Growing up in Liverpool, Vivien Churney was sworn to secrecy about her mum's time in the French Resistance.
Though Sabine Specter had survived the war and had settled in Britain, she had been conditioned to stay silent about her time as a Jewish teenager working against the Nazis in occupied France during WWII. As a result, daughter Vivien could not tell anyone about her mum's remarkable story.
In the late 1930s, when she was a young girl, Sabine's family moved from Poland to the Belgian city of Antwerp. Belgium was invaded by the Nazis in May 1940 and Sabine spent her formative years in the occupied nation, before the family went into hiding in France.
