When Terry Bohle Montague was sitting in her high school biology class, she heard one of her classmates say that his father had been a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Nazi Germany.
Ten years later, Bohle Montague reached out to her former classmate’s father, Norm Seibold, to interview him for an article she was writing.
“I was thinking about an 800-word article, maybe 1200. After sitting there for two hours and recording his story, I’m thinking, this is going to be a lot more work than a 1200-word article,” she said.
This interview led Bohle Montague to interview several other returned missionaries. After five years of interviews, she would publish a book about their experiences escaping Germany.
Bohle Montague is the author of “Mine Angels Round About”.
She said contacting the former missionaries for interviews was a challenge. Some of them did not want to talk. Some of them were difficult to locate.
The author eventually found a list, however, of all the missionaries who had been serving in Germany at that time, tucked away in the mission office basement. She said the list was her “biggest help” when finding the former missionaries.
“In the middle of all that, somebody in that mission office took a list of the missionaries’ names and their hometowns and put them in a folder,” she said.
Years later, movie director T.C. Christensen called Bohle Montague with the idea to make a movie about the story, which would later turn into the film “Escape from Germany”.
“I get a phone call and he says, ‘This is T.C. Christensen. Do you know who I am?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ That’s how it began,” she said.
Bohle Montague had a critical role in the production of the film, reviewing the first drafts of the movie’s script.
She also contacted the original missionaries and their descendants, some of whom were able to come on set and act as extras in the film.
When “Escape from Germany” came to theatres, Bohle Montague said there was an overwhelmingly positive public response. She recalled the reactions of those former missionaries whose experiences the movie was based on.
“They would watch the movie and they did not move,” she said. “It looked like a whole bunch of mannequins sitting there. They didn’t move until the end, and then it was like jumping up and applauding and some of them were crying.”
People continue to share their stories with Bohle Montague, giving her new information for “Mine Angels Round About”. She has published three editions of the book so far.
To learn more about the author or to purchase her book, visit her website.