Researching the horrors of Auschwitz set this photographer on a hunt for his lost family history. Philip Key reports

When his own mother died two years ago, the search began again. At that funeral, his Aunt Audrey told of the occasion she had gone to the grandmother's flat in Runcorn and having discovered she was out, let herself in and switched on the television while waiting.
 
"Then she heard the key turn in the lock and my grandmother came into the room and immediately started screaming. It was because she was watching a war film featuring Nazis."
 
The tale seemed to back up John Guy's belief that his grandmother was a German Jew.
 
He did discover that she arrived as a child in Britain around 1916 when her name was then Linderman.
 
He went to Poland and the Auschwitz death camp not only to take photographs but to make inquiries.
 
It was there that he met the museum's curator Teresa Swiebocka who had some advice. Why not go to Krakow ( the nearest town to the camp) and make inquiries, she suggested? Guy headed for the Jewish quarter and a well-known restaurant (used by film director Steven Spielberg and his crew while filming Schindler's List) and started questioning people.
 
It was there that he met a Scot who was not only Jewish but had a strange story to tell.
 
According to this man, in 1916 a ship arrived off the coast of Scotland ( no one knows exactly where) and deposited German, Polish and Slovakian Jews.
 
The rumour went around that the ship was actually going to the USA and they all got back on the ship. It left the Scottish coast, went north and then travelled around the British coast, finally arriving in Liverpool where they all got off again.
 
If true, it made sense of Guy's grandmother arriving in Liverpool at that time.