I first encountered Hazel Selzer in the archives. She could not have been more than four, but still figured prominently in a list that attributed her with a political opinion based on what was perceived to be her father’s political stance: anti-Nazi. Her brother was three. This document was the “nominal camp roll” for the parole camp at Satara – one of the several sites where the British Indian Government had interned foreigners with transnational connections in general and Axis links in particular, during the Second World War.
The Selzers – Hermann and Kate – were German-Speaking Jews holding Polish passports. Both were doctors by profession and had fled Europe on the cusp of Hitler’s rise to power. Their children – Hazel and Michael – were born in Lahore and were consequently designated subjects of the British Empire. With the German invasion and takeover of Poland, the senior Selzers became stateless people – deemed “enemy aliens” by the colonial state.
Hazel and her family were kept behind barbed wires for almost the entirety of the war and for a while even after the cessation of hostilities. This experience of growing up in subcontinental camps – of being on the receiving end of…
