​​Unlike most deportees who had to be ready to leave the following morning, Michael, then a pupil at Victoria College, and his parents Emma and William, were given three days to prepare themselves for the unknown. 

​Travelling by boat to St. Malo, the Ginns’s transport group was then put onto a train for a three-day journey through France and Belgium, finally reaching Germany and the Baden-Württemberg town of Biberach. 

​Michael spent six weeks at the Biberach camp – which he says was his most difficult and most hungry period spent as a prisoner of war. The Jersey families left Biberach on 31 October for the nearby town of Wurzach, where they were interned in an 18th century castle. Despite a daunting start, Michael quickly grew accustomed to camp life, recalling that: 

​‘After six weeks of meagre portions of cabbage soup, it was quite a difference. We had a continuous supply of Red Cross parcels up to Christmas 1944. In the end, we were better off for food there than the people left behind in Jersey.’  

​‘I used to go out into the town with a couple of friends to get the milk for the children, call at the baker’s shop to get white bread for invalids and rolls for the children and any other errands that needed to be done. We soon learned that if you took a bar of soap to a farmer’s wife, she was ecstatic because Germany didn’t have proper soap – we used to get lots of things given to us.’ 

​In September 1944, Michael’s father who, by this time was seriously ill, was repatriated to England. In early 1945, it was agreed that the dependents of those already repatriated could join them, and Michael and his mother left the camp in March. They travelled by train, a harrowing journey that took them across Germany’s rapidly disintegrating infrastructure to Denmark, where they embarked on a ship to Sweden and then on to Liverpool. As a result, Michael did not see the liberation of the camp by French forces on 28 April 1945 and he also missed the liberation of Jersey – something he says gave him immense frustration.​