 To avoid persecution in the largely non-Jewish Köslin, his family placed him in the Jewish Orphanage Berlin-Pankow in Berlin in 1936.In 1938, at age 13, to escape the rising anti-Semitism of the Sturmabteilung (Storm Troopers) and teachers, Brent was sent to England on the first of the Kindertransports and became a pupil at Anna Essinger's Bunce Court School.His parents and older sister stayed behind in Germany.