​​Esther was initially transported to Compiègne near Paris and then to Biberach in Germany. Her internment camp diaries confirm that she and the other British Jews deported from Jersey, apart from John Max Finkelstein, were treated the same as other non-Jewish Channel Islands deportees. One diary entry that Esther wrote, at considerable risk to herself, of her reversion to Judaism:

​‘I have completely finished with the Christian religion; the children must leave Sunday school at the end of the Xmas holidays. My wish is that David will grow up with the real Faith, the religion that does help. I wish I had been brought up properly to know everything about [it] and had learnt Hebrew when I had the chance. Well time will tell. I feel very bitter now towards humanity…’

Remarkably, Esther successfully appealed against her deportation and was repatriated to Jersey on 25 April 1944. Once back in Jersey and still under German occupation, Esther made a complaint to the Bailiff and informed the Chief Registration Office, Clifford Orange, that she:

‘was Catholic on my mother’s side…I went to register at the Aliens Office at the time an order was brought out concerning Jews as I am of Jewish origin on my Grandfather’s side only, I thought at the time it concerned me but if all the facts concerning myself had been fully explained to the German authorities, there would have been no question of my being sent away’.

Esther demanded to know ‘why these facts have been suppressed and wish the matter gone into’. Despite Clifford’s response that registration was the sole responsibility of the individual, she was not the only Jewish resident who recalled not being offered any choice in the matter. Hedwig Bercu felt the same. By chance, after Liberation, Clifford met Hedwig in St Helier, apologising for his actions stating ‘I had to follow German orders’.​