First novel from man who escaped Nazi Germany

Rolf Kruger, who lives in Caldbec Hill in Battle, touched on his own background for the novel Assignment Endgame.

The book is set in the mid-1930s, as the Nazi Party came to power.

The book’s hero, Jamie Robertson, taught English and wrote for an anti-Nazi local paper in Munich before being forced to leave Germany for Paris.

War was declared and nothing was heard from him for four years.

Sixty years later, Willy Newman is commissioned to write a television documentary and the biography of Jamie Robertson, now a world famous playwright and Nobel Prize winner.

Willy uncovers the nightmare behind the events in Nazi Germany and in war torn France, and their reverberations to the present day.

With the discovery of Endgame, and the code which has protected the truth for all these years, Willy becomes involved in a web of deceit, risking Willy’s life and his sanity.

Not unlike Willy Newman in Assignment Endgame, Rolf Kruger arrived in Britain in April of 1939, one of the children who escaped from Nazi Germany by the Kindertransport, a rescue mission which took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.

Rolf said: “My brother and I boarded the train in April of 1939 in Cologne.

“We arrived in Harwich and then were moved to Liverpool Street Station in London, sorted, labelled and, in our case, sent on to a jam makers summer camp at Selkirk, near Edinburgh.

“The background of Willy Newman is fairly true, with the treatment both he and I had at school in Germany.

“The kind people, who took in two ungrateful children, had much to cope with - we had no idea why we had been sent away.

“My parents divorced in 1935. It was inconvenient to have a Jewish wife, and our father took the easy course.

“Then I blamed him for abandoning his family. Now I can possibly understand that it was the only course open to an ambitious man.”

Rolf spent his working life in the theatre, directing and running repertory theatres in England and Scotland as well as numerous productions on tour.

In the late 1960s, he opened an agency for actors, directors, technicians and playwrights, which he ran until his retirement 20 years ago.

Rolf and his wife moved from London to Battle eight years ago.

They spend half of each year in their second home in the Charente in France. Rolf spends his spare time wood carving with the U3A.

Kindle readers can order Assignment Endgame direct from Amazon. Those without Kindles can download the free Reader for PC, from Amazon, to read eBooks on your PC.