Classified as a degenerate by the Nazis, Walter Nessler worked underground. Having met an English dancer in Dresden, they married and came on a two week holiday to Britain - never intending to go back.
 "The pictures give a feeling of being a refugee. There are very few internees still alive and we only have written testimonies left," says Feather. The drawings were acquired by the Walker Art Gallery in 1999. Because they are so fragile they have received considerable conservation work in the Conservation Centre at National Museums Liverpool. She adds: "After Dachinger's death eight years ago, his pictures from the camp had lain in his attic and the family came across them as they cleared the property. This is one of the most unusual exhibitions that I have been involved with. "There was very little research to go on, so writing the catalogue meant that I had to start from scratch. It was very rewarding to turn up new material. "The Walker does have some works by a Liverpool-born merchant seaman, Thomas Burke, but he was a POW in Germany from 1940. These works by Dachinger and Nessler are a different angle entirely. "They are extremely unusual and there is nothing like them in the Imperial War Museum in London. The only comparable pictures are in the Isle of Man. "The drawings show the kind of people like the middle class intellectuals who were in the camp, the guards and also nudes of women, some verging on the abstract. They're generally bleak and show the lack of freedom the internees suffered. In particular, Nessler's work portrays the endless walking around and anonymous shuffling figures." Typically, the issue of interning aliens (people, who, after all, were escaping Britain's enemy) came to a head with a horrendous event. Many of the younger internees were shipped out to Australia and Canada. One of the deportation ships was torpedoed with great loss of life. There was a huge public outcry and from July 1940, which Churchill (who declared: "Collar the lot") retreated from this policy and started releasing internees. By September 1941, the Huyton camp had become an Army base. "Nobody could predict the outcome of the war and everybody was highly anxious and deeply suspicious of those who seemed in any way differ-ent. The press fuelled this panic over aliens and refugees," says Feather. The internees and their families didn't know where they were going and received little or no news in the camps. Nessler described arriving at Liverpool Lime Street station and people had been told they were Nazis. By-standers shouted and spat at them. There was a real prejudice about refugees. "Once in the camps, the internees had no idea what would become of them. There was an awful feeling that if the Nazis invaded, the British had done a wonderful job of rounding up all those who had eluded capture while in Germany," adds Feather. "Both men went on to be quite successful, but what's so impressive is that they retained this wonderful creative drive, even in a situation of extreme adversity." | 
