Letters that reveal how a secret network saved Jews

For decades, more than a hundred 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.

The 73-year-old knew she was taking in a trove of heirlooms, as the family had dragged the “mountains of letters” across their many homes in regional Victoria over the years. But the size of the task meant she continually put off sorting through them

The retired academic and teacher was aware that her late