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The School That Escaped the Nazis
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In the spring of 1933, as Nazi symbols began appearing on public buildings across Germany, Anna Essinger looked at the new political reality and at her students. She understood what many still refused to see. Danger was coming, and it would not spare children.
Her response was quiet but resolute. And soon she was planning something extraordinary. She would move her entire school out of Nazi Germany.
Anna Essinger was born in Ulm in 1879, the eldest of nine children in a secular Jewish family. At twenty, she moved alone to the United States and studied at the University of Wisconsin, where she encountered Quaker values of equality, peace, and moral courage.
She returned to Germany after the First World War on a Quaker relief mission. In 1926, she founded a progressive boarding school in Herrlingen with her sisters. It welcomed children of all faiths. Teachers were called by their first names. Corporal punishment was forbidden. Students were encouraged to think, to question, and to live without fear.
By 1933 she had created a rare place of intellectual freedom.
Then Hitler rose to power.
Anna had read Mein Kampf. She understood exactly what it meant. Jewish children were being humiliated in schools. Public squares were filled with book burnings. A respected Jewish educator, Kurt Hahn, was arrested. Inside her own school, the husband of a teacher wrote to the new Ministry of Culture accusing her progressive philosophy of being un German.
Anna did not wait to see what would happen next.
Throughout that year she traveled quietly across Europe, searching for a place to rebuild her school. She found support in England, where Quaker allies helped her rent a neglected manor house in Kent called Bunce Court.
Then came the dangerous part.
While emigration was still technically possible in 1933, the political climate made moving an entire Jewish led school risky. If authorities discovered her plan, they could seize the school or stop the children from leaving. Everything had to be done with care.
Anna met with parents privately across Germany. She explained the plan. She asked for their trust and for their children.
Almost all agreed.
While the students believed they were on summer holiday, teachers prepared them for England. They learned English, British customs, and the beginnings of a new life.
On October 5 1933, Anna Essinger carried out one of the most remarkable school escapes of the Nazi era. Her staff met families at prearranged railway stations across the country. Parents were told not to cry or linger.
Sixty six children and their teachers crossed the border.
Every one of them reached England safely.
Classes began within days at Bunce Court. The manor was drafty and broken down, so students and teachers worked together to rebuild it. Over time the school developed a reputation for exceptional academics and extraordinary emotional care.
As Nazi persecution intensified, more children arrived, including Kindertransport refugees. After the war, the final students to come were young survivors of ghettos and concentration camps. One of them, Sidney Finkel, later wrote that his time at Bunce Court slowly turned him back into a human being.
By the time the school closed in 1948, Anna Essinger had taught and cared for more than nine hundred children. Many became artists, scientists, teachers, and doctors, including painter Frank Auerbach and immunologist Leslie Brent.
Anna remained at Bunce Court until her death in 1960, corresponding with former students for the rest of her life.
She proved something that still matters now.
One person who refuses to look away can change hundreds of lives.
One school built on freedom can outlast a regime built on fear.
Written by: Layla Noel on 12/1/25
SOURCE LIST:
Biography of Anna Essinger
History of Bunce Court School
BBC feature on the escape of the school
US Holocaust Memorial Museum overview of antisemitism in German schools