Baddiel’s Heartbreaking Island Link

Comedian David Baddiel has shared a heartbreaking letter sent by his grandma to try to free his grandfather from the internment camp he was held in on the Isle of Man.

As a Jewish man who was expelled from Nazi Germany, Ernst Fabian was then held in the Central Promenade internment camp on the island as an enemy alien.

On October 30 1940 his grandma, Otti Fabian, wrote to the Home Office in Whitehall asking for him to be granted a medical exemption from remaining in the camp.

She said: ‘My husband is suffering from grave periodic attacks of nervous paralysis of the vocal cords, especially during the winter months. He was in Germany under constant medical. attention, and our doctor there had warned us that, unless my husband is very careful, this might develop into a chronic paralysis.

‘I have now leamt that recently he had another sevene attack which necessitated hie admission to the Camp Hospital. I was very worried about the consequences a prolonged internment might have on the health of my husband.

‘May I add that we came to this country in August 1939 with an Affidavit for U.S.A. where we want to emigrate as soon as we are permitted. We are Jews and were expelled by the Nazis after my husband had been put in a Concentration Camp. Now he has been interned again since May the 12th and I have to stay here alone with my one-year-old baby.

‘I trust, sir, that you will consider this case favourably.’

Mr Baddiel said on Twitter that his grandparents never made it to America and his grandfather, on his mother’s side, was interned on the island for 18 months before being allowed to leave.

He has previously written about internment in his novel The Secret Purposes.

Heartbreaking letter I’ve just found written by my grandma to the internment camp on the Isle of Man where my grandfather was being held as an “enemy alien” in 1940. pic.twitter.com/Mjzjw85j28

— David Baddiel (@Baddiel) November 23, 2023