Dear Mutzi: A story of love, escape and finding the forgotten

(Paperback)

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Harry Peters formally Hermann Ludwig Pollnow, known to his family as Mutzi was born in Berlin in 1920. As a teenager, he fled Nazi Germany and landed in rural Australia. Harrys parents, Max and Edith, stayed and perished in Nazi camps.

This story, of forced migration, assimilation, loss, resilience and determination despite the odds, is one that has been lived countless times throughout history and continues to be a common human experience. Harrys particular experience also tells the history of refugee farmers in rural Australia and migrant labour companies during WWII.

Scholfield-Peters tells her grandfathers story with three intertwining threads: a sketched-out history based on Harrys testimony and documentary history; her engagement with this personal history from a third-generation perspective; and the present story of Harrys growing infirmities and eventual death in early 2021 at age 100.

Through the hybrid narrative non-fiction form, Scholfield-Peters investigates her family history and seeks to share an ethical historical account of Harrys life. This work necessarily skirts the edges of fiction and non-fiction, as Scholfield-Peters weaves her deep research with Harrys recollections and imagines the unknown details.