Over the Ocean

The extraordinary true love story of a couple who were separated during a shameful and fascinating chapter of British history.

Erica Fischer's Over the Ocean tells the extraordinary story of her own parents and sheds light on a little-known and little-discussed chapter in British history. Fischer's parents met in Austria in the early 1930s. Her mother, Irka, was a Polish Jew and her father, Erich, was a Viennese lapsed Catholic.

Faced with growing unrest in Europe, Irka fled to the United Kingdom in 1938, her husband followed a year later. However at the outbreak of war, Erich had been arrested as an 'enemy alien', and having been interned was deported to the opposite side of the world.

Faced with unimaginable hardships, the deportees banded together in solidarity to face their new life in Australia and Erich was, against the odds, able to make contact with Irka and their letters established a lifeline between continents.

Over the Ocean is astonishing true tale dealing with an unexposed and unexplored period in British history but also a story of the resilience of love.