HELEN FRY

Claus Ascher’s father, a German Jew, was one of Hitler’s political opponents during the 1930s, which led to his arrest, imprisonment and murder in Dachau in 1937.

 

Claus managed to escape to Britain where he joined the British Army and changed his name to Colin Anson. He was one of around a hundred Germans in X-Troop (or 3-Troop) of No.10 Inter-Allied Commando in WWII.

 

Attached to the Royal Marine Commandos, he took part in the invasions of Sicily and Italy in the summer of 1943, surviving a life-threatening head wound when shrapnel penetrated his skull, and underwent brain surgery in a field hospital. Nine months later after recovery, he was determined to re-join his Commando comrades. He went on to fight in Corfu, Greece and Yugoslavia.

​

At the end of the war Colin returned to Germany with the British army. Whilst there, he discovered his father’s betrayer but decided not to take revenge. It is a powerful story.

​​

Colin's childhood as the son of one of Hitler’s most dangerous foes, provides a unique insight into the political maelstrom of 1930s Germany - an extraordinary portrait of his bravery and determination, continuing his father’s legacy as he fought to defeat the Nazis.​