The Tennis Champion Who Escaped the Nazis by Felice Hardy
The Tennis Champion Who Escaped The Nazis is based around the author’s grandparents’ escape, along with her mother, to London from Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1939. It explores the terrible fate of those they left behind who died in the Holocaust. Felice’s grandmother, Liesl Herbst, was the 1930 Tennis Champion of Austria and in 1939 beat Tim Henman’s grandmother to qualify for the Wimbledon tournament. Liesl and her daughter Dorli also played doubles at Wimbledon in 1946, the only mother and daughter ever to do so.
The author’s grandfather, David Herbst, came from an impoverished rural background, but by the age of 21 he was a textile tycoon. Still in his 20s, he became president of the largest sports club in Europe. He took his football team to London, where they beat West Ham 5-0 at Upton Park. To reach Britain, part of David’s journey involved crawling for 18 miles through the snow across the Czech-Polish frontier.
Felice’s mother was 12 years old when the family left everything behind. Woven throughout the book is the search for the author’s own identity. She was raised in an emotionally-ravaged family who suffered from survivor’s guilt. They buried their pre-war existence beneath a blanket of denial.