Susan Freeman had not been to the Isle of Man since she was born there in December 1940.

But last weekend a historic commemoration in which she has a personal stake finally drew her back.

Mrs Freeman's parents, Margarete and Ferdinand Kraus, Jewish refugees who left Vienna for London in 1938, were among the thousands of potential enemy aliens who were interned by Britain on the island in 1940.

From Friday to Sunday, a series of events took place to launch the second stage of an exhibition about women internees.

"I had always wanted to go back," Mrs Freeman said, but her trip came about "completely by accident" after her son, Richard, went to the Isle of Man on business and found out about the exhibition."

A first exhibition, "Friend or Foe?" , put on last year by a group of local volunteers at the Rushen Heritage Trust, looked at the first year of internment for the 3,000 women and 300 children brought there.

This month's new exhibition was opened by Baroness Henig, the daughter of Jewish internees. It looks at the years until the end of the war.

"It was fantastic," said Mrs Freeman. "They have done it beautifully. They have got so much information in their hands. The documentation I got was marvellous. I had never seen my mother's registration, from when she arrived on the island on May 30, 1940."

The title of the weekend's talks and musical events - "Festival of Wagner and Rushen Internment" - might have seemed incongruous since the 19th century composer Richard Wagner was a notorious antisemite.

But his granddaughter Friedelind Wagner was an avowed anti-Nazi who fled to Britain before 1939 and was briefly interned on the Isle of Man herself.

Hugh Davidson, a Rushen Heritage Trust board member, said most of the internees were either Jewish refugees fleeing persecution or had been well-established in Britain. Many were released within six to nine months.

"There has been a high level of interest in the exhibition," he said. The camp at Rushen in Port Erin was "unique in being for women and run largely by women".

Men were interned elsewhere, although later in 1941 a marriage section was set up.

"They took one room in a hotel and made it into a synagogue," he said.

Mrs Freeman believes the exhibition deserves a wider showing and hopes to move it to the Jewish Museum in London.