Danny Behrman

Danny Behrman enlisted in the Royal Army Service Corps in London in 1940. He was posted to North Africa and was involved in the campaign against the Italians before being shipped to Greece.

He was captured near Piraeus when his unit was overwhelmed by German Paratroopers and dive bombers. Before capture, he was on the loose for about four days. He and others bribed a Greek fisherman to take them out in his boat to a British destroyer about a mile off the coast. Unfortunately the fisherman abandoned his boat when German planes approached.

Being Jewish, Danny buried his Identity Disc before being taken prisoner. A German officer told him that Behrman was a 'good German name'!

Danny spent most of his captivity in  Work Camp 1107/L at Donnersbach in the Austrian Tyrol, where the temperature one winter got down as low as -50 degrees.

Group picture in the mountains (Danny is seated at front left.)

He was a carpenter by trade and built a secret compartment under a bunk for a radio, and an escape route underneath one of the huts.

He was liberated by the Americans and got home via Italy in the bomb-bay of a bomber.

Danny died in 2000, aged 87.

(Details provided by his son, Stephen Behrman.)