The English teacher and the Nazis: trove of letters in Melbourne reveals network that saved Jews

Frances and Jan Newell painstakingly uncovered their mother's role in facilitating the escape of Jews and political dissidents from Berlin to Britain

For decades, more than 100 mouse-nibbled fruit boxes, tea chests and old leather suitcases sat untouched in a 3-metre pile in the backyard shed of Frances Newell's home in suburban Melbourne.

They were stuffed with thousands of letters - some in German, others in English - that she had kept when her father moved out of their family home in Castlemaine in the 1990s.