 In January 1939, when Hitler's military was preparing the invasion of Czechoslovakia, thirteen-year-old Hugo escaped with his mother and his older brother Wilfred on a harrowing train ride that traversed Nazi Germany to France.He recalled that during a midnight stop at the Stuttgart station, Gestapo officers combed the train, removing ten passengers; the Iltises survived because the boys pretended to be asleep while their mother bluffed that she was the wife of a French diplomat.In Cherbourg, they were joined by Hugo Iltis and boarded the passenger ship RMS Aquitania for the Atlantic crossing.