The Jewish girl who shook Hitler's hand

Hanni Begg was a Berlin schoolgirl when the Nazis came
for her family in 1943. Through sheer luck she evaded
capture before later coming face-to-face with Hitler. This
is her story of survival.
Her father had a plan for when the Nazis came for their
family - they would kill themselves with cyanide.
But both the 14-year-old and her father were out when, in
1943, the Gestapo arrived at their third-floor flat in Berlin.
Her younger brother Max and sister Ruth were not so
lucky, they spent the rest of their short lives in Auschwitz-
Birkenau concentration camp.
"I never saw my brother and sister again," said Hanni, now
86.
"I knew I wouldn't see them again, that was quite clear to
me. I never had any more hope, by that time I knew too
much.
"At first I cried. Then I just had to carry on and put it at
the back of my mind."
After Hanni's mother died of cancer in 1939, her father
warned her of the threat their small Jewish family faced
from the Nazis.
"They took all of our money and wouldn't give us ration
books," she recalled.
"Right away my father talked about Mein Kampf [Hitler's
self-penned blueprint for a Third Reich] to me. He said I
had to be aware I would be surrounded by anti-semitism
but would have to be very proud of my Jewish background.
"He also said we would get a letter from the Gestapo on
some day saying they would come and collect us and take
us to a camp for our own protection, each must prepare a
suitcase, all our belongings would be returned when we
came back.
"My father knew this was all lies. He told us not to believe
the propaganda. He said we would never go to a camp.
"He brought out a box which had four cyanide tablets in it,
he said when we get that letter we will all take the tablets
and die.
"I thought that was romantic, that we would die together."
The letter never came, but the Gestapo did.
"When I came home from school some neighbours were
waiting outside and said I wasn't to go in because the
Gestapo would be waiting to take me away. I didn't see my
father again for years.
"I had to disappear, but there was always some help from
somebody despite the danger to themselves."
She lived with neighbours and friends who hid her real
identity, part of which involved her going to school.
And it was there that she came face to face with Adolf
Hitler.
"He came to our school. I was in the front row and I was
the only child in that class from a Jewish background but I
didn't look Jewish.
"He was surrounded by guards, we shook hands for a
second and it was all finished.
"Afterwards I felt ashamed I had actually done it but I
couldn't have done anything else.
"Firstly, I didn't have enough time to think about, and
secondly, it would have been very dangerous if I hadn't."
As the war came to a close, Hani finally located her father
through a friend - he was living in a room in a bombed-out
house in the city.
He was suffering from tuberculosis and died on 9 May
1945 as soon as he found out the war was over.
Hanni buried him in the yard.
She was then adopted by another family before a friend
saw an advert for young German women to move to Britain
to train as nurses for the newly formed NHS.
Hanni moved and eventually married a doctor, settling in
Guisborough near Middlesbrough, where she has lived ever
since.
"Do I feel grateful to have survived? Not always, no, I've
felt guilty a lot of my life that I'm the one here. Why should
I have survived?
"It was just a stroke of luck that I wasn't there when the
Gestapo came that I survived.
"I've had a happy life and normal life now, managed to
have a family and I'm grateful for that."