going to transport him to the Royal Brompton Hospital. I thanked the men and asked if I could go with him in the ambulance to the hospital. Initially they looked unsure but then one of them asked me if I was a family member. Yes, I lied, and he nodded his head and told me to get into the ambulance. I wrote a "To whom it may concern," note and placed it on the hall table explaining who I was and gave my name and address at Balliol and mentioned that I would stay with the old man until they arrived. At that moment a neighbor, having seen the ambulance, poked her head in and asked, somewhat redundantly, if everything was all right. I explained what had happened and she told me she would inform his wife and let her know he had been taken to the Royal Brompton Hospital and that I was with him. I thanked her and jumped into the ambulance.

In 1841, 25-year-old solicitor Philip Rose became the founder of what is today The Royal Brompton Hospital. Rose decided to build a tuberculosis hospital when his sympathy was roused for one of his clerks who had tuberculosis and wasn't able to be treated by any hospital in London. Today The Royal Brompton Hospital is considered to be one of the finest cardiovascular hospitals in the world.

We arrived at the hospital in record time and the old man was wheeled into the emergency room on a gurney. At that point I was directed to the waiting room, while he was being checked out by the doctor. An hour later someone from the hospital told me that the old man was in stable condition but had been admitted for observation, and that I was welcome to go and sit with him in the ward as visiting hours were still going on for the next couple of hours. Over the past hour I'd had plenty of time to reflect on why this man had reacted so strongly when I introduced myself. Could it be? Hmm, I wondered. Was it too much of a coincidence that we shared the same surname? A few minutes after I arrived in the ward and was settling into an uncomfortable wooden chair when an old woman appeared looking harried and fraught with worry. She rushed over to the old man’s bedside and kissed him on the cheek and whispered to him. "Hello, my love, you silly old man. I'm here now. I love you, my darling." With those gentle words he opened his eyes, smiled, and replied; “I’m so glad you came. So sorry to be such a nuisance." And they looked at each as if they were teenagers. I felt a rush of love and warmth inside.

The old man was drifting in and out of consciousness and still did not seem to be at all well. His wife was clucking around him like a mother hen, and it seemed rude of me to intrude on any more on their time, so I decided to take my leave of them. The old lady shook me by the hand and thanked me profusely for saving her husband’s life. I just smiled at her telling her I was glad to be of help, but left feeling more confused than ever.

I left that day replaying the afternoons events in my head. First of all, why had my Dad told us his childhood home had been destroyed when it clearly hadn't been? Could it be that he had actually grown up somewhere else? Maybe a street or two over? Had I not searched hard enough? And why had the old man collapsed when I told him my name. Or had that just been a coincidence? Maybe he was about to collapse right before he answered the door. There were so many questions that were swirling around my brain as I climbed aboard the double decker bus that would take me from South Kensington to Paddington station which would take me home to Oxford. 

Ever since I'd been a little boy, I've always loved riding double decker buses in London. My favorite thing to do was to climb the stairs and walk to the very front of the bus and plonk myself down in the front seat and pretend I was driving that magnificent beast. I clearly was destined to become a bus driver. Forty minutes later after a scenic tour of London I arrived at Paddington. There happened to be a bus stop literally opposite the station and so I rang the bell, and the bus dropped me fifty feet away from the front entrance. I looked at my watch. It was 4:55 pm and I had just 11 minutes to buy a ticket and catch my train, and so I sprinted down the stairs of the bus and rushed to buy my ticket. I made the train just as it was starting to pull out of the station.

CHAPTER 3

Balliol College

After I returned to Oxford things got pretty hectic. You know how crazy college life can get? A few days later I got a letter at Balliol. You may remember I had written a note to the wife of the man who had collapsed, leaving it on the hall table for her to find when she came home. In it I had given my name and school address in case they needed to contact me. When I received the letter the return address that was written clearly on the outside of the envelope was; Mr. and Mrs. Eric Chandler, 37 Eaton Terrace, London, SW3. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. The man who had collapsed a few days earlier and the old lady who I had met in the hospital who had come to check on her husband after his collapse were my grandparents. That was quite obvious. I stared at the envelope for ages and ages. My mind was churning What was going on? Had my father intentionally lied to us, or was it possible this was some dreadful mistake? I was in shock. After a minute or two I decided to read the letter, so I sat down and tore open the envelope. What I read changed my life forever.

Dear Matthew,

It appears I owe you an enormous debt of gratitude. The last thing I remember is answering my front door, and hearing you introduce yourself. The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital with my wife at my side. She told me all about you and what you had done for me, and how you sat with me until the ambulance arrived and then came with me to the hospital and sat with me until she arrived. I’m most grateful to you.

I think dear Matthew that we should speak soon. Would you be able to come and visit us and have a cup of tea with us, at your earliest convenience? Our telephone number is Chelsea 62514. We look forward to hearing back from you.

Fondly,

Eric and Susan Chandler

I sat there for a moment silently. From the tone of their letter, I got the feeling that they had figured it out, just as I was beginning to. But why, that was the question that had to be answered. I had no idea why my Dad had lied to us. Had he done something so awful, that he had to hide his background? What on earth could have been so bad? Assuming that the Chandlers would be at home now, I decided to take the bull by the horns and telephone them immediately. I walked down the hall to the bank of payphones that Balliol had installed in my college “at the turn of the century,” and rang them up to arrange our meeting. After a few rings, a female voice answered. “Hello Mrs. Chandler,” I began. “This is Matthew Chandler, and I’m ringing to let you know that I received your letter this morning and would love to come and have a cup of tea with you. I have a half day tomorrow and was wondering if that time would be convenient?” “Well, hello, Matthew dear.” Yes, I think tomorrow would be perfect. Shall we say at 4 o’clock?” Mrs. Chandler replied. “We shall look forward to seeing you then Matthew.” I smiled at the phone as I confirmed the time and said with a most confident voice that was actually far more confident than I felt, “super. that’s all set then. I'll look forward to seeing you both tomorrow,” and then hung up the phone.

After I got back to my room, I realized that if indeed these nice people were my grandparents, they’d probably like to see a photo of my Dad and so I dug around in my stuff and finally found a fairly new photo of my Dad and Mum that I had taken with my Kodak Brownie last summer when we’d been in Scotland at our summer house on Loch Fyne in Argyle. It was a happy photo. I remembered that day well. Dad was in an unusually jolly mood and had played a round of golf with us two boys, while Mum walked around the course pretending to be our caddy. The photo I took, was of Mum and Dad on the side of the cliff at the golf club overlooking Loch Fyne as the sun was sinking over the loch. I caught them right as Dad was laughing at something Mum had just said to him. It was nice to see them so happy. I pocketed the photo to take to the Chandlers tomorrow knowing they’d love to see him after all this time. I had no idea what had gone so wrong that prompted my Dad to lie to us and for him to forgo the only parents he had. 

I arrived promptly at 4 the following day. "Come in my boy. It's lovely to see you again." I smiled at the old man as he let me in through the same door where just a few days earlier the old man had collapsed. He led me down the hallway into a sunny drawing room where the old woman was sitting in a Queen Anne chair reading a novel. She looked up when we entered, and a smile lit up her ancient face. "Oh, Matthew how good of you to come. How are you? Please come in and make yourself comfortable," she gushed as she stood up and began to organize her Knick knacks for some reason known only to her. "Let me get us all a cup of tea and a biscuit and then we can chat more comfortably." The old man nodded and then beckoned for me to sit down on the sofa as he plonked himself down in the corresponding Queen Anne chair on the other side of the fireplace. I must say it felt so natural to be in their house, and I was experiencing a wonderfully warm feeling inside. After the tea arrived the small talk started. "Now my boy, you're up at Balliol am I right?" I nodded in the affirmative. The old man smiled and replied. "I was there too, but back in the early 1600s." I laughed politely at his joke. "Are you enjoying yourself at Oxford?" I smiled and told the old man that I was, and that I was in my first year and was sharing a room with my cousin Tiki and twin brother Simon. “Tiki must be Ruth’s son, is that right?” interjected the old woman. The question stopped me in my tracks. How did she know Aunt Ruth, I thought to myself. “That’s right, Aunt Ruth is his Mum” I answered but that question opened the floodgates and prompted us to get past the small talk and move to the topics that we really needed to talk about. The old man stood up and looking at me pointedly asked “Was your father’s name James, and your mother’s name Elizabeth? I swallowed and nodded yes; those are my parent’s names, I told them. Then with one accord both of them leapt toward me and hugged me so hard that it hurt. I couldn’t believe that I had found my father’s parents. But still the nagging question remained. Why had my Dad lied that my grandparents were dead. I vowed to find the answer.

The one question my grandmother asked about my Aunt Ruth altered the trajectory of our conversation and allowed the three of us to acknowledge that we were indeed related and that in fact these two good people were my grandparents and in point of fact were very much alive. I had so many questions I wanted to ask, and so did they. That afternoon we sat in their comfy drawing room asking and answering tons of questions and getting to know each other and making up for all those years of absence. I asked them both what they would like me to call them and as if they had been rehearsing that question for decades they replied. You can just call us Granddad and Grand Mum if you like, which was fine with me. Then my grandfather began to fill in the missing years.

CHAPTER 4

The Missing Years

We were living in this same house in 1940. The war had started a year earlier in 1939 and I was working for the War office in Whitehall. I first met your grandmother at Oxford University. She was at Lady Margaret Hall and was studying linguistics. We began courting in our second year and got engaged a year or two after graduation and finally moved to London when I began working for the Foreign Office and then got married at the Brompton Oratory in Knightsbridge. After a year or two of marriage Susan got pregnant and we purchased this house just a few months before our son, your father Robert was born. We only had the one child, but he was a wonderful little chap. So full of questions and was interested in everything. Of course, he followed the identical track educationally that you and I have taken. Hydneye House, Harrow and then Oxford. After he got his degree he once again followed in his mothers and my footsteps and joined the Foreign Office and began his diplomatic service." During the years while your father was growing up your grandma was a housewife, and I was working at the Foreign Office. When Robert went to Harrow, she decided to put her degree to use and got a job translating German into English for the ministry. She met a group of women at the ministry who were not only translating but also deciphering communications from the German government that had become increasingly alarming. She became rather good at it. Germany was behaving irrationally and this new chap Adolf Hitler, who had recently been imprisoned for treason had been released and had become Germany's new chancellor. Things were not looking good in Europe and war was becoming more and more imminent day by day. At that time, I was about a year from retirement.

When the war began in 1939 Robert was doing something rather hush-hush with the government. We never really knew what it was, and we never talked about it. In 1940 the war was in full swing, and everyone was doing their bit and in the autumn of that year the Luftwaffe began bombing raids every night on all the big cities in England including London. That time of the war was known as the Blitz. 

A cousin of mine Buzzer Haddingham lived with his wife Lois and their three kids, Peter, David, and Jane, in the Channel Islands on the island of Guernsey and had mentioned that if we were ever considering evacuating London, we'd be more than welcome to come and stay with them for as long as was necessary. They had a large house, a 5-bedroom Victorian called “Les Blicqs,” so your grandmother, and I discussed it and decided to close up this house and take Buzzer and Lois up on their kind offer. It was the worst decision of our life. The first couple of years were actually genuinely nice. Buzzer was a barrister and was very involved in home defense. That in some ways was what I had done with the government for my whole career, and so Buzzer put me to work on Guernsey in the unlikely event the Germans invaded us. We felt safe in Guernsey.  But unfortunately invade they did, and in 1943 one morning without warning a battalion of German troops landed on the island and announced their intentions. Guernsey, because we had no military immediately surrendered to German rule.

“Why oh why had we left the comparative safety of London? Now we were at the beck and call of the Nazis. Shortly after they arrived, they interviewed all the residents on Guernsey. They began to ask questions about everyone’s heritage and insisted on seeing birth certificates and seemed unusually interested in our backgrounds. Bloody krauts. They've always been a nation of number crunchers, small minds, and officious behaviour. Then one evening in July we were all settling down after dinner when a German lorry pulled up to the house and a Nazi officer accompanied by three goons knocked on the door and demanded to see your grandmother. The German asked her what her name was, and she replied, Susan Chandler, and he then asked her what her birth name had been. I remember that she looked over at me and for the first time since I had met her, I saw a look of fear in her eyes, and then replied that her birth name was Steinberg. The officer looked down at his "list" and without another word marched her out of the door to the waiting lorry. The next few days were a nightmare for us all. We tried everything to free your grandmother but to no avail. They wouldn't let me visit her or bring her a change of clothes or even a toothbrush. Then a week later I went to the garrison and was told that she was no longer there but was on the way to Germany to face trial for her crimes! For what charge I yelled! It made no difference I couldn't get blood out of a stone. My darling wife had been arrested, for god knows what." I looked over at my grandparents trying to figure out what to say, but nothing came, and so we sat there silently as I watched my grandmother sob quietly in her chair. The only sensible thing to be done in my opinion, was to walk over and give her a big hug. She smiled at me through her tears, and then got herself together and picked up the story where my grandfather had left off. "When the Germans arrested me, I assumed it had something to do with me being a Jew. I'd heard rumors of course that Hitler intended to rid the world of all Jews, but I had no idea the lengths to which he would be willing to go. When I began working for the Foreign Office, my job had been to translate communications between Nazis and their allies that had been intercepted by us after Hitler became chancellor in 1936. There was a lot of chatter about what they referred to as "The Jewish Problem," but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that it meant the systematic decimation of millions upon millions of Jews. And also of course I never imagined that I would be so personally involved. The German high command apparently had told your grandfather that I was being taken to Berlin to be tried, for a crime they refused to acknowledge, but in fact I was taken to Paris instead, to a place called Drancy which was an assembly and detention camp for Jews on the outskirts of Paris who were to be deported to death camps like Treblinka, Belzec, Theresienstadt, Dachau, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, and Ravensbrück the last place being where I was eventually sent. We lived in constant fear of brutal treatment, torture, starvation, and terror detention. For instance, the men had to endure pole hanging which was a form of torture where their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were suspended by a rope attached to their wrists and left to hang for hours at a time. I lived in a barracks with women, young and old, a number of whom would disappear on a regular basis. The guards would come into our barracks and would simply call out the name of an inmate, then frog march them out of the hut, never to be seen again. I survived Ravensbrück for two excruciating years until May 5th, 1945, when to our surprise the United States Army liberated us in a maneuver that impressed the most battle hardened of us. We were so tired and unbelievably grateful to the liberating forces. The fact that we were alive was extraordinary, and after all of us realized the significance, all I wanted to do was try to get a message to Eric as soon as possible. First of all, our wonderful liberating forces allowed us all to send a telegram to our loved ones. I managed to send it to our house in Eaton Terrace figuring that the moment Eric knew that the war had been won, he’d beetle home knowing that if I were still alive, Eaton Terrace would be the first place I would contact him at. How right he was! Finally, just 3 days before we were scheduled to leave the refugee camp, I managed to telephone the Haddinghams where Eric and I had evacuated to after we left London during the Blitz. I spoke with a delighted Buzzer who told me that Eric had stayed with them until right after V Day and then just as I had assumed had beetled home to await my arrival at 37 Eaton Terrace.

2 days later after crossing the English Channel 16 of us Jews arrived in England at the port of Dover, where we boarded a train to London and 90 minutes later, I arrived safely at Waterloo station where I found an anxious looking man scanning the platform for his first sight of me. We saw each other about the same time, and it was just like a scene out of a Clarke Gable movie. Your grandfather first saw me and began running towards me. About five steps in I saw him and dropped my one bag and began running towards him. When we finally reached each other, he scooped me up and gave me the longest kiss which seemed to last at least two hours. Nothing needed to be said, and so we just stood there holding each other as if there was no tomorrow. Finally, still holding on to one another we walked to the taxi rank to find a taxi to take us home. My first few weeks home were like a dream. Freedom is a commodity that one takes for granted until it is taken away from you, and so, just the fact that I could sleep until when I wanted, eat when I wanted, go for walks when I wanted was such a luxury. Never again would I take freedom for granted.” My grandmother slumped down in her chair remembering all the horrors she had endured at the camp where she’d been incarcerated for more than 2 years. I was desperately trying to think of something that might lift her spirits and suddenly remembered I'd stuck the photo I had taken last year of Mum and Dad in my pocket. I reached in and said, "I brought a photograph of Mum and Dad with me and thought you might like to see it." "Why yes, we'd love to see one,” she replied, and so I fished it out of my pocket and handed it to her. She looked at it and then her face turned ashen grey and without saying a word she handed it over to my granddad. He took one look at the photo and his jaw went slack as he sat there staring at the picture muttering something unintelligible. Frankly, I was taken aback by their reaction and just sat there silently waiting for them to say something, anything. But still .... silence. Finally, I broke the silence and stammered, “what’s wrong? Please tell me, and my grandmother looked back at me and with tears streaming down her face, simply said. The photograph that you just showed us is not our son. The man is in fact someone I knew very well however, because he was the Gestapo commandant at Drancy the camp the Nazis first sent me to after I was arrested and arrived in Europe. His name is Sturmbannfuhrer Otto von Braden, and he is a brutal man who took great delight in humiliating and torturing the Jews who had been incarcerated there." Tears were now streaming down her face so much so that my grandfather stood up came over to his wife and hugged her tight to his chest until her crying slowed down. I was desolate, thinking that a happy holiday snap of my Mum and Dad would in fact be a tonic for all the tragedy this poor woman had gone through. After my grandmother stopped crying and the shock had worn off, I explained that the two people in the photo were my parents. However, on the inside, my mind was racing a mile a minute. I was now doubly confused and just wanted to get back to Balliol and try to make sense of all this madness. I heard myself explaining to these nice old people that I had been raised by these two people and for over twenty years had considered them to be my rock, my security, and my comfort. In a second everything I held dear had been trashed, and now I had more questions than answers.

CHAPTER 5

The British Fascist Union

A  little while later, I took my leave of the Chandlers, promising I'd be back in touch soon, and then took the bus back to Paddington station where I boarded a train for Oxford. Less than 2 hours later I was back at my rooms at Balliol considering my next move. One thing of which, I was sure; my next move wouldn’t involve talking to my parents. I needed to find out who they were. As it happened Tiki was at home when I got back to college. I knew that his Mum Aunt Ruth hadn't been particularly close to my Mum, her sister, and as it happened his parents lived just fifteen minutes from college. Tiki was planning to visit them the following day and so I asked if he wouldn't mind if I visited them as well. I had some questions that I felt needed to be answered. 

The next day I visited Aunt Ruth and Uncle David and over lunch asked her why she'd had a falling out with her sister. Aunt Ruth is a smart lady and doesn't suffer fools gladly. As my mother’s older sister, she told me the reason she fallen out with her was that in 1936 my Mum had joined a pro-Nazi group called the British Fascist Union, which was a splinter group from another organization, the Union of Fascists that had been founded in 1932 by Walter Mosby. Apparently, Mum had been radicalized by the Union of Fascists during her time at university and had been lured to the British Fascist Union by John Angus McNab one of the leaders of the UOF whom she'd had a mild fling with in 1936. “Her political ideology differed diametrically from mine.” Aunt Ruth told me. “She believed that all decisions should be made by a leader who had absolute power. All political authority and sovereignty should rest with this leader and should be trusted by the people to make important decisions on their behalf, and no other political parties could be tolerated. She felt that groups with political influence, such as unions or churches, should be restricted or abolished. Sadly, we fell out badly because of her fascist beliefs. We’d always been close as children and it stayed that way until after the war when she married your father. He was a wonderful influence on her and shortly before you were born the four of us went away on a summer holiday to Scotland, and Lillibet and I had a chance to talk, and we made up and have been like the sisters we used to be ever since. The only thing I regret were the wasted years we spent not talking to each other.”

What Aunt Ruth told me confused me more than ever. What had happened to my Mum to change her views? I realized that I had to visit Mum and Dad as soon as possible. I had devised a plan. FINALLY.

I had visited Aunt Ruth and Uncle David with Tiki the previous weekend and so I spent the next 5 days attending lectures at university and then on Friday afternoon having phoned Mum and Dad earlier in the week, took a train to Esher station and arrived in time for supper. There were just the three of us. Simon was at Oxford and so it gave me a chance to ask them in as natural a way as possible how they had first met. Aunt Ruth had told me that right after VE day in 1945 they had met at a victory party in London and hit it off in a big way. One thing led to another, and they married 3 months later. I did the math quickly and figured out it was only 6 months later that I was born. I never said a thing to them, and they glossed over as many details as they could, but they knew. It was vital that I wasn’t too inquisitive, as that would’ve certainly raised suspicions, so I simply sounded interested. It seemed to work. I didn’t wish to give the impression that I was prying.

Dad was in a particularly jolly mood that evening and filled me in on a few significant details of his return to “civilian” life after the war. London’s a big city, and easy to get lost in, plus the fact that it’s the center of the British government. There are two chambers in Britain that determine democratic political outcomes: they are known as The House of Commons and the House of Lords. The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament. The House of Commons is a democratically elected body consisting of 650 members, known as members of Parliament or MPs for short, and the House of Lords, which is also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament. Membership is by appointment, heredity, or official function. Both the upper house, the House of Lords, and the lower house, the House of Commons meet in the Palace of Westminster, otherwise known as the Houses of Parliament and is the headquarters of the bicameral Parliament.

When he returned to London having been part of the allied mop up forces, he was finally and officially “demobbed,” (the term used when a member of the British military returns to civilian life) Dad first took a month’s leave and during his leave wrote to his superiors and made a request to change departments from the ministry of defense to the PRO, giving his reasons for his decision as mental exhaustion and the desire to live a quieter life and become an administrator. He asked to be considered for a post in The Public Records Office, PRO (The National Archives), the guardians of over 1,000 years of iconic national documents from the Domesday Book to present day, and expert advisers in information and records management of cultural, academic and heritage institution. Several weeks later he received an answer from the Public Records Office (The National Archives) accepting his transfer to begin a new post the following Monday doing a job very much like the one he had been doing in Berlin by helping with the transition after the war. With the birth of a new welfare state after the war, the incoming Labour government, following its landslide victory in the 1945 election, faced many post-war challenges in quick succession. The continuation of the war in the Far East and its end (before any graduation adjustment of the war economy could take place) was an immediate problem. The need for de-mobilization (demobbing) of the armed services was also paramount. British colonies began to seek independence and decolonization followed. India was the first to gain independence. Following the Beveridge Report, the new government created the Welfare State in order to help the poorest and most disadvantaged in society. The National Health Service then began operating in July 1948. For the first time in history, medical treatment was available for the entire country, without charge. Dad began his new job right after he returned to England and shortly after he met my Mum. He had fallen on his feet.

Once I had begun looking into the “whys and wherefores,” of my Dad’s life, nothing seemed to make any sense. I had first seen the picture of my Dad wearing a Nazi uniform and standing with Hitler at the Berghof in the library when I was still at Harrow, but for whatever reason, maybe because I just couldn’t deal with the fact that my Dad might have been a fraud, or that maybe I was just too young; I had left all my unanswered questions in a pile on my bedroom floor and covered them up with dirty clothes for ages. But since I had been at Oxford, I had got a second wind, and once I found out that my grandparents were alive after Dad had told us when we were young children, that they had been killed in a German bombing raid in 1940 I knew that I had to find out the truth. I owed that to my dear younger brother Simon.

Saturday morning came and Mum and I were sitting around the kitchen table having breakfast while Dad had gone shopping. I decided to take the bull by the horns and asked Mum if she and Aunt Ruth had been close siblings. “Why do you ask,” she replied. “Oh, I dunno,” I said, “Tiki told me that years ago you weren’t speaking to each other.” I blustered. “I suppose we must have had an argument or something. I really can’t remember now. It was so long ago.” And with that one sentence she shut me down, and so I realized that I would have to dig a lot deeper if I were to find the truth. We finished breakfast and went back to talking about nothing important, so I made a snap decision to steal something with both of their fingerprints. Later that morning Mum brought Dad a gin and tonic, and as we sat in the drawing room of their lovely suburban house, reaching for that drink on the side table next to his chair, he accidentally knocked it over and it fell on the carpet, smashing into a zillion shards of glass. In his haste he leaned down and tried to pick up some of the broken glass and cut himself on his thumb. I waited until they both got up to have lunch on the patio and went over to Dad’s side table and carefully stole the now empty replacement glass and walked upstairs to my bedroom and wrapped it in newspaper and concealed it in my overnight bag. I then went downstairs and rooted through the trash and successfully retrieved the large shard of glass that Dad had cut himself on and went upstairs to my bedroom and added it the blood-stained shard to my collection. I then went and joined Mum and Dad on the patio for lunch.

That evening I took the train home to Oxford with a master plan in my mind, the glass with my fathers fingerprints, and his blood for analysis in my bag. I knew what had to be done.

CHAPTER 6

Otto von Braden

Otto von Braden's full Nazi military title was Sturmbannfuhrer Von Braden which was the SS equivalent to a Major. Otto von Braden initially organized the deportations of Jews from France, Greece, Slovakia, and Austria. He became the Commandant of the Drancy internment camp which was an assembly and detention camp for confining Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps during the German occupation of France during World War II. Originally conceived and built as a modernist urban community poetically named La Cité de la Muette, (the silent city) it was located in Drancy a northeastern suburb of Paris France. Between 22 June 1942 and 31 July 1944, during its use as an internment camp, 67,400 French, Polish, and German Jews were deported from the camp in sixty-four rail transports which included 6,000 children. Only 1,542 prisoners remained alive at the camp when the German troops in Drancy fled as Allied forces advanced and the Swedish Consul-General Raoul Nordling took control of the camp on 17 August 1944, before handing it over to the French Red Cross to care for the few survivors.

Drancy was under the control of the French police until 1943 when administration was taken over by the Nazi secret police (SS) which placed Otto von Braden in charge of the camp.

On 20th August 1941, French police raided houses throughout the 11th arrondissement of Paris and arrested more than 4,000 Jews, mainly foreign or stateless Jews. French authorities interned these Jews in Drancy, marking its official opening. French police enclosed the barracks and courtyard with barbed-wire fencing and provided guards for the camp. Drancy fell under the command of the Gestapo Office of Jewish Affairs in France. Five sub camps of Drancy were located throughout Paris (three of which were the Austerlitz, Lévitan and Bassano camps). Following the roundup on 16th and 17th July 1942, more than 4,900 of the 13,152 victims of the mass arrest were sent directly to the camp at Drancy before their deportation to Auschwitz. 

The compound was under the control of the French police until July 3rd, 1943, when Germany took direct control of the Drancy camp. Sturmbannfuhrer Otto von Braden became camp commandant as part of the major stepping up at all facilities needed for mass extermination. The French police conducted additional roundups of Jews throughout the war. Some Drancy inmates died as hostage pawns (In December 1941, 40 prisoners from Drancy were executed in retaliation for a French attack on German police officers.) In November 1943 around 350 inmates of the Borgo San Maldazzo concentration camps in Italy were deported by train to Drancy and, soon after, on to Auschwitz. The inmates from Borgo, Jewish refugees from a number of European countries, had been arrested after the Italian surrender in September 1943, having mostly come to Italy from France in search for safety from Nazi prosecution.”

I sat there silently as I absorbed the information I’d just read. The day after I’d visited Aunt Ruth and Uncle David, I’d received a reply from the Office of German Archives in Berlin after I’d written to them asking for information about Otto von Braden some time earlier. The report continued. “In May 1943, von Braden was promoted from SS-Sturmbannfuhrer to SS-Ostubaf (Lieutenant Colonel) and was transferred from Drancy deportation center to Ravensbrück concentration camp 90 km north of Berlin, where he moved with his wife Astrid and their two young children, Hans, and Mariah. SS-Ostubaf Von Braden succeeded Max Koegel as commandant of the woman’s labour camp at Ravensbrück.”

Ravensbrück was a death camp in every sense of the word. The Nazis relished in the abuse of their inmates who were there for one purpose solely. The SS anatomist, Johann Kremer described it best by saying, “ Dante's Inferno seems to me almost a comedy compared to this. They don't call Ravensbrück the camp of annihilation for nothing!"

There were children in Ravensbrück as well. Pregnant women who were Romani gypsy’s or Jews who were incarcerated in the camp then gave birth, but initially there were few children, except a few Czech children from Lidice in July 1942. Later the children in the camp represented almost all nations of Europe occupied by Germany. Between April and October 1944 their number increased considerably, consisting of two groups. One group was composed of Romani children brought into the camp with their mothers or sisters after the Romani camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau was closed. The other group included mostly children who were brought with Polish mothers sent to Ravensbrück after the collapse of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Most of these children died of starvation. This was the death camp that my grandmother found herself sent to in 1944 after she was transferred from Drancy. The remarkable coincidence was that Ostubaf Otto von Braden moved to Ravensbrück around the same time. The mode of transportation they arrived in was the only difference!

Heinrich Himmler visited the outskirts of Minsk in 1941 to witness a mass shooting. He was told by the commanding officer there that the shootings were proving psychologically damaging to those being asked to pull the triggers. Thus, Himmler figured out that another method of mass killing would be preferable. After World War II, the diary of the Auschwitz Commandant, Rudolf Höss, revealed that the killers "unable to endure wading through blood any longer,” either went mad or killed themselves.

The Nazis had first used gassing with carbon monoxide cylinders to murder 70,000 disabled people in Germany in what they called a 'euthanasia programme' to disguise that mass murder was taking place. Despite the lethal effects of carbon monoxide, this was seen as unsuitable for use in the East due to the cost of transporting the carbon monoxide in cylinders.

Each extermination camp operated differently, yet each had designs for quick and efficient industrialized killing. While Höss was away on an official journey in late August 1941 his deputy, Karl Fritzsch, experimented with an idea that had been suggested to him. At Auschwitz clothes infested with lice were treated with crystalized prussic acid. The crystals were made to order by the IG Farben chemical company for which the brand name was Zyklon B. Once released from their container, Zyklon B crystals in the air released a lethal cyanide gas. Fritzsch tried out the effect of Zyklon B on Soviet POWs, who were locked up in cells in the basement of the bunker for this experiment. Höss upon his return was briefed and was impressed with the results and this method became the camp strategy for extermination as it also became at Ravensbrück. Besides gassing, the camp guards continued killing prisoners via mass shooting, starvation, and torture.

Otto von Braden was born in Munich in 1914 the only child of a doctor and clinical psychologist. His parents decided to educate him in England where they had both been educated and Otto was accepted into Cambridge University to study philosophy. By all accounts he was brilliant and had excelled at university, graduating with a good degree. Otto spoke with a near perfect English accent; something his parents had always wished for in their son. The von Braden’s lived in Berlin in a bright and airy home near the hospital where they worked and just a mile from their son Otto’s home that he shared with his lovely wife Astrid, a researcher whom he had met at Munich University where he’d been conducting post graduate studies after Cambridge. After he and Astrid were married, they raised two children Hans and Mariah, and were living a perfect existence. Astrid had a brother, Jürgen who was something of a tearaway who in 1936, 3 years before the start of World War 2 joined the Nazi party. He’d attend weekly meetings at a beer hall in Munich and one day invited Otto to come along as his guest. It only took one meeting for Otto to be sold on the idea of fascism. Germany at that time in history was incredibly divided and needed someone to save it, politically speaking. Adolf Hitler fit the bill perfectly. He was a brilliant orator and had the impressive ability to whip crowds into wild frenzies. Hitler in Otto von Braden’s mind was a saviour, and from that moment he became his loyal disciple.

The next day Otto joined the Nazi party and soon began being noticed by Hitler loyalists and in 1937 became leader of a “brown shirt” troop in Berlin, (The Sturmabteilung SA ((or brown shirts)) were the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and the 1930s. Its purpose was to provide protection at Nazi rallies to disrupt the meetings of opposing parties, fight against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties, especially the Communist Party, and to scare Romani gypsies, trade unionists, and especially Jews. In 1938 Otto von Braden was offered a commission in the SA. When war broke out in 1939 Otto von Braden was promoted to a Hauptsturmführer in the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS or SD, which was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization and back then, the Gestapo was its sister organization through the integration of SS members and opposition procedures. The SD was administered as an independent SS office between 1933 and 1939. That year, the SD was transferred over to the Reich Security Main Office as one of its seven departments. Its first director, Reinhard Heydrich, intended for the SD to bring all individuals within the Third Reich's reach under "continuous supervision," by the use of force, torture, and intimidation. Otto von Braden being the captain of a brown shirt unit, received hands on training in the art of terrorizing Jews, and so by the time he was sent to Paris to become commandant of Drancy, he had earned a PhD in fear.

SS-Sturmbannfuhrer von Braden spent a year at Drancy applying the skills he had learned as captain of a brown shirt troop to round up thousands and thousands of Jews, in order to deport them to death camps that Hitler had built during the first few years of World War 2. From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than 1000 concentration camps. In 1929 Hitler appointed Himmler to be the Reichsführer of the SS, which initially served as bodyguards for Adolf Hitler. Himmler created two new functions for the SS, internal security and the guardianship of racial purity, the latter giving him autonomy to create dozens of concentration camps first in Germany and then as they conquered other nations building hundreds of concentration camps in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and France, which then identified Heinrich Himmler as the Architect of Terror. So, when looking back on the legacy that Himmler left behind and knowing that under his direction 2,600,000 Jews were murdered, including four members of the British World War II Organization, Special Operations Executive: Lilli Rolfe, Denise Bloch, Cecily Lefort and Violette Szabo, his was a legacy of terror and violence and Otto von Braden’s hero.

CHAPTER 7

Ravensbrück

Otto von Braden the newly promoted to Lieutenant Colonel (SS-Ostubaf) left by car for the 2-hour drive with his wife and children to assume his new post 90 km from Berlin in Ravensbrück concentration camp. They arrived around lunchtime at the commandants’ house located outside the campgrounds. His children had lived in Berlin their whole lives and this new place seemed to be forbidding to a 5- and 7-year-old, respectively. As Astrid calmed their fears with soothing words, the landscape simply added to their concerns. Barbed wire fences that ran for miles and tall imposing guard towers and men in them with guns interspersed the long rows of razor wire while large Alsatian dogs marched up and down the fence line for no particular reason the children could fathom. It was all very scary to a small child. And Hans and Mariah were no exception.

They finally arrived at their new house; a large two-story home built out of flint stone looked to have been quarried at a local mine. As they climbed out of the car an unpleasant odor filled the air, and Hans and Mariah wrinkled their noses in disgust. The family was met by soldiers who gave the Nazi salute to their new commandant who returned it with a grim smile and strode into the house with his family in tow.

In the first few months at Ravensbrück von Braden purged the camp of as many Jews as he could. In his first month alone, due in part to a surprise visit by Himmler himself, von Braden murdered over 50,000 Jews in the gas chambers that were now using Zyklon B as their killing method in all four of the camps crematoria.

Otto von Braden, the commandant of Ravensbrück said the use of Zyklon-B to murder prisoners came about on the initiative of Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, who had used it to murder some POWs in 1941 in the basement of Block 11 at Auschwitz. They repeated the experiment on more Russian POWs in September, with Höss watching. Block 11 proved unsuitable, as the basement was difficult to air out afterwards, and the crematorium (which operated until July 1942) was some distance away. The site was moved to Crematorium I, where more than seven hundred victims could be killed at once. By the middle of 1942, the operation was moved to Auschwitz II–Birkenau, a nearby satellite camp that had been under construction since 1941.

The first gas chamber at Ravensbrück was the "red house" (called Bunker 1 by SS staff), a brick cottage converted to a gassing facility by tearing out the inside and bricking up the windows. It was operational by March 1942. A second brick cottage, called the "white house" or Bunker 2, was converted some weeks later. According to Höss, Bunker 1 held eight hundred victims and Bunker 2 held 1,200 victims. These structures were in use for mass-murder until early 1943. At that point, the Nazis decided to greatly increase the gassing capacity of Ravensbrück. Crematorium II was originally designed as a mortuary with morgues in the basement and ground-level incinerators; they converted it into a killing factory by installing gas-tight doors, vents for the Zyklon B to be dropped into the chamber, and ventilation equipment to remove the gas afterwards. Crematorium III was built using the same design. Crematoria IV and V, designed from the beginning as gassing centers, were also constructed that spring. By June 1943, all four crematoria were operational. Most of the victims were murdered using these four structures.

Astrid von Braden hated her husband’s new position as commandant at Ravensbrück concentration camp. She sensed that evil was being conducted by members of the Nazi party above and beyond the normal call of duty, although she didn’t have absolute proof. Since her brother, Jürgen had introduced Otto to the Nazi party in 1936, he had been killed in France at the Battle of Normandy, so now Astrid was alone in the world, save for her two wonderful children whom she adored and who hated this awful place as much as their mother did. Astrid Von Braden’s parents had also recently been killed in Berlin during a British bombing raid.

CHAPTER 8

Ruth Martin

I arrived back at my dorm room around 8pm on Saturday evening having spent an extremely productive weekend visiting my parents in Esher. Tiki was there in our rooms when I got home and he watched as I unpacked the glass with my Dad and Mums’ fingerprints, and also the shard of glass with blood on it. His eyebrows raised inquisitively as he watched me unpack and seeing that the question was on the tip of his tongue, I decided to answer without him uttering a word. That evening I told him everything I knew; I told him about finding my grandparents, after Dad had told us that they had been killed in the Blitz, and the photo I had found a couple of years earlier of a German guy who looked just like Dad, except that he was wearing a Nazi uniform and standing alongside Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler. Why had he lied to us all I asked. I had always had a slightly cantankerous relationship with my Dad, but it hadn’t ever really affected me that much because I’d always trusted him because he was my Dad. I’d had no reason not to. But when I discovered my grandparents were still alive, and hadn’t been killed in the Blitz, nothing made sense to me anymore. I now realized that I was way out of my depth and needed some help, but I didn’t know where to turn. “Well, that’s simple Matt, my Mum and Dad would be happy to help you, and I know from what Mum talked to you about last weekend they were both very worried about Aunt Lillibet and know a lot of people who are pretty experienced in these matters. I’d recommend that you phone them tomorrow and tell them exactly what you just told me. I’m sure they’ll know what to do.” Tiki suggested in his quiet and confident manner. “Tell you what Matt,” he went on; “let me telephone them right now and maybe we could both go and see them and have lunch with them. Because it’s Sunday I think Mum will be cooking roast pork with crackling and roast spuds tomorrow, and I must say I could use a good home cooked meal.” “Wow that’d be great if you don’t mind calling her Tiki. I would be so grateful.” I replied. And with a nod of his head Tiki telephoned his Mum telling her the bare bones of what I’d just told him a few minutes earlier and then arranged to visit them the next day for lunch around 1.00 pm.

Tiki and I arrived promptly at 12.30 the next day, in time for a snort with Uncle David and Aunt Ruth. As we walked in, the house already smelled of the pork that was roasting in the oven. My mouth began to water. I had brought the two items I’d taken from my parents a couple of days earlier. I had carefully placed them in two separate boxes so both of them would not be compromised. We walked into the living room and to my surprise there was another guest in the room. “Matt, Adrian (Tiki’s real name) how lovely to see you both,” Aunt Ruth gushed. “I’d like you to meet a dear old friend of ours, Richard O’Callaghan. We’ve asked him to have lunch with us today so he could hear what you are going to tell us. I hope that’s all right with you Matt?” she asked sincerely. “Yes of course it is,” I replied. “How do you do Sir. It’s nice to meet you.” And I reached out and shook Mr. O’Callaghan’s outstretched hand. The introduction completed, we drank a glass of sherry and then Aunt Ruth announced that lunch was served. Aunt Ruth was famous for her roast pork and so we concentrated for the first half an hour on cleaning our plates twice. (at least for us ‘hungry and poverty-stricken college students.’) When we finished the main course, and coffee and brandy and dessert were being served Uncle David identified Mr. O’Callaghan. He turned out to be an Inspector of the Special Branch whom they had invited along as they felt that what I had to tell them would be of particular interest to him and his department. At the very least they reasoned that he would be able to take my information and then pass it on to the appropriate department.

We sat at the dining table for the next three hours. I told them everything I’d found out, and finally presented them with the shard of glass that my Dad had dripped blood all over and also the glass with both of my parents’ prints on it. O’Callaghan had been taking notes most of the time and finally after I gave him the shard of glass and the fingerprints, he looked at his watch and muttered to himself, “oh my, is that the time? I must be off. I will be in touch with you as soon as I have shared this information with my team.” He thanked Uncle David and Aunt Ruth and got up to leave. But before he did, he walked over to me and shook my hand and said, “I’m so sorry that you’ve been put in this awful situation, but I must tell you, that you’re very brave and you are doing the right thing. I’m sure of it,” and then left. Uncle David walked him to the front door and watched as he walked to his car and then reversed out of the driveway.

I asked Aunt Ruth how she had first met Inspector O’Callaghan and she smiled and told me she had known him ever since my mother had been a member of The British Fascist Union and the Union of Fascists. Inspector O’Callaghan at that time, had been investigating terror ties and the possible infiltration of English-speaking Nazi spies into Great Britain in order to set up sleeper cells in case war broke out between the two countries. The British government finally lost interest in the UOF and TBFU because even though they had credible evidence that in particular, the Union of Fascists were conducting likely terrorist activities it would have taken too long and been too hard to prosecute. And so, in their infinite wisdom, they chose to do nothing.

Three weeks later I received a letter from my grandparents asking me to please contact them, as they had some important news to tell me. I dropped what I was doing and rang them right away. My grandfather answered the phone and asked me if I could come to Eaton Terrace as I had done before. I happily agreed and arranged to visit them in 2 days’ time for tea again at 4pm. My curiosity was piqued!

Two days later I turned up at 37 Eaton Terrace to be met for the second time in several weeks by Inspector O’Callaghan sitting in the drawing room of my grandparents’ home. This time he had brought a subordinate with him who he introduced as Sergeant William Collins. My grandmother opened the front door and gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek then led me into the sunny drawing room at the back of the house where my grandfather was sitting, talking most earnestly to Inspector O’Callaghan and his sergeant pc plod who was busy taking notes. As I entered the room, I noticed a concerned look on my grandfather’s face, and I walked over to him and shook him by the hand. “It’s so good to see you again Sir,” I said warmly. “You too my boy. Have you been well?” he asked, and I smiled and nodded that I was. “Well why don’t we sit down. The Inspector has something that he wants to run by us.” I did as I was told, and he explained what he had been doing since I last saw him a few weeks earlier.

“After we met at your Aunt and Uncles’ house last month,” he began, “I had the fingerprints, blood, and blood samples you gave me analyzed at our lab and discovered you were correct in your suspicions. First of all, military personnel are all fingerprinted nowadays and so I matched the fingerprints on file of Major Robert Chandler with the prints that you provided, and they were not a match. I then contacted Major Chandlers’ parents and asked for blood samples from them, which they kindly gave me and ran their blood against the sample you had given me. It proved without a shadow of a doubt that they are not in any way related to the person who spilled the blood that you provided. You had in fact shown Mr. and Mrs. Chandler a picture of your father I understand. Am I right?” I nodded my head and Inspector O’Callaghan continued. “When they saw the picture Mrs. Chandler became upset. Is that right as well?” I nodded again. “And then Mrs. Chandler told you that the picture you had shown her was not in fact her son James?” I confirmed once more by nodding my head. “If the photograph was not in fact the Chandlers’ son, then who was this man? The fingerprints you included in the package you gave me were definitely those of your mother and father, am I also correct Matthew?” Inspector O’Callaghan paused, and I nodded my head and replied, “Yes, I’m certain of that, because I was sitting in the drawing room at the time when my Mum brought my Dad a gin and tonic and at that time there was no one in the house except the three of us. So yes, I am absolutely sure that the fingerprints on the glass I gave you belonged to my Mum and Dad.”

Inspector Richard O’Callaghan looked at me and delivered the eight most chilling words that I had ever heard. “The fingerprints belong to the Assassin of Drancy.” He was referring to the commandant of Drancy, Otto von Braden, who had been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews in World War 2. I looked down at my feet for what seemed like an eternity. My grandmother had told me when she first saw the photo I had taken of Mum and Dad on holiday in Scotland that the man in the picture was categorically not her son, but that he was in fact the infamous Assassin of Drancy, Otto von Braden,

When I first saw a photo of a man wearing a Nazi uniform that looked just like my Dad, in the library at Harrow I first thought that it was just a coincidence, but over these past few years it had become clearer and clearer to me that the picture was not actually a coincidence but a fact. There was a part of me that to this day I couldn’t believe it and certainly didn’t want to. But those eight chilling words were for me, the coup de grace, and so I just looked down at my feet and said nothing. This time it was my grandmother who came over to me and put her arms around me and comforted me. I just felt so lost.

“Blood tests that we conducted prove that Matthew Chandler is the biological offspring of who we now believe to be Otto von Braden and his common law wife Elizabeth Arbuckle, and therefore is in fact, no relation to Eric and Susan Chandler.” I looked over at my grandparents and noticed a look of disappointment in their eyes. “I suddenly realized that Simon and I could both be considered the bastard children of ‘unmarried parents.’ What the hell had they done to us boys, I thought to myself, and suddenly I was furious. Simon and I had always been close, and it occurred to me that my “meddling,” had potentially destroyed the one honest relationship I had left, because from what I was gleaning from Inspector O’Callaghan’s current conversation was that my parents, were about to answer some very serious charges. “Otto von Braden disappeared from Ravensbrück concentration camp on April 28th, when he drove away in his car, heading towards Berlin,” O’Callaghan continued, “where he’d been working as the camp commandant for about a year after he left Drancy in Paris. His wife reported him missing when he didn’t return to their house outside the camp gates that evening. 2 days later his abandoned staff car was found 5 km away from Berlin. Von Braden was never seen again until 1965 when he was discovered to be living under a fake name, Robert Chandler with his wife Lillibet and their two sons Matthew (20) and Simon (18).”

I had grown very fond of these two nice people that I had met some months earlier and I was sad since I’d discovered that they weren’t actually my grandparents. As I looked across the room at them the old man smiled at me and stated, “Matthew, I want you to know that if I had been lucky enough to have a grandson, I would have wanted him to be just like you. I smiled back at him and nodded my thanks. That was all I needed to hear.

CHAPTER 9

Disappearance

SS-Ostubaf von Braden had been on the run for days now. As the Soviet Red Army's rapid approach to Berlin in the spring of 1945, SS-Ostubaf von Braden had decided to remove as many prisoners from Ravensbrück as he could, in order to avoid leaving live witnesses behind who could testify as to what had occurred in the camp. At the end of March, he ordered all physically capable women to form a column and exit the camp in the direction of northern Mecklenburg, forcing over 24,500 prisoners on a death march. A day or two prior to the Soviet army liberation of Ravensbrück, Otto von Braden took his staff car and drove from his house, on the way to his office, at the camp, but never arrived. Instead, abandoning his family, he drove towards Berlin. In the trunk of the car was a suitcase containing money and diamonds he had stolen from Jews upon their arrival at Ravensbrück, clothes and the few necessities he would need until he could get out Germany to start his new life. Astrid would be fine he told himself. She had the children and the two of them were all she really cared about. He’d never really loved her anyway. She was too cloying and while she was still a beautiful woman, he would not miss her petty bourgeois behaviour. As he drove away, he thought of the freedom he was about to get. Frankly, he was sick of all the killing and was ready to start his new life as soon as possible. He whistled as he drove. He knew he was driving toward the enemy but had a plan that required he mix with the British. He knew he’d have to jettison the car as he got closer to Berlin but was unsure of when and where. He’d play it by ear he decided. He'd heard rumours that Adolf Hitler was holed up in the Fuhrer bunker in Berlin. It was April 28th1945. 2 days later the Soviet Red Army would liberate Ravensbrück and Adolf Hitler on that same day would commit suicide.

Otto drove his car as far as he dared and then parked in a lay by, changed out of his uniform and put on a British suit he’d purchased in Saville Row when he was studying at Cambridge. He knew Berlin well and waited in a grove of trees at the edge of a field until it was dark and then walked the last 5km into a city that had diametrically changed since he’d last visited it a year ago. What he saw surprised him beyond belief. Everything was different. The charming leafy green streets with elegant townhomes were now gone, and in their place were bomb scarred remains in an almost totally blighted landscape. Otto couldn’t believe his eyes. What have we done, he thought to himself. My beautiful Berlin is all but gone. And for the very first time, he began to see the errors of his ways. Von Braden had been so sure of Adolf Hitler’s ideology. Ever since the first meeting he had attended with Astrid’s brother Jürgen at the beer hall he had been sold on the idea that Jews were inferior, and needed to be eradicated from the society he lived in. By joining the Nazi party, he was assuring a guarantee that Germany would eventually become an Arian race just as God had ordained. He would believe that to his dying day.

Otto found himself remembering why he had first decided to become a Nazi, and began thinking back to how it had begun.

The Geheime (Gestapo) was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. The party had been created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining all the political police agencies of Prussia into one organization. On 20 April 1934, oversight of the Gestapo passed to the head of Schutzstaffel, Heinrich Himmler, who was also appointed Chief of German Police by Hitler in 1936. Instead of being exclusively a Prussian state agency, the Gestapo became national becoming the Sicherheitspolizei.  From September 1939, it was administered by the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). It became known as Department 4 of the RSHA and was considered a sister organization to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). During World War II, the Gestapo played a key role in the Holocaust. After the war ended, the Gestapo was declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at the Nuremberg trials.

After Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Hermann Göring, commander of the Luftwaffe and the number two man in the Nazi Party was named Interior Minister of Prussia. This gave Göring command of the largest police force in Germany. Soon afterward, Göring detached the political and intelligence sections from the police and filled their ranks with Nazis. On 26 April 1933, Göring merged the two units as the Geheime Staatspolizei, which was abbreviated by a post office clerk for a franking stamp and became known as the "Gestapo". He originally wanted to name it the Secret Police Office, but the German initials, "GPA", were too similar to those of the Soviet State Political Directorate.

The first commander of the Gestapo was Rudolf Diels, a protégé of Göring. Diels was appointed with the title of chief of Department 1A of the Prussian Secret Police. Diels was best known as the primary interrogator of Marinus van der Lubbe after the Reichstag fire. In late 1933, the Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick wanted to integrate all the police forces of the German states under his control. Göring outflanked him by removing the Prussian political and intelligence departments from the state interior ministry. Göring took over the Gestapo in 1934 and urged Hitler to extend the agency's authority throughout Germany. This represented a radical departure from German tradition, which held that law enforcement was a state and local matter. In this, he ran into conflict with Schutzstaffel (SS) chief Heinrich Himmler who was police chief of the second most powerful German state, Bavaria. Frick did not have the political power to take on Göring by himself, so he allied with Himmler. With Frick's support, Himmler (pushed on by his right-hand man, Reinhard Heydrich) took over the political police in state-after-state. Soon only Prussia was left.

Concerned that Diels was not ruthless enough to effectively counteract the power of the Sturmabteilung (SA), Göring handed over control of the Gestapo to Himmler on 20 April 1934. Also on that date, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of all German police outside Prussia. Heydrich, named chief of the Gestapo by Himmler on 22 April 1934, also continued as head of the SS Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst; SD). Himmler and Heydrich both immediately began installing their own personnel in select positions, several of whom were directly from the Bavarian Political Police, such as Heinrich Müller, Franz Josef Huber, and Josef Meisinger. Many of the Gestapo employees in the newly established offices were young and highly educated in a wide variety of academic fields and moreover, represented a new generation of National Socialist adherents, who were hard-working, efficient, and prepared to carry the Nazi state forward through the persecution of their political opponents.  

By the spring of 1934, Himmler's SS controlled the SD and the Gestapo, but for him, there was still a problem, as technically the SS (and the Gestapo by proxy) was subordinated to the SA, which was under the command of Ernst Röhm. Himmler wanted to free himself entirely from Röhm, whom he viewed as an obstacle. Röhm's position was menacing as more than 4.5 million men fell under his command once the militias and veterans’ organizations were absorbed by the SA, a fact which fueled Röhm's aspirations; his dream of fusing the SA and Reichswehr together was undermining Hitler's relationships with the leadership of Germany's armed forces. Several Nazi chiefs, among them Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess, and Himmler, began a concerted campaign to convince Hitler to take action against Röhm. The SD and Gestapo released information concerning an imminent putsch by the SA. Once persuaded, Hitler acted by setting Himmler's SS into action, who then proceeded to murder over 100 of Hitler's antagonists. The Gestapo supplied the information which implicated the SA and ultimately enabled Himmler and Heydrich to emancipate themselves entirely from the organization. For the Gestapo, the next two years following the Night of the Long Knives, a term describing the putsch against Röhm and the SA, were characterized by "behind-the-scenes political wrangling over policing".

On 17 June 1936, Hitler decreed the unification of all police forces in Germany and named Himmler as Chief of German Police. This action effectively merged the police into the SS and removed it from Frick's control. Himmler was nominally subordinate to Frick as police chief, but as Reichsführer-SS, he answered only to Hitler. This move also gave Himmler operational control over Germany's entire detective force. The Gestapo became a national state agency. Himmler also gained authority over all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies, which were amalgamated into the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police), which became a national agency under SS general Kurt Daluege. Shortly thereafter, Himmler created Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police), merging it with the Gestapo into Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), under Heydrich's command. Heinrich Müller was at that time the Gestapo operations chief. He answered to Heydrich, Heydrich answered only to Himmler, and Himmler answered only to Hitler.  

The Gestapo had the authority to investigate cases of treason, espionage, sabotage and criminal attacks on the Nazi Party and Germany. The basic Gestapo law passed by the government in 1936 gave the Gestapo carte blanche to operate without judicial review in effect, putting it above the law. The Gestapo was exempted from responsibility to administrative courts, where citizens normally could sue the state to conform to laws. As early as 1935, a Prussian administrative court had ruled that the Gestapo's actions were not subject to judicial review. The SS officer Werner Best, one-time head of legal affairs in the Gestapo, summed up this policy by saying, "As long as the police carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally". 

In September 1939, the security and police agencies of Nazi Germany except the Order Police became the Reich security Office (RSHA), headed by Heydrich. The Gestapo became Amt IV (Department IV) of RSHA, and Müller became the Gestapo Chief, with Heydrich as his immediate superior. After Heydrich's 1942 assassination, Himmler became leader of the RSHA until January 1943, when Ernst Kaltenbrunner became chief. Müller stayed on as the Gestapo Chief while Adolf Eichmann headed the Gestapo's Office of Resettlement and its Office of Jewish Affairs. During the Holocaust, Eichmann's department in the Gestapo coordinated mass deportations of European Jews to Nazi death camps.

The power of the Gestapo included the use of protective custody (Schutzhaft) a euphemism for the power to imprison people without judicial proceedings. An oddity of the system was that prisoners had to sign their own Schutzhaftbefehl, an order declaring that he/she had requested imprisonment out of fear of personal harm. Also, political prisoners in Germany from 1941, and throughout the occupied territories under the Night and Fog (Nacht und Nebel) decree simply disappeared while in Gestapo custody. From April 1944, at least 6,639 persons were arrested under Nacht und Nebel orders. However, the total number of people who disappeared as a result of this decree has never been known.

CHAPTER 10

Guilt and Innocence

Two men posing as Special Branch detectives pulled up outside the charming suburban house on Arbrook Lane in Esher just twelve miles away from London. It was 6.30 am on Tuesday March 19th, 1967. Inside the 2-storey white pebble dash home with the elegant front porch, two people were stirring in preparation for another busy day of work. As the two detectives saw movement from inside the home, they climbed out of their unmarked Ford saloon and walked up the immaculate path that curved through a manicured rose garden and knocked loudly on the front door which was answered by a woman in a house coat. “Mrs. Chandler?” the one detective enquired. “Yes,” replied the woman. “My name is Inspector Watkins from Special Branch, and this is Sergeant Haley, and we have an arrest warrant for you and your husband. We need you to come with us now. And with that the two parents I had known my entire life were placed under arrest and driven to an unidentified location for further questioning. Simon and I were notified the next day that our parents had been arrested. I’d kept my brother up to date with what was going on, so neither of us was surprised when we heard the news. My emotions were all over the map. I hadn’t initially thought my Mum would get in trouble, but soon learned just how involved she had been.

“Please sit down, Mrs. Chandler. “Inspector O’Callaghan said. “Please tell us, in your own words what your involvement was in managing to secrete Herr von Braden into Great Britain after the war.” Elizabeth Chandler stammered a most unconvincing explanation of how she knew nothing and had no idea that her husband was anything other than what he had introduced himself to her as. “Nonsense,” replied the Inspector, “We have a written statement from Mr. McNab of the British Fascist Union who admitted they smuggled Otto von Braden into England in late 1945, and that you were the initial contact person for von Braden after he first arrived in London. So please spare me the sanctimonious ‘I been done wrong’ act and just tell me the truth. Trust me Mrs. Chandler, it will go much better for you if you spill the beans now. If you decided to prevaricate any longer, we’ll throw the book at you, and you will never see the outside of a prison again. You’re still a young woman, and I would think long and hard before you tell me another whopper. Do I make myself clear?” And with that she slumped forward, put her head in her hands and began to sob. A little time later after she’d composed herself, Elizabeth Arbuckle aka Mrs. Chandler acquiesced to all of the Inspector’s demands, in exchange for him putting in a good word for her, which he explained could easily minimize the jail sentence she was facing, as long as she cooperated.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the police force responsible for law enforcement and the prevention of crime in London. In addition, the Metropolitan Police Service is also responsible for some specialized matters throughout Great Britain; these responsibilities include coordinating and leading national counter-terrorism measures and the safety of specific individuals, such as the Queen or other members of the Royal Family, members of the Government, and other prominent public officials.

A few doors down the hallway Otto von Braden was chatting to his old friend Angus McNab. He’d agreed to record a false confession in order to convince his enemies they’d arrested the right man. He confessed he was The Assassin of Drancy and was responsible for the murders of at least 150,000 Jews in addition to the more than 100,000 Jews he had murdered during the time he was commandant at Ravensbrück. There was reason for this madness.

A few doors down the hall, things were not going quite so well for Otto von Braden. He still refused to admit that he was The Assassin of Drancy responsible for the death of more than 150,000 Jews during his time as the commandant of Drancy, but insisted he was Robert Chandler.

A few weeks later I was at Oxford back at Balliol college. My first lecture wasn’t until 2:00 pm. I was studying in my room when there was a knock on my door and standing there with his trusty sergeant was Inspector O’Callaghan. “How are you, Matt?” he enquired, smiling at me. “Do you have a few minutes where we could talk?” I nodded and invited them both into the pigsty. (The name I had coined for the three rooms I shared with my brother Simon and my cousin Tiki.) I looked around desperately for somewhere for my guests to sit but the Inspector seeing what I was doing waved his hand to indicate that they’d be fine standing and so the three of us rather awkwardly ‘found our battle positions,’ and the conversation started. “Firstly Matt, I know how hard this must have been for you and your brother Simon. I cannot imagine having your parents ripped away from you like they have been, and for what it’s worth, I am terribly sorry that you have both had to deal with such an awful lot of pain. Above all though, we’re grateful to you Matt for finding some evidence that linked your father to his true identity. Let me start at the beginning.” Inspector O’Callaghan paused and looked directly at me. “It appears your Mum was a member of the British Fascist Union, during World War 2, and had been asked to assist in smuggling German spies into Great Britain.

Operation Sea Lion, (Unternehmen Seelöwe), was Nazi Germany's code name for the plan of an invasion of Great Britain during World War II. Adolf Hitler hoped that Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and the British government would agree to his offer to end the war and accept defeat gracefully. He would consider invasion only as a last resort if all other options failed. In order to achieve this aim Germany decided to embed spies, mainly older men too old for active service, and young women who could possibly have lost husbands in battle. These Nazi spies had to speak English flawlessly without the hint of an accent and be able to integrate into British society with ease. It was your Mum’s job with the British Fascist Union to meet those men and women when they arrived by submarine off the south coast of England and take them to a safe house where they would live for a week or two while they became used to their new environment. She did this job all through the war until finally she met your father at the end of the war and legitimately fell in love with him and decided to marry him. The rest as they say, is history.” Inspector O’Callaghan paused for a moment, and I asked him, “how did they falsify my father’s identity?” and O’Callaghan replied, “that Matt is a particularly good question. I’ll get to that in a minute but, this part of the story gets a bit complicated, so if it’s all right with you I’ll continue this chapter of the tale. You see, as your Mum was doing what she was doing for the British Fascist Union, the British had their own version of what the Germans were doing, but it was called the XX system or The Double-Cross System, which was a spy and deception op, created by the British Security Service (aka MI5). 

Nazi agents in Britain, real and false, were caught, or simply surrendered for their own reasons, and were then used by us to broadcast disinformation to their Nazi controllers. Operations were overseen by the Double X Committee under the chairmanship of John Masterman; the name of the committee stemmed from the number 20 in Roman numerals: "XX,” hence the name double cross. Masterman would then give the Nazi spies false intelligence and have them radio it home to Germany. This worked successfully for a while but toward the end of the war somehow the Nazi’s discovered they were being fed bad intelligence and so British Security decided to send one of ours to try and find out how they had cottoned on to our plan. The man they sent to ferret out the truth was none other than Major Robert Chandler.”

“Are you telling me that we sent an agent over to Germany and that agent was my father?” I blurted out. “Well, not exactly my boy, but the good news is that you were half right. After intense interrogation of Mr. von Braden, we learned the truth. It’s true that in April 1945 we did in fact send a young agent fluent in German to Berlin. His name was Major Robert Chandler. During the course of the war, he had traveled behind enemy lines on a number of occasions, with each operation being a success, and had built up a decent network of trustworthy contacts. It appears that Major Chandler had arranged to meet a contact on the evening of April 28th at a prearranged rendezvous.

Otto von Braden had deserted his post as commandant of Ravensbrück and was intending to smuggle himself into England using the contacts he’d acquired some years earlier when he had been a student at Cambridge university, with the British Fascist Union, of which he was one of the founding members along with Angus McNab who was the boyfriend of your Mum when they were at university together. As luck would have it for Otto, he also was a friend of Hans Himmel, the member of the Nazi SS that Major Chandler was meeting that fateful evening.

Hans Himmel was a member of the Abwehr, the German secret police, and had been a friend of Otto von Braden’s since the mid-1930s when they joined the Sturmabteilung, Adolf Hitlers notorious brown shirt brigade who were responsible for policing new antisemitic policies that Hitler enacted after he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Otto and Hans loved nothing more than to beat a Jew to death for having the audacity to walk on a sidewalk in Berlin thus violating the new laws against Jews being required to walk on the roadway instead of the sidewalk where everyone else walked. Jews you understand, at least in the eyes of Adolf Hitler and his party, were considered to be second class citizens, and were sub-human. Hans and Otto both ate and slept facism. Otto walked the last 5km into Berlin having jettisoned his car earlier. He arrived at Han’s billet/flat in Berlin carrying his one suitcase filled with looted jewels and money at 11:30 am to find his friend hurriedly packing a suitcase. The war was going badly for the Germans and upper level military personnel were fleeing the country in droves to find safety, knowing that when they lost the war, they would have to pay for the crimes they had committed. Hans was no exception, and had made plans to take a flight to Spain that afternoon, where he had booked a ticket on a ship headed for Argentina in just 2 days. That meant that it was imperative he made the flight. He mentioned that he was also meant to be meeting some idiot British agent that he had been feeding faulty intelligence to for some time now. Maybe, he wondered to himself, if the agent had discovered the truth about him feeding him faulty intelligence, and intended to confront him? Well no matter now, because he would have to miss meeting him anyway. Hans told his friend that he‘d arranged to meet the agent at his billet at 8:00 pm, and Otto had just asked him if he could stay with him for a day or two. Maybe, Hans suggested, Otto could meet the idiot agent in his place? Otto smiled and agreed immediately and replied, "maybe I could do what we used to do to the Jews when they tried to walk on the sidewalk?" And they both laughed.

Later that day Hans Himmel left his flat with a promise that he would get in touch with Otto as soon as he was settled in Argentina. They both knew that that he never would."  

Inspector O’Callaghan had been talking uninterrupted for over an hour, and he paused and asked me for a drink of water. "Yes of course," I replied, "or would you and your sergeant like something stronger, perhaps?" "No thank you Matthew, but I will sit down if you don’t mind?" "Of course." I replied, went, and got two glasses of water from the kitchenette. After a few minutes of small talk Inspector O’Callaghan carried on recounting his interrogation of my father. “We had allowed your Dad to think about answering us for several days now and on the fourth day in our custody he made the decision to come clean. He prefaced his admission by insisting that he wasn’t a bad person but had simply been caught up in the politics of the moment. As a matter of fact, he had always liked the British culture, which was a big reason for his decision to be educated at Cambridge University. He first met your Mum when she was also a student at Cambridge, at a political rally of the Union of Fascists. The TBFU was an organization run by Walter Mosby that spun off a couple of years later into The British Fascist Union which was the organization your Mum worked for during the war that was responsible for smuggling German spies into Britain. At that time, she was dating one of the men who founded the TBFU called Angus McNab and actually claimed to us that she did not remember Mr. Von Braden. She does remember him becoming involved in the organization however and does remember worrying that if ever England went to war with Germany, Otto would be a formidable enemy.

“As I mentioned to you earlier Matthew, your father having been in the custody of the British Security Forces for a few days decided to “come clean” and so the following tape-recorded confession by him is now in the hands of the justice department and will be played at his upcoming trial in the near future.”

CHAPTER 11

Lillibet

The alarm sounded and jarred me out of a deep sleep. I leaned over and hit the snooze button and opened my eyes and then looked out of the window. It was snowing. I jumped out of bed and went to the window and noticed that about 3 inches had fallen overnight. It had become a winter wonderland. I had woken up in my dorm room at Balliol. My conversation with Inspector O’Callaghan  seemed like a dream. I was confused. Nothing made sense any more. I was fuzzy with sleep. The last thing I remembered was listening to my Dads taped confession. That was so bizzarre, to hear the man I had always thought of as Dad admitting he was a war criminal. I thought of all the inconsistencies I’d heard throughout my life, that I had decided to  ignore. The tape sounded like my Dad had been reading from a script, and some of the things O’Callaghan had told me, no one could have known. It was as if Inspector O’Callaghan was not in fact a policeman at all but was in fact a member of the organization that seemingly was responsible for all this chaos. Could it be that all this mayhem had been orchestrated. But for what reason?

I suddenly needed to confirm something and threw on my clothes and ran down the hall to the phone bank at the end of the hall. I was trying to figure out why I was so confused this morning, which was why I decided to dial a number I knew so well. After three rings a voice came on the line. “Hello,”  the  voice answered. “Hello Mum this is Matt, what are you doing home. I thought you were in prison? ” I stammered, more flustered than ever, but the fact that she answered confirmed my suspicions. “Whatever do you mean Matt?” she laughingly replied. “Mum I need to see you as soon as possible. Would it be okay if I came to visit you.” “Yes of course darling, we‘d love that,”  she replied, “when were you thinking of coming?” “Would it be okay if I came to see you now?” I pleaded. “That would be perfect,”  she replied and I told her that I‘d see her in a couple of hours and then hung up the phone. The next thing I did was ring Aunt Ruth. I had asked her the last time I saw her where she had first met Inspector O’Callaghan and she had told me “when he was investigating suspected anti-British activities at the British Union of Fascists in 1936 and had my Mum on his radar. I had thought about that ever since Aunt Ruth had told me, and it made no sense, and so I wanted to ask her again. I got no reply. She must have been out, and so I decided to phone Inspector O’Callaghan instead. I was going to tell him that I’d changed my mind and would like to visit my Mum and Dad in jail, like he‘d suggested. “Special Branch, metropolitan police,” an operator answered. “how may I direct your call?” “Inspector O’Callaghan please.” There was a short pause and a rustling of papers, and then the operator replied. “I’m sorry sir, there is no one of that name who works for Special Branch. May I connect you to someone else sir?” “Let me speak to the duty officer then,” I replied. There was a brief pause and then a new voice came on the line. “Sergeant McGillicuddy here. How can I help you?” “Good morning Sergeant, my name is Matthew Chandler, and I’m trying to locate Inspector O’Callaghan of the Special Branch. “Hello, Mr. Chandler, we’ve searched the roster and I’m afraid we cannot find anyone with that name who works here. May I ask what this is in reference to?” and I answered “A man called Otto von Braden is in your custody, accused of war crimes. He entered the UK right after World War II illegally and Inspector O’Callaghan arrested him recently and from what I understand he‘s being held here until his trial or extradition. Would it be possible for you to check for me Sergeant?” I pleaded. “I’ll see what I can find out for you. Please hold.” The man was gone for a long time, but finally returned with the answer I suspected he would give. “No person with that name is or has been in our custody Mr. Chandler. I’m sorry I cannot help you more.” he replied. “You’ve helped me more than you can know,” I replied. “Thank you Sergeant.” And I hung up the phone.

My worst suspicions had been confirmed. Who were these people, I wondered. First of all, years earlier, why had my own Dad lied to Simon and myself about our grandparent’s being killed in a bombing raid in 1940. And then after my discovery that my father was not the man, he claimed to be but was in fact a war criminal the man who finally arrested him turned out to be an imposter himself. So, who was he? And where was Otto von Braden now?

The only possible way to find out the truth was to go and confront the man and woman I’d called my parents for the last twenty years. So, I left my dorm, and bicycled to the station and took a train to Esher where 127 minutes later I was walking up the pathway to my childhood home. My Mum saw me and just as I was arriving at the front door flung it open and gave me the biggest hug, she’d ever given me. “Matt, how lovely to see you. Come on in darling. It’s my lucky day.” She said smiling. After dropping my bag in the hallway, and grabbing a drink, we went to the drawing room and sat down opposite each other. “How have you been sweetheart?” she asked, and then without waiting for my answer asked, “What did you mean this morning when you said you thought I was in prison.” That prompted me to start the conversation, which was why I had come today.

That afternoon I told her everything. I told her about the photo I had found years earlier while I was studying World War II in the library at Harrow, of a man who looked like Dad standing with Adolf Hitler, and then I told her about meeting his parents some years later when I was up at Oxford, who were very much alive and living in the house that Dad had told us they’d been killed in during the Blitz. The more I talked the more anxious Mum became. I then asked her, “Were you ever involved with The British Fascist Union when you were at university?” and with an astonished look she shook her head and replied, “No, sweetheart it was the furthest thing from my mind at that time, but it’s funny you should mention that, because your Aunt Ruth and I had a big falling out over that organization that almost destroyed our relationship. At the time Ruth was at university and was in love with one of the founding members of the British Fascist Union and adopted some bizarre notions that tore us apart. Hitler was gaining prominence globally and the BFU adopted his racist ideology. The strange thing was that Ruth wasn’t in the least racist and I never understood her obsession with Adolf Hitler.” Mum paused, and I could see that she had an internal conflict going on. She sat there silently for the longest time, then took a deep breath and looked at me directly then launched into what I can honestly say rocked my universe.

“What I’m about to tell you I have never told anyone. During that time, I began courting a young man, a fellow student named Robert Chandler. They say that once in a lifetime a person is lucky enough to truly meet a person who is one’s spiritual match. Well, I met my spiritual match in your father.” That statement stopped me in my tracks for a second and so I held up my hand and asked her to stop for a second. “What do you mean my father?” I asked. “What year are you talking about?” I continued. “1943.” She answered. “Robert and I first met in 1937 and we dated all the way through university, and then once we graduated, we moved to London where he got a job with the Foreign Office, like his father. We decided to live together and found a small flat in Putney just over the bridge at the wrong end of the Kings Road. We were happy there.” “But I thought you didn’t marry Dad until 1946.” I interjected. I was now really confused. “Well yes Matt that was true. I really never wanted to talk about this but circumstances being what they are, it’s better that I come clean with you. I never wanted to mislead you, and I’m so sorry I may have given you boys the wrong impression.”

“Robert and I were so happy living together in our lovely little flat in Putney. In 1943 society frowned on unmarried couples living together and so we decided to keep it a secret and live in an out of the way place south of the river, like Putney. We used to joke about Putney as if we were living in the “back of beyond!” Robert had joined the Foreign Office after we moved to London. As far as his parent’s and his work were concerned, he lived alone. His parents were good people who loved their only son and simply wanted the best for him. They were conservative and wouldn’t have approved of us living together, even though they had met me on a number of occasions and seemed to like me. I certainly liked them. By the time we came to London, the war was in full swing, and my in-laws had moved to Guernsey in the Channel Islands because they felt it would be safer living there.  Robert was busy at what they called the War Office. He had joined the British Security Forces (MI5) and was being sent on dangerous missions for weeks at a time. I got used to being alone. Putney was far enough away from German bombs that I wasn’t too scared. I had a job with the WAC’s, which was clerical, but kept me busy. My degree is in economics, and they had found me work in the accounting department which I enjoyed but it was not the most scintillating work. At least I was doing my part for the war effort. Towards the end of the war Robert was sent on a secret mission to Berlin. That was in 1945. I realized just after he left, that I was pregnant with twins. I was over the moon with joy and wanted to tell the world. With the exception of a few girlfriends at work I had to keep it to myself. I was excited to be able to break the news to Robert as soon as he returned.

Unfortunately, he was killed on that mission. I never knew any details of how he died, but what I did know was that he would never have a chance to meet his babies. I was completely devastated. You boys were born without a father.” “But that makes no sense Mum.” I said to her rather abruptly, realizing suddenly exactly what my Mum was telling me. “Are you saying that our real Dad was Robert Chandler, the man you were living with in Putney?” “Yes Matthew. That’s exactly what I’m saying.” I sat there completely stunned. All I could do was look at her. I said nothing. Mum returned my look and then took a sip of coffee and continued. “The Foreign Office was kind to me but because Robert and I weren’t married they wouldn’t pay any compensation and so things became very difficult financially for the three of us. The war had ended, and I was about to be evicted from my little flat in Putney. As a last resort, I spoke to my sister your Aunt Ruth and she offered us a room in her house temporarily.  And so, with the help of Aunt Ruth, Uncle David, and a borrowed van, I moved lock stock and barrel with you and your brother Simon from Putney to Trinity Road Oxford to move into Ruth’s spare room.  Things went well for the first few weeks, but now I had no income and things right after the war were extremely bleak. That was when your Aunt came to me with a proposition.”

“I mentioned that she had been involved before the war with The British Fascist Union. It turned out that she was still an active member of the TBFU and was instrumental in smuggling fugitives into England and helping them become British citizens. Since the end of the war, she had conducted 4 such operations, and had managed to integrate them all into British society seamlessly. When I had decided to live with Aunt Ruth and Uncle David, I was desperate. I was penniless and was trying to raise you two boys. I didn’t have a job and our future was hopeless. I had nowhere to turn. Your Aunt offered me a lifeline that I couldn’t refuse.” I was still in shock from just discovering that my Dad was not Otto von Braden, but was in fact Robert Chandler, the biological offspring of the couple who I’d come to know as my grandparents, (until Inspector O’Callaghan crushed that dream) who lived at 37 Eaton Terrace, London. S.W.3. I’d now figured out what Mum was about to tell me and what Aunt Ruth had recommended that Mum do; and it disgusted me.

“The British Fascist Union was a well-funded organization,” my Mum continued; “It had the political and financial backing of some very powerful men. My sister offered me the freedom I’d been craving since with the death of your father. The TBFU would buy me a house in my name in a London suburb and provide a small income for 3 years. In exchange I would meet and marry a man of their choosing who would require a new identity. The only thing I had to assure the TBFU was that I would keep this agreement completely confidential. Ruth suggested I think it over for a few days and then give her my decision. I thought it over, weighing all the pros and cons and several days later I accepted their offer. Several days later a gentleman arrived at Aunt Ruth’s. He identified himself as Brian Kavanagh from the TBFU. I invited him into the house, and we sat in the living room and while you and Simon sat in your bassinets, he told me all about The British Fascist Union and their ambitions for a better and more democratic country and then mentioned that a candidate had been chosen for me and would I like to see a picture of him? I of course said yes, and he produced a photo of a smiling very handsome man. I then looked at some documents that he had with him which he asked me to read and then if I agreed with the conditions, I should sign the contract. I read the documents and half an hour later took the pen he offered and signed on the dotted line. And with that, Matthew I belonged to them.” I’d been listening to Mum for more than an hour now, and I was beginning to understand her dilemma. First of all, I had never understood why my Dad (I’ll call him that for the time being) had always been so cruel to the three of us. I realized now that cruelty was obviously his second language, so why should he behave differently to us, as we were “simply a means to an end,”. Now that I knew that he wasn’t my biological Dad, it made all the difference.

“We stayed with Uncle David and Aunt Ruth for three weeks. In that time, I was having meetings regularly with TBFU’s Brian Kavanagh, and my sister at her house and during the course of the meetings I learned I was to be married to a man who had been educated at Cambridge, before the war. He spoke with a flawless English accent and could easily pass for being British. During that time TBFU had been searching for a house for me. Brian phoned me and told me they had found a perfect home just 12 miles from London in a suburb called Esher in Surrey. He told me they’d bought it and transferred the title into my name, which meant that I was now the proud owner of a 5-bedroom home at the end of Arbrook Lane in Esher and could prepare to move in at my earliest convenience. The house was called Woodside, as it was the last house on the end of the cul-de-sac. A week later your Uncle David and Aunt Ruth once again came to my rescue and helped me move into the house we’re now sitting in.” Mum paused, and I asked her. “How long were you here before you met Dad?” “Only a few weeks actually darling. No sooner had the 3 of us got settled, we then received word from TBFU that we would be going on holiday to Scotland for a couple of weeks, after which we would return with your new father, who so the rumour that TBFU had been circulating, had just been released from a Glasgow hospital and would join us for the holiday on Loch Fyne in Argyle and would then come home with us to our new house in Esher to begin our new life. Things went well for us, and I discovered, (how TBFU pulled this off I had no idea,) but somehow, they managed to erase all military records that your biological father had been killed in Berlin, but that he had only been wounded, and had been flown to a Scottish hospital for rehabilitation.

After we returned from our holiday in Scotland, we began our life in Esher, and got married privately allowing my new husband to adopt your real father’s identity. I felt awful doing it, but at least I was being able to raise you kids, put food in your tummies, and keep a roof over our heads. I made a point of not asking what he had done in the war. I didn’t want to know. Frankly the old adage, “what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over,” came into play here, but there were important considerations as well. We needed to stay away from any of your Dad’s old chums which meant we had to stay away from his old lifestyle, and so I was able to help him cut ties with everyone he had grown up with   I made lists for him, and all those people were erased from his life. That included of course his parent’s and so as you boys grew older, we told you they had been killed in the Blitz. Also, he applied for a new job at the Public Records Office at the National Archives in Kew. He couldn’t afford to be recognized at his job in Whitehall and so he decided to transfer to a more administrative job; someone was bound to ask questions and his subterfuge would be discovered. I never asked his real name or what he had done Matt. I promise you the first time I realized that something was really wrong about him was that time you visited us and after Dad dropped his glass on the floor and it broke, you took the broken glass and concealed it in your suitcase. You’ve always been a smart boy Matt, and after you left, I began wondering why you had done that. The only conclusion I could come to was that you had discovered something about Dads past and you were looking for confirmation. When you finally confirmed that and told me what his real identity was, I was flabbergasted and disgusted. I had no idea he was a murderer, and clearly a mass murderer at that.” I looked at Mum, and for the first time I saw a vulnerable and defeated woman. I felt so sorry for her, but I believed every word that she’d just told me, and in my heart knew that everything she had done when Simon and I were babies had been done for our welfare. However, everything she had just told me convinced me that the people who were guilty of permitting this imposter to ever come to our shores and perpetrate such a crime against innocent and trustworthy people must be held accountable and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. What she told me also confirmed my worst suspicions. Inspector O’Callaghan clearly was not with the Special Branch and most probably worked for the British Fascist Union. And Inspector O’Callaghan had lied to me telling me that it was my Mum who was an active member of the UOF when in point of fact it was actually my Aunt Ruth. The only thing I was still confused about though, was whether Uncle David was a participant or a completely innocent bystander. Only time would tell.

I made a mental note to myself to locate TBFU headquarters and then stake it out and see if O’Callaghan turned up. I could also just ask Aunt Ruth to tell me the truth about O’Callaghan! I pondered that for a moment and then asked Mum when Dad would be home, making the excuse that I would have to get back to Balliol soon. Mum was understandably upset that I hadn’t spoken to her when I had found out. She was upset to find out about Dad’s background and absolutely horrified that he had been lying to her for all these years. As the day wore on and she was clearly mulling over a lot of things he must have said to her, and I noticed that she became more and more upset as the day wore on. “Are you certain you have all the facts,” she asked somewhat hopefully.”

That gave me the opportunity to tell her about Susan Chandler, my grandmother, who in 1940 had moved to Guernsey and two years later the Germans had invaded the island and discovered that her maiden name had been Steinberg. Her origins were Jewish, and the German officer arrested her immediately and had her sent to Europe here she ended up in a Jewish deportation center in Paris called Drancy. The commandant of that infamous camp was none other than your husband.” I told her, and my Mum looked mortified. “But how did she know he was,” I then told her all about looking in the records if the Chandlers house had been destroyed in the Blitz and discovering it had never been touched. What was more, I told her, I had decided to go to 37 Eaton Terrace and knock on the front door. “Why would you have done that?” Mum asked. “Because I was suspicious, and my natural inquisitive nature got the better of me.” I then told her when a man answered the door and I introduced myself he collapsed in shock and was taken to hospital. I stayed with him until his wife arrived and then left to return to Oxford. I had written down my name and address at Balliol, and a few days later received a thank you note from the Chandlers, asking me to ring them because they would like to offer me tea whenever I could make it. I think they had realized I was their grandson at the moment I first knocked on their door.” I could see Mum wanted to ask me a question and so I stopped talking for a moment. “How did they find out that you were their grandson?” she asked. “By the time you boys were born everything had changed and Robert was dead, so I never told anyone as part of my agreement with TBFU.” “Well, the Chandlers had pieced it together much as I did. The facts were eerie. My name was Chandler, as was theirs. The old man had been educated at Oxford like me, and we both lived at Balliol College. It was too much of a coincidence, and frankly I looked just like him. It was clear that he was my grandfather. After I received the note from them, I phoned them to accept their kind offer and arranged to visit them two days later. After I hung up, I thought it would be a nice gesture if I brought a picture of you and Dad to show them. Mum, do you remember the picture I took last summer of you and Dad on holiday at Loch Fyne?” Mum nodded. “I’ve always loved that photo of you, and so I decided to show it to Eric and Susan Chandler when I had tea with them.” A look of horror passed across my mother’s face as she realized the implications, but all she said was. “Oh my God.”

“Two days later I knocked on their door at precisely 4:00 pm and my grandmother answered and gave me a big hug. That afternoon we compared notes, and it became obvious we were related. I still didn’t understand why Dad had lied to us and told us his parents had been killed in the Blitz. Tea was over and I was getting ready to leave when I suddenly remembered the photo of you and Dad. It was in the inside pocket of my jacket, and I reached in and innocently produced what I thought would be a wonderful memory for these two sweet people. I handed it to my grandmother first who took one look at you and then began to splutter. Her words were incomprehensible, but I could see she was upset. And then I heard her mutter the word MONSTER.” “What on earth did she mean,” asked my mother. “It appears that I had shown her a photograph of not the two people that I dearly loved but instead a picture of a man who had tormented her when he was the commandant of Drancy in Paris and also the following year as commandant of Ravensbrück death camp where she had ended up. It was too much for this woman to see a picture of this vile and cruel monster in England after all she had endured posing as the father to her grandson.” “But I don’t understand,” my Mum kept repeating. “I just don’t understand. It was never meant to be like this. They lied to me. They promised he was a low-level German, a pencil pusher were the words they used; but if what you say is true, and I’m sure it is, this man was responsible for killing thousands of innocent Jewish people and both he and TBFU lied to me when they placed him with me.” I thought about that for a moment, and then asked Mum if Von Braden had had any trouble being accepted as Robert Chandler. She told me no, but in fact she’d thought it strange as when he first arrived, he had in his possession Robert’s military identification, and she remembered thinking how good the forgery was. “Maybe a bit too good.” I remarked and caught her eye just as she realized what I was implying!

CHAPTER 12

The Time to Tell

I took the train home to Oxford before Dad got home from the office. I didn’t want to see him because I knew I would lose my temper with him. I’d asked Mum to keep quiet until I’d had a chance to find out more, and she reluctantly agreed, because I had a feeling that my conversation today was the first time, she’d ever heard about my Dads true identity. I knew my Mum very well. She was a terrible liar, and it was obvious to me that there was no way could she have kept a secret as huge as that quiet. I’d bank my life on it.

It only took me two days to find out O’Callaghan’s true identity thanks in part to my criminology professor at Oxford who had recently delivered a lecture on that very subject a week or so earlier. Webster defines criminology as “the scientific study of crime as a social phenomenon of criminals, and of penal treatment.” I wasn’t sure how exactly I intended to use my degree yet, but I was certainly grateful for the help it had given me in this instance. I discovered in a most circuitous fashion that Inspector Richard O’Callaghan was in fact Brian Kavanagh, a man well known to law enforcement, and a political agitator with deep ties to The British Fascist Union for at least the past ten years. My contact even furnished me with an address for Mr. Kavanagh which I made a note of to possibly visit in the near future. But for now, I needed to stay focused. Simon, had to be told. I was dreading that conversation, but it had to be done. My brother is a gentle soul, highly intelligent but extremely sensitive. When I first found out who my Dad was, I hadn’t wanted to tell Simon as I knew he would freak out. He didn’t handle stress well, so I’d just decided I would tell him only when it was absolutely necessary. But now, before the newspapers got hold of the story was the time to tell, and so I headed over to his room at Christchurch College to pick him up for our luncheon. I arrived and asked him if he’d like to have lunch at the Bluebell café in town. That’s like asking a drowning man if he’d like a life belt. Simon agreed instantly and the two of us wandered through town happily heading for our favourite eatery. By the time we’d caught up on what was happening in our lives and were both enjoying a dessert of sherry trifle I decided to come to the point of our meeting for lunch. Dad had always been hard on Simon and the fact was, I’d seen him be cruel to poor Nomey, but he was our Dad, and I was nervous how my twin brother would react to the news. As we sat there in the crowded restaurant, I told him what I had found out and then went on to explain how initially I’d been told that Mum was implicated as well, but later found out that it was someone else, because I’d been lied to by someone impersonating a senior ranking police officer. Simon listened to me throughout, only occasionally interrupting if he didn’t understand, and as I wrapped up my long explanation he asked simply, “what will happen to Dad if he’s charged?” “I dunno Nomey. He could be extradited to Germany to face trial for his war crimes, but the justice system here would probably like a crack at him for: murder, impersonation, entering Britain illegally, and a host of other charges that I don’t know about yet. But Simon, it is deadly serious. There’s no question that Dad is in fact the Assassin of Drancy, Otto von Braden.” I looked over at my brother sitting opposite me, and he had such a sad look on his face and looked as if he was going to cry. What he said surprised me to the core. “Matt, I wish you had told me sooner. I could’ve helped you sort this out. But thanks for telling me. I’m so glad Mum wasn’t involved, but if you don’t mind me asking, who was the person who smuggled that imposter into our country?” “I’d rather not say at the moment Nomey. Let me just say that it definitely wasn’t Mum. She had no part in it. I’ll tell you as soon as I think it’s safe. Okay?” I replied to my him and suddenly all the anxiety that I’d had for the past two hours disappeared. “Is there anything you’d like me to do?” he asked, but I shook my head, thanked him but declined and walked over to the cash register. I walked with him back to Christchurch and as we were getting ready to say our goodbyes he suddenly said. “I never liked him you know. I know he’s my father, but he was never very nice to me, and I never liked the way he treated Mum either. I know that I shouldn’t say this but frankly, good riddance.” And he hugged me and walked into his college, the ancient house that had been home to thousands of young eager students before him. I waved goodbye and walked toward Balliol. I agreed with what he had said to me and frankly just wanted my Dad to be arrested so that the three of us could get on with our lives, but the problem with that scenario was that there were many people involved and I had no control over whether they would get in trouble with the law. I was thinking about Ruth who had, back in the day made a bad decision and become involved with an organization that put her in legal jeopardy. I was thinking about that and how important she’d been to me throughout my life when I realized who it was that I had to go and visit immediately.

I jumped on my bike and rode to the station, where I took a train to Paddington in London. Then I jumped on the number 17 bus which wound its way through London down Oxford Street to Marble Arch on the northeast side of Hyde Park and then it turned south and went down Park Lane to Hyde Park corner where we skirted the edge of Green Park and turned left onto the Brompton Road and drove directly past Harrods. By now it was late afternoon on a cold wintry day and the shop looked so pretty with its thousands of colored lights illuminating the entire building. The bus trundled past the store and on past the Midnight Shop in Knightsbridge and the Brompton Oratory where Mum and Dad had got married, and to South Kensington where I jumped off and walked the last few hundred yards finally arriving at 37 Eaton Terrace where I bounded up the steps and knocked on the front door. I heard noise inside and a moment later the door was opened by my 85-year-old surrogate grandfather. The minute he saw me his face lit up and he said, “come in my boy, lovely to see you.” And he waved his hand to motion me in. I did so and he asked me to go through to the drawing room where my grandmother was reading. I walked over to her and gave her a big hug and told her I had missed her. She responded sweetly by hugging me a little tighter. It was nice to see these kind people again. After we’d gone through the normal niceties we settled in to a comfortable back and forth and after about 15 minutes I decided to get down to business. “I wanted to bring you up to date on what has been happening since I last saw you.

First, and I don’t want to scare you, but the Inspector is not it appears to be a member of Special Branch or even in fact a policeman. He is actually a fraud and a con man named Brian Kavanagh. It took me a couple of days to find out his true identity, but I did, and I also managed to find his address. He is employed by The British Fascist Union, the organization that managed to smuggle Otto von Braden into this country at the end of the war. Contrary to what O’Callaghan/Brian Kavanagh told us, my Mum had nothing to do with smuggling Otto von Braden into the country. The only thing she is guilty of is agreeing to marry a murderer and a cad.

What’s more, I discovered that, contrary to what O’Callaghan told us, no one in fact conducted any blood tests and so there was no evidence whatsoever regarding our bloodline. To that point, Mum told to me just yesterday, how she and Robert came to live in London. You mentioned the last time I saw you that Robert had joined the Foreign Office doing something, rather hush hush. Well, he and Mum decided to get a flat together after they moved to London and rented a flat one in Putney, because they were worried that you might not approve of them living together. Robert’s final mission was to Berlin, and Mum learned she was pregnant soon after he left for the mission. She told me just yesterday that she was looking forward to telling Robert that he was going to be a Dad when he returned from Berlin, but sadly he died during that tour of duty.” Suddenly my grandmother jumped up from the chair she was in and exclaimed, “Oh Matthew how wonderful. I knew you were our grandson. You’re the spitting image of Robert when he was a boy. What I still don’t understand is how your sweet mother met that terrible German monster.”

I walked over and hugged my grandma and told her I loved her, and she clung onto me as if there was no tomorrow. Then I walked over to my grandfather’s chair and told him I loved him as well, to which he reacted the way most men do and looking slightly embarrassed said, “I love you too Matthew, and I know that Robert would have been very proud to have been your father.” With that the old man clasped my hand and shook it hard to cover his emotional outburst! I spent the next two hours filling my grandparent’s in on the “deal” Mum had struck with The British Fascist Union underscoring that she had no idea who Otto von Braden was. In fact she never even knew his real name until I told her. I also filled them in on the Brian Kavanagh aka O’Callaghan and mentioned that it was my intention to seek legal advice to see exactly what British laws had been violated.

“I know who helped “Inspector O’Callaghan” and I’ll be happy to divulge that information in due course. The real insult to all of this was that O’Callaghan told us, standing in this very room that my parents had been arrested, but that was untrue. I, in fact saw Mum yesterday at their house in Esher while Dad was at work as usual. So, we’ve been lied to, possibly because they are scared, we’ve found them out. Whatever the reason, having spoken to both my mother and my younger brother, we have decided that my father and all those in this travesty, need to be held accountable.” I paused for a moment and looked squarely into the old man’s eyes and spoke. “I need your help.” Without missing a beat he replied with a steely tone to his voice, “of course my boy. It will be my very great pleasure to bring these traitors to justice.”

CHAPTER 13

Justice

After my grandfather’s solemn promise to bring TBFU to justice, I took my leave and bussed into the city where I had arranged to have a drink with an old school chum from Harrow who worked for one of the largest law firms in the UK.

“Good to see you Toby,” I said to my friend as he sat at the bar dinking a large pint of ale. He looked up and smiled as he saw me and made a motion that was almost imperceptible to the bartender for the “same again plus one,” “Matthew my old todger, it’s good to see you old boy. How’s life in the provinces?” We both laughed, and clapped each other on the shoulders, the way old friends who’ve known each other for several lifetimes always greet each other. Toby had been in his last year when I first came to Harrow, but his parents lived in Esher as well, and were good friends with my parents. As younger kids Simon and I had always looked up to Toby. Now I found myself using his expertise in legal matters and hoping he would have an equitable solution.

In the time it takes me to drink 3 pints of best bitter I told him the whole sordid story, and ended up with the question I had wanted to ask; “Do you think the Crown has a case to indict him in the British courts, given what I’ve told you? Once the newspapers get hold of this story, it’ll become madness, and Israel and Germany will be eager to extradite him and prosecute him for his war crimes. I also think Toby although I don’t have any evidence yet, he well may have murdered my real Dad in order to steal his identity.” Toby had been listening carefully. We had been friends since I was 5 years old, and he was 10. We had always shared a love of history and used to imagine we were soldiers in the trenches fighting unseen enemies always being the victors in hectic and dangerous conditions. The salient thing about that was that rather being on opposite sides like most kids choose to be, we’d always chosen to be on the same side fighting injustice, corruption, and greed. And now here we were, 15 years later playing the same game. “Oh yes Matt, listening to what you’ve just told me, I think there is a very strong case for an indictment, not only for Otto von Braden, but also for the other participants in the crimes. Have you contacted Special Branch to file a formal complaint yet?” I laughed and replied, “No if you don’t count “Inspector O’Callaghan’s” investigation.” And Toby roared as he polished off yet another pint of Watney’s best bitter. “I think I will drop into Scotland Yard and file a bill of complaint first thing tomorrow. Thank you, Toby. I’m so grateful to you for your advice.” Then I stood up, clapped my friend on his back and headed for the door. “Great to see you Matt,” boomed his big voice as I walked out into the fresh air. Life was starting to feel normal again.

I left the pub and realized that I didn’t have anywhere to sleep, and so I took a risk and telephoned my “new” grandparents and explained my situation. They immediately understood and suggested that I stay with them tonight, and if I would like would be happy to accompany me to Scotland Yard in the morning. I thought about that for a second and realized that the police might take the complaint more seriously coming from a woman who could identify the defendant personally as the commandant of Ravensbrück concentration camp as she had been a prisoner at the camp. So that was all settled, and I spent a night in their spare room and the next morning we took a number 27 bus to Scotland Yard on the River Thames at Victoria Embankment 3 miles (approx.) from Eaton Terrace arriving at a perfect time to be interviewed by two smart detectives. The icing on the cake was my grandmother’s testimony. I could see how impressed they both were by the fact that she had survived 3 years of unimaginable horror. The night before I had told them of my suspicion that Otto had in order to steal his identity cards, possibly murdered their son. Until then they hadn’t even considered the possibility, and so when I apprehensively floated the idea their first reaction was of horror, but then the more they thought about it the more it made sense. My father, Robert Chandler, had gone to Berlin to meet someone and Otto was visiting Berlin on the same day. So, there was clear circumstantial evidence that Otto von Braden was my fathers’ killer.

The two detectives were stellar that morning. They took notes that would have filled a full-length novel, they asked questions that were relevant to the case and moreover, they were very polite and professional throughout the interview. We left the Met, at around 1:15 pm and grandfather suggested that he’d like to buy us lunch. We both thanked him and agreed right away. The Met had agreed to open an investigation into the illegal activities of Otto von Braden, The British Fascist Union, and people involved in the demise of Robert Chandler and the subsequent illegal entry into Great Britain of a foreign national and the impersonation of a government employee. The two detectives had asked us to sign an affidavit criminal complaint which all three of us did willingly. They told us that they would be in touch with us in due course.

CHAPTER 14

Going Home

Five weeks later two MI5 agents boarded the 6:30 train to Esher from Waterloo station in London. Wearing 3-piece suits and bowler hats and looking just like the rest of the passengers, they sat at opposite ends of the carriage reading their Evening Standards. In the middle of the carriage sat Otto von Braden aka Robert Chandler wearing a similar uniform. Both agents were wearing discrete earpieces that allowed them to stay in touch with HQ. These agents were members of a highly trained abduction team that British Intelligence Services MI5 had modeled from their Israeli counterparts Mossad. Twenty minutes later the train pulled into Esher station where Robert Chandler disembarked with the two agents falling in behind him for the eleven-minute walk to the Chandler home at the end of Arbrook Lane. Walking down the hill from the station, Otto took a left turn onto Jasmin Way and then a right turn onto Esher Park Avenue. The sun had gone down half an hour ago and there was a new moon rising. Right before the main turn onto Arbrook Lane there’s an alley between two houses that doubles as a public footpath. That alley is a popular cut through for people walking home from the train station, who live on Arbrook Lane. Otto von Braden turned into that alley and began to walk the 75 yards toward Arbrook Lane. As he turned into the alley the two agents picked up their pace until they were in spitting distance of their quarry. The third member of the team had been sitting in the parking lot of The Swan public house on the corner of Esher Park Avenue and Arbrook Lane in a van with phony license plates, when he heard in his earphones from HQ that their quarry was in the alley. He reversed out of the parking lot and drove ever so slowly to where the alley met Arbrook Lane. As the alley ended the two agents picked up speed, then walked up beside Otto von Braden, one on either side of him and as the three of them left the alley and began to walk up Arbrook Avenue the two men grabbed his arms and in a beautifully coordinated maneuver bundled him into the van which had driven up slowly at exactly the right time and carried out the abduction perfectly. The two MI5 agents climbed in behind him and one slammed the door shut while the other reached for a black hoodie and a pair of handcuffs. The van then drove to London and entered the security area of an anonymous building and drove over to a small car waiting in the parking lot with its engines running. In the car there were three members of Israeli intelligence who had flown in from Jerusalem after a high-ranking retired official had told them of Otto von Braden’s whereabouts. The official whose wife had been at Drancy and Ravensbrück camps had positively identified him from a photograph she had been shown of him posing in 1965 in Scotland where he was on holiday with his new family. He had assumed the identity when he first came to Britain in 1945 of her son James, who she believed was murdered by von Braden in Berlin in order to steal his identity.

Mossad had requested permission from the British Security Service to carry out a clandestine operation to smuggle Otto out of the UK to Israel in an operation similar to one they’d successfully carried out in Argentina in 1960 when they’d managed to abduct Adolf Eichmann and bring him to justice in Jerusalem where he was tried, convicted and sentenced to be hanged. British Security Services (MI5) declined Mossad’s request as they frowned officially on this kind of operation by a foreign country on British soil, but came to a compromise that if Mossad helped train British agents in their techniques, then MI5 could conduct the operation and deliver two Nazi’s instead. MI5 had decided to prosecute Otto von Braden in the United Kingdom because of the strength of their case.

As the van turned off its engine, the car carrying the Mossad agents pulled in beside them. A minute after the car arrived an armored windowless van approached and two guards got out and opened the back of the van and instructed the two in the back, who were obviously the Nazi prisoners to exit the van and walk with them over to the car carrying the Mossad agents. When this transaction was completed, the car drove out of the forecourt into London traffic and turned south as it drove towards the airport where a private jet was waiting to whisk its occupants home to Jerusalem where the two men would be tried and hopefully convicted of war crimes.

Eric Battersby and his two MI5 colleagues delivered Otto von Braden into the custody of the Metropolitan Police force on that chilly evening in May where a very chastened and sour looking Otto von Braden was arrested and charged with unlawful entry into Great Britain. That charge was the first of 27 charges that the Crown eventually indicted him on.

CHAPTER 15

The Old Bailey

Otto von Braden was charged under the War Crimes Act with the murder of Robert Chandler, a British citizen, the theft of Robert Chandler's identity, unlawfully entering the United Kingdom using false military identification of a citizen of the UK and the murder of thousands of Jews when he was the commandant of Drancy and Ravensbrück.

The day started out clear and bright but bitterly cold. Enormous publicity had been given to the Otto von Braden trial, starting today at the Old Bailey in central London. The outcome was a foregone conclusion. Dozens of witnesses had come forward after he had been arrested identifying him as the Assassin of Drancy. Jews who had been prisoners at Ravensbrück the women’s camp north of Berlin where von Braden had been commandant, and from Drancy deportation center in Paris, came forward in droves. These survivors were willing to testify that his policies were responsible for the deaths of multiple Jewish inmates. Prosecutors had lined up over 300 people to sit in the gallery at the Old Bailey who would testify to his guilt. I had decided to attend the trial along with my two grandparents, Eric and Susan Chandler. I was feeling most apprehensive about seeing the man I had only ever known as Dad on trial for murder.

The Old Bailey is where the British fascist William Joyce was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for high treason. He was nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw and was a fascist and a Nazi propagandist during World War II. After moving from the US to England, Joyce became a member of the British Union of Fascists in 1932, before moving to Germany at the start of the war where he became a citizen in 1940. At the end of the war, having broadcast lies and propaganda Joyce was captured, tried and convicted at the Old Bailey for high treason in 1945 and then sentenced to death. He was hanged in Wandsworth prison on 3rd January 1946, making him the last person to be executed for treason in the United Kingdom.

The Old Bailey originated as the sessions house of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of the City of London and of Middlesex. In addition to sessions court, the Old Bailey also held trials, similar to the traveling Courts of Assize held in other parts of England and Wales. The original medieval court was first mentioned in 1585; it was located next to the old Newgate Prison, and was initially endowed, to improve the jail and rooms for the sheriffs, and was made possible by a gift from the mayor of London, Richard (Dick) Whittington. It was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 but was rebuilt in 1674, with the court open to the weather to prevent the spread of disease. 

The Old Bailey adjoined Newgate Prison until the jail's 1902 closure. Hangings were very much a public spectacle in the streets outside the court until May 1868. The condemned would be led along Dead Man's Walk between the buildings to the gallows, and then many were buried in the walk itself. Large, rowdy crowds sometimes gathered and pelted the condemned with rotten fruit and vegetables and stones. After 28 people were crushed to death when a pie-seller's stall overturned, a secret tunnel was dug beneath the prison and St. Sepulchers’ church opposite, to allow the chaplain to walk and then minister to the condemned without having to force his way through crowds.

It was to this bastion of justice that hundreds came to witness the first day of Sturmbannfuhrer von Braden’s trial for war crimes against humanity. My grandmother, one of the hundreds, hadn’t volunteered to give testimony against this man who had stolen her son’s identity, and was now on trial for his murder. She was simply at the Old Bailey to watch von Braden squirm. She’d had over 3 years to witness his cruelty when she’d been a prisoner at Drancy and then Ravensbrück.  Susan Chandler had been trained as a translator at Cambridge and before the war had helped decipher messages that the Germans were sending to their allies. She learned then from those communications that these people were intent on inflicting terrible punishment on their perceived enemies, but she never thought she’d be on the receiving end of such cruelty.

The first couple of days of the trial were fairly routine. A jury had been seated, and opening statements were delivered. On the 4th day the four of us (Simon was present as well) were seated in the gallery, when my grandmother suddenly nudged me. “Look over there Matt, in the second row third seat from the aisle. I think that man is Inspector Callaghan, or Kavanagh or whatever his name is.” I looked over, and sure enough the man we now knew as Brian Kavanagh was sitting right next to his sergeant, Bill Collins. As far as I could tell, they had not seen us yet, but one thing was for sure. The fact they were there suggested they were up to no good. I took a risk and in the lunch break, went to hunt down the barrister who was the man in charge of the crown prosecution, a man called Jerry Walters. I found him returning from a quick lunch and so I pigeonholed him as he was walking to the court room. I told him about seeing the two men in the gallery and mentioned that they had been the ones who had impersonated police officers at my grandparents’ house. He seemed most interested and wrote down their names on a piece of paper he plucked from his pocket. I could see he was in a hurry and so I let him go and returned to my seat, where I joined my brother and grandparents.

Toward the end of the second week once again the 4 of us were sitting in the gallery when all of a sudden, the man I had spoken to in the hallway, wearing his full legal regalia called Brian Kavanagh to the witness stand. A moment later the man appeared looking extremely crestfallen. He was sworn in by the clerk and Mr. Winter’s the prosecutor began his questions. “Is your name Brian Kavanagh?” “Yes.”  “Are you known by any other names?” “No.” “Have you ever heard of Inspector O’Callaghan?” “Can’t say I have.” “Have you ever been known as Inspector O’Callaghan?” “I have already told you I’ve never heard of Inspector O’Callaghan.” “Would it surprise you if I told you I have several witnesses who will identify you as Inspector O’Callaghan?” “Yes, it would, but if they did, they’d be lying.” Then suddenly I heard my name. “Prosecution calls Matthew Chandler.” I stood up like in a dream. Mr. Winter’s had told me I might be called as a witness, but since he had mentioned it a few weeks earlier I had conveniently forgotten about it. I walked to the witness stand and placed my hand on the bible and took the oath and then turned to the prosecution. Over his right shoulder sat my ‘father’ at a table for the defense. “Do you know the man sitting behind me at the defendants table?” he asked. “Yes, I do. He is the man I called Dad for 20 years and his name was Robert Chandler.” I replied. “You say ‘was my Dad.’ What happened to change your mind?” Winters enquired. “A police detective came to me at my rooms at Balliol College Oxford with a tape-recorded confession of my Dad admitting to being an imposter.” I answered. What was the name of the detective who came to see you?” Winters asked. “His name was Inspector O’Callaghan,” I answered. Do you see O’Callaghan in this courtroom today?” I looked around the upper gallery and sitting where he had been before sat the man who called himself O’Callaghan. “Right up there,” I said pointing towards him. At that moment the man made a sudden movement and began to walk to the exit, and so Waters shouted to the policemen in the gallery to ‘apprehend that man.’ Once done and the man was in custody the Crown continued asking me question. “You say that Inspector O’Callaghan played you a confession by your Dad?” he politely asked. “Yes, that’s correct sir.” I replied. And then Waters asked the judge for permission to play the recording. Of course, that sent the defense into a tizzy, and they argued back and forth for about half an hour until finally the judge said yes to the Crowns motion. The entire court listened to the first few minutes of the tape and then he held up his hand and paused the recording. “Mr. Chandler can you identify the voice on the tape?” “Yes, that voice is the voice of the man I called my Dad for 20 years, Robert Chandler.” There was a gasp from the gallery as they began to realize the scam this man had perpetrated on such good and innocent people. The real crime however was the crime that he conducted against Jewish people when he aided and abetted Hitler in the mass murder of millions of Jews across Europe. My grand Mum was extraordinarily lucky to have survived her time in the camps.

CHAPTER 16

In his Own Words

My name is Colonel Otto von Braden, but I’ve been living as Major Robert Chandler since I arrived in Great Britain at the end of World War II. This is how I managed to pull off this deception. A year earlier during the time I was the commandant of the Drancy transit camp in Paris and received a promotion to become commandant at Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was located about ninety kilometers north of Berlin. Many prisoners worked for Siemens and Halsey the electrical engineering firm that had a factory just a few miles from the camp. In April 1945, the war was not going well for Germany and the Soviet forces were advancing from the north and the American and British forces were advancing from the south. I knew that Hitler had retreated to his bunker with some of his top generals and I had made plans to leave Ravensbrück at the appropriate time and head towards Berlin where a friend Hans Himmel, from my time in the Sturmabteilung was billeted. I planned to stay with him for a day or so and then arrange a passage with my contact at the British Fascist Union. That part of my plan was dicey as communication was now non-existent and I‘d have to use all my resolve to find a way to cross the English Channel and get to safety. I knew that as long as I could get to England I would be fine. The years that I‘d spent at Cambridge had been invaluable as my accent was flawless and I could pass for an Englishman 100% of the time. All I had to do was to find a way to get across the channel. And that was where my dear friend Hans entered the scene. I arrived at his flat to find him furiously packing a suitcase as he had just plans to fly to Spain that very afternoon, in order to catch a boat that was sailing from Malaga to Argentina the day after tomorrow. Argentina was the country that he planned to start his new life in.  He mentioned he was meant to be meeting a man, a British agent, who was reputedly a spy. Hans had been feeding him false information for some time now. His name was Robert Chandler and Hans had heard through the grapevine that British Security had learned of his deception. Hans intended to talk to Chandler and if things went sour, which he suspected they would, then he would have Chandler arrested immediately. Now because of his imminent departure, it was not necessary for him to make the meeting. He asked if I would be willing to meet with Chandler, and I suddenly realized that this could be the opportunity I’d been waiting for, to help me cross the English Channel: and because this golden opportunity presented itself, I agreed wholeheartedly. I had left my wife and children at our house in Ravensbruck knowing they would be well looked after, and settled in to the flat and waited for the meeting with Chandler.

That evening Robert Chandler arrived right on time. I answered the door and introduced myself to Major Chandler.Initially he was suspicious but after I explained that Hans and I were old friends he began to relax. I downplayed my position in the Nazi party never mentioning that I had in fact been the commandant of 2 notorious detention centres but that I was in fact a major (like him) in the German army and that I couldn’t wait for the war to end. (which was true) Slowly but surely Major Chandler relaxed and I could see that he was beginning to quite enjoy himself. The icing on the cake was when I mentioned that I had been educated at Cambridge. He laughed and immediately told me that he was an Oxford man, but didn’t hold it against me that I had gone to Cambridge. There has always been a healthy competitive attitude between students from Oxford and Cambridge and this finally did the trick. After that we chatted for hours, and he told me all about his life growing up in England, and about his parents and where they would go every year on holiday. He told me that he had gone to Hydneye House prep school, Harrow on the Hill as his public school and finally Balliol College at Oxford for his university education. I‘d been plying him with cognac and he became tipsy, in fact so tipsy that he leaned down and fiddling with his shoe suddenly produced his military papers that he had hidden in a compartment in the heel. (the reason why he had carried them with him was the Geneva convention dictated that any spy who was caught by the enemy without official identification could be executed upon capture by the enemy.) Drunk as he was, he wanted to show me what an important little man he was. He waved the document at me indicating that he wanted me to look at them and so I stood up walked across to his chair and looked at what this idiot was waving. Not only did he hand me his full military identification but he also handed me all his travel passes. I looked at them carefully and while he nattered on I devised a good plan. After I returned to my chair having returned his documents, Major Chandler told me about his peacetime job with the Ministry of Defense in Whitehall and how after war had broken out between our 2 nations he had been offered a position to train as an agent carrying out operations behind enemy lines trying to cause as much confusion as he could to the German military. My plan was simple. Find out as much as I could about Major Robert Chandler and then when I had enough relevant information I would kill him, steal his identity and using all the means at my disposal I would make my way across Berlin and attempt to cross over into the now Soviet controlled part of Berlin. That was my greatest risk, but given that Chandler and I were the same age, same height and colouring I considered the risk to be worth taking. Once I was in the relative safety of the Soviet occupied territory, I would be able to make my way to the British sector of Spandau which was the westernmost of the twelve boroughs of Berlin at the junction of the Havel and the Spree rivers.  I am lucky to possess a photographic memory and spent the next hour learning as much as I could about the life and times of Major Robert Chandler. When I was certain I had gleaned as much as I could I chose my moment carefully. Chandler was an extraordinarily bad agent and had allowed himself to be duped by me, a total stranger. Having drunk a massive quantity of cognac which I liberally poured, he then had to relieve himself and as he sat down to continue talking, I took out my pistol and shot him through the heart. I felt a bit bad for the man but it had to be done. We were at war.  

That night I left him in the chair and went to bed in Hans Himmel’s bedroom and slept like a baby. The following morning I awoke and changed into Major Chandler’s clothing which fit me to a tee, retrieved his ID papers and travel documents, then left the billet with him still sitting in the chair and continued my journey toward the Soviet sector. I knew Berlin having lived there for some years with my wife Astrid so I chose back alleys to travel that short distance. As I suspected the Soviet guards gave me a hard time, but I did manage to finally convince them that I was Major Robert Chandler. I‘d decided to leave my case at Hans Himmel’s flat because I was concerned if I was searched they might find the loot, which given the circumstances appeared to be likely. As it happened I’m glad I made that decision, because I went through a rigourous search at the Soviet sector as the guards were on the lookout for any fleeing Nazis. Having managed to enter into the Allied zone it was important that I kept myself to myself as much as possible for fear that I might run into someone who knew Robert Chandler. Luckily for me the English did not manage to advance into Berlin until two months later and by that time I had already landed in England. I managed to get a lift on a transport flying into Southhampton two days after I arrived in the Soviet sector. Because I was familiar with Berlin’s geography I wound my way through the back streets finally ending up at Templehof airport that the US and the UK shared for supply runs to Berlin.

I had to wait two more days before I managed to cadge a ride. I flew into Southampton and then contacted my friends at the British Fascist Union who sprang into action and found me a safe house to stay in for the foreseeable future.”

“It was at the safe house that I was introduced to Ruth Martin, who I’d first met when we were both undergraduates at Oxford and would attend meetings at the British Fascists Union. Ruth was obsessed with socialism. Ruth had a sister named Lillibet who had been married to the English man I had killed to steal his identity. I didn’t know it at the time, but The British Fascist Union had orchestrated our meeting so I could meet Robert Chandler‘s widow who because of his death was in extremely dire circumstances. Ruth Martin, Lillibets sister had concocted a scheme to introduce us during a holiday in Scotland. Lillibet had 2 small children who I was happy to help raise. It seemed to me, a small price to pay for freedom. We subsequently met and married and I successfully assumed Major Chandlers identity, and lived in relative harmony with Lillibet as man and wife for 21 years.”

The audiotape of my Dad’s voice ended without warning. I looked down at my feet feeling ashamed and confused. What he‘d said was damning enough and would without question put a noose around his neck. Also the question that my Mum had been duped was accurate. All she was guilty of was falling in love with a man who was introduced to her by her sister. There was no question that she knew a few things didn’t add up, but her situation at the time dictated that she didn’t ask too many questions. Was that wrong? Possibly. But given her dire circumstance, she had gratefully taken the olive branch that was handed to her.

 After the audiotape was played, the Crown requested a lunch break, and the proceedings adjourned for two hours. At 2:00 pm the case continued. After the jury was seated the Crown told the Judge, “We would like to call one final witness before closing statements, My Lord. If it pleases the court we would like to call our witness now.“ Chief Justice Lord Halloran who was presiding over this high profile case nodded his head and said. “Fine. Call your next witness.“ Jerry Walters the prosecution for the Crown spoke clearly and succinctly as he called his last witness. “I call Major Robert Chandler.“ As he spoke those words a murmur could be heard throughout the courtroom, and Robert Chandler appeared through the back doors and walked up the aisle towards the witness stand.

It was a surreal feeling watching him enter the courtroom. He was middle aged and frail and seemed full of reticence as he approached the witness stand. Who was this man? Could he be yet another imposter? It wasn’t until I looked over at my grandmother and saw her tears forming that I realized it was really him.

There was a gasp as the people in the gallery realized who was about to give testimony. He raised his right hand and was duly sworn in. „“Please give us your full name sir.“ The Crown asked. “ My name is Robert Chandler, and towards the end of the war I had been sent to Berlin to meet with a double agent called Hans Himmel. He was unable to make the meeting and had sent Otto von Braden instead. I of course knew Herr von Braden by reputation and knew that he was bad news and so I decided to treat him with kid gloves. Sadly I underestimated him and he got me drunk and as I was returning from the lavatory, I saw he was holding a gun, and was aiming it at me. That was the last thing I remembered because right after that he shot me and left me for dead lying in my chair.

Later that night I regained consciousness and discovered the man had stolen my clothes and left me in the chair. What I discovered later was that the bullet had missed my heart by a fraction of a milimeter. I drifted in and out of consciousness all night , but pretended to be dead when I heard him come into the room. He must have gathered his possesions and decided to leave in the morning and the next thing I remember was being found by some soldiers who placed me on a stretcher and carried me to a makeshift hospital.“ Major Chandler paused for a moment, and Jerry Walters, the crown prosecutor asked, “Did you know who the soldiers were who found you that morning?“ “They were the Soviet troops and were moving in from the north and took over Berlin on April 28th and had just secured the garrison that I had been shot in. They found me and assumed I was a high ranking Nazi, because they found a suitcase filled with jewelry, diamonds and money that had obviously been stolen from Jews in the camps that was in the flat where they found me. The soldiers took me to a makeshift hospital where a doctor looked at me and managed to remove the bullet lodged near my spine. I spent a few weeks there and then when things had calmed down a bit I was transported to Leningrad where I was thrown in a jail with a number of other German POWs. I had recovered from the bullet wound and subsequently was tried in a kangaroo court and sentenced to life imprisonment at a Stalag in Siberia. No matter how much I tried to convince them otherwise, the Soviets believed I was the escaped commandant of Ravensbruck, Otto von Braden. I kept telling them that I was a British soldier, but they just wouldn‘t believe me.“ Once again Major Chandler paused. The crowd in the Old Bailey was riveted. They could not believe that the Crown had been able to find this witness, especially considering that the defendant Otto von Braden was on trial for the murder of this very person, who was clearly very much alive.

“How do you come to be here today, and how did you escape the Stalag, Major Chandler.“ The Crown prosecution asked. “Thanks to an extremely astute observation by a friend and colleague of mine Major Eric Battersby. He had been instrumental in the arrest of Colonel Otto von Braden who had stolen my identity here in the UK and had been living with my wife and children for the past 20 years. Major Battersbys‘ job since the end of the war has been to reunite imprisoned British citizens and bring them home to the British Isles. POWs from Japan, Germany and Italy have been his particular passion, but because the Soviet Union was instrumental in the defeat of Germany many were misidentified and captured then confined by the Soviets after the war.

It just so happened that Major Battersby‘s area of expertise was in Soviet studies and he regularly inspected the lists of all those who had been detained and sent to the Stalags. After he had arrested Colonel von Braden he noticed that a man named Otto von Braden had also been detained in Berlin by the Soviet army and had ultimately been convicted of war crimes and sent to Siberia to serve his sentence in Stalag Luft II. He had a Soviet friend who helped him research and locate the man in the notoriously brutal Stalag. The friend sent him a stock photo of my prison photo and after comparisons he thankfully discovered the truth, and the Soviets realized their mistake and freed me almost immediately. By the time I was once again a free man, I had been in the Stalag in Siberia for almost 20 years. I was flown to Moscow where I was met by the British Ambassador, and was flown home to London and to freedom.

I was horrified that the man who had shot me had the gall to impersonate me, steal my life, my family and my identity and then have the audacity to make a good life for himself. And so I am delighted to give testimony today at his trial and make sure that justice is done.“ As he uttered the last words of the sentence a cheer erupted from the gallery and then the entire crowd stood and gave Major Chandler a standing ovation. It took the chief justice banging his gavel repeatedly to finally quieten the crowd. “Order, or I will clear the courtroom.“ Chief Justice Lord Halloran commanded. The crowd did as they were ordered.

On the one hand I felt badly for turning in the man I‘d called Dad my whole life. If I hadn‘t followed up on finding out who the man in the picture was who was standing with Hitler and his henchmen, maybe none of this would have happened. But I had to find out who he was. I couldn’t have lived with myself if he had managed to escape justice. The man had  killed thousands of Jews and had to be brought to justice. And I was the only one who had managed to work out his identity.

On the other hand, as I looked down from the gallery at The Old Bailey at my real father, I felt so proud of him, and realized that if I had never started this strange journey, he would still be rotting in a Soviet Stalag. Thank God I did what I did. It had all been worth it.

Throughout history children have survived the sins of their parents. When you study criminology you can look back at all the people who‘ve committed heinous crimes and the vast majority of them are parents with children and wives or husbands in tow. For example, Ricardo Eichmann was born on Nov 4 1955 and is the youngest son of Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious Nazis in history. Ricardo was five years old when his father was captured and smuggled out of Argentina and flown to Israel by Mossad. As a teen, Ricardo learned of his father's crimes from books. He rejected the Nazi ideology of his Dad and accepted that his execution was justified. I just like Ricardo Eichmann was resolved to the idea that my Dad had to be punished for the crimes he had so willingly committed.

After a grueling 5 week trial Otto von Braden was found guilty on all 15 charges he had been indicted for. The murder charge was amended to “attempted murder.” During the sentencing phase his defense team struck a deal with the Crown, and agreed that he should be imprisoned for life and be remanded to solitary confinement at a maximum security facility to be determined by HM Prisons. The audio testimony Otto von Braden had given was used in evidence several months later to arrest sixteen active members of The British Fascist Union including Brian Kavanagh and William Collins who had pretended to be the Inspector and the police sergeant respectively, who had visited my real fathers parents at 37 Eaton Terrace. Also Ruth Martin, my aunt, was formally charged for being an accessory after the fact and aiding and abetting  Herr. Von Braden for unlawfully entering the United Kingdom and using a stolen military identification belonging to Robert Chandler. Nine months after she was charged she was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison, and is currently serving her sentence at the Wandsworth prison for women. Brian Kavanagh and Bill Collins were not so fortunate as they were both charged with aggravated assault, smuggling into Great Britain a foreign person and impersonating a police officer. They received 15 years and 10 years respectively. Otto von Braden received a life sentence from the court and also got the tongue lashing of his life from Chief Justice Lord Halloran.

When the verdicts were read a cheer erupted from the gallery, the loudest cheer coming from my grandparents.

The reuniting of my father and mother was tense but with time came an understanding and Dad was able to come to terms with the dilemma mum had been faced with. After he realized she’d had nothing to do with smuggling Otto von Braden into Great Britain or had any knowledge of his prior identity before he arrived in England, only then was he able to reconcile her behaviour. Over the next year or two I watched my parents fall in love for the second time. They announced their marriage on May 6th 1967 to be held at The Brompton Oratory on June 7th. Mum asked her Dad to walk her down the aisle, and my Dad asked his Father, my grandfather to be his best man. Simon and I watched their entire wedding from the front pew of the chapel, and for the first time in over twenty years we both had smiles of happiness on our faces.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Imagine if you will, that you discover that your Dad is not whom he says he is. That is what happened to young Matt Chandler an Oxford university student who finds a photograph of his father as a young man wearing a Nazi uniform.
The Imposter follows a maze of lies, and distractions that plead with Matt to investigate his own father, a man whom he has trusted and loved his whole life. What will he do? Will he, for the sake of "family harmony" bury the evidence that he might find, or will he expose everything he holds to be safe and secure?
Read The Imposter today.

Tim Battersby is the son of a British Intelligence Officer. He was a contributor to The HuffPost and wrote articles on Musical Talent in the Arts and Culture section of The HuffPost. He and his wife Laura were awarded a Grammy Nomination for their Children’s album Sunny Days in 2011. Tim lives with his wife Laura on the west coast of Florida. They have a daughter, a son in law, 4 Grandchildren and 2 Great Grandchildren.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The author wishes to thank Wikipedia for allowing use of descriptive passages within The Imposter under the Creative Commons Attribution License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Cover Photo Anonymous man with a derby hat by Jack Moreh