I had been looking for evidence and information about my family’s displacement after the war, and up to that point had mainly looked at old photographs, found pieces of writing, a family tree and stories my mother was telling me.

This map was an incredible discovery for me – the treasure I had been looking for. It was marked with the ‘escape route’ that my family had taken as refugees at the end of the war in 1945.

The family (my grandfather, grandmother, my mother then aged 7 and my uncle, aged 5) had lived in the town of Teplitz-Schoenau in Schlesien (Silesia) up to then. But when the war was lost for Germany, borders were being moved and the town was soon to become part of Czechoslovakia. All Germans (Reichsdeutsche) had to leave and millions of refugees were crossing the borders back into Germany – borders that for some time kept moving, as territories were being re-shuffled.

The family left on foot, taking only a few belongings packed in a cart and an old pushchair. They headed for Dresden, and along the way slept in barnyards, railway stations and took shelter wherever local people were kind enough to let them stay for the night. Eventually they ended up in Mindelheim, a small town in Bavaria, where they stayed in a refugee camp until being moved to more permanent housing.

In this animation piece I have traced the line along the route my family had taken 63 years earlier with a pencil, while taking a picture of this action every second. I wanted to record the action of me drawing the line, the movement of the pencil across the map, as I was literally tracing their footsteps.

I am particularly intrigued by the very nature of animation, and how a series of still images in succession can create movement.