At the end of August 1940 Erika Mann travelled via Lisbon to London. She accepted an offer from the British Minister of Information Duff Cooper to work on the BBC's German broadcasts as part of the broadcasting propaganda effort. Erika Mann worked for the BBC in London from September to October 1940, and from June to September 1941. She travelled in both cases via Lisbon.

The stopover in Lisbon in the summer of 1940 lasted nearly two weeks. During her stay from 23 August to 6 September 1940, Erika Mann encountered a city which was bursting at the seams. The stream of refugees in the Portuguese port city reached its first peak in these months. Together with her mother Katia, Hermann Kesten and the Emergency Rescue Committee, Erika Mann also endeavoured to obtain passage for her uncle Heinrich and her brother Golo Mann, who were stranded at that time in southern France.

In her report Waiting for the Lifeboat which she wrote in English in the same year but which was only published in 1991 for the first time in German, Erika Mann describes the oppressive, fearful atmosphere in the "Lisbon refugee camp" and tells of the lack of places to sleep, the crowded cafés and endless queues in front of the consulates and the aliens authority.

Further reading:
Mann, Erika: Blitze überm Ozean. Aufsätze, Reden, Reportagen. Hrsg. von Irmela von der Lühe und Uwe Naumann. Reinbek: Rowohlt Verlag 2000.