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On VE Day, Betty was a 14-year-old schoolgirl living in Melton Mowbray. Across the Atlantic, Hans was a 20-year-old German prisoner of war at a camp in Tennessee, in the USA.

Fast forward two years, and they met in England where now Hans was a prisoner of war working on an English farm. They fell in love even though Betty’s mother hated the Germans after losing both of her brothers in the war.

Hans was no ordinary German; he had been in The SS and was one of Hitlers bodyguards!

Despite this, they married and had four children…but Betty was jeered at in the street, spat at and called a ‘Nazi lover’.

Despite the odds, they have been happily married for 66 years.

Image: Betty and Han