Peter Johnson: Personal papers

Readers need to book a reading room terminal to access this digital content <p><strong style="color: #ff0000; text-decoration-color: initial;">Readers need to book&nbsp; a reading room terminal to access this digital content</strong><br /></p><p>This collection of Peter Johnson's personal papers documents his life up until the immediate post-war period. It includes school reports, family correspondence, documents re naturalisation, papers relating to his service in military intelligence, and papers relating to the former Jewish population in Hildesheim, where he was stationed at the end of the war. Also deposited by Peter Johnson, the bulk of which collection relates to the activities of the refugee social club 'Hyphen', of which he was one of the founding members.</p> <p><strong style="color: #ff0000; text-decoration-color: initial;">Readers need to book&nbsp; a reading room terminal to access this digital content</strong><br /></p><p>Wolfgang Josephs (later Peter Johnson), a German Jew from Berlin, came to Great Britain in July 1933. He began work in the fur trade until he was interned as an enemy alien at the outbreak of war and later transported on the 'Dunera' to Hay Internment Camp, Australia. His parents having divorced in 1934, his father went to Amsterdam in 1937, from where he was deported to Auschwitz in 1942. His mother came to Great Britain in 1939 and went into service. On Johnson's return to Great Britain in 1941 he enlisted in the Pioneers Corps, later changing his name to Peter Johnson. He was a military interpreter for the British occupying forces in Germany at Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, from May 1945 to October 1946 where he was involved with the de-nazification process. Whilst there he also took an interest in the returnees from concentration camps, arranging correspondence between them and their families all over the world.</p> Open