3. Arrival in Great Britain

All I wanted to be was an English schoolgirl. I had no regrets, I didn’t feel homesick, and I didn’t want to speak German. All I wanted to be was an English schoolgirl, in my school uniform, riding my bicycle.

But the behaviours we’d [the child survivors at Bulldogs Bank and Weir Courtney] learned in the camp we still continued. So that was quite interesting. You know, like the touching: we’d clearly seen dead bodies. When we were asleep we weren’t sure, so we checked each other at night just to- just to make sure. Other things. Getting used to having adults around. All we knew adults did was to bring food

So my parents and Aulchen [the nanny] had taken us, and then we boarded the train. And you know this was, as I said Bahnhof Friedrichstraße, but everybody, all the parents or anybody who had accompanied children, rushed off to take the S-Bahn zum Bahnhof Zoo, because the train would come through Bahnhof Zoo - you know from Friedrichstraße to Bahnhof Zoo - to wave once more. Dreadful, huh? Dreadful!

I remember the evacuation of course. And I remember it was very pretty, the countryside. It was just- We were all taught in a big room, so I was one of the youngest children there. And all the children somehow, you know we were right up to 14, 15 - we were all taught together. Since we were in the country we probably ate, ate quite well. I think that what I remember most about school is missing my parents. And how my parents of course, as enemy aliens, and with the difficulty of transport, couldn't visit. But I imagine all the children in the school were in the same boat as me because their parents were also- they were probably abroad and couldn't get back. So I saw my parents when- they had to get permission from the aliens department to go without an area twenty miles - fifteen twenty miles out of Edinburgh.

People need to remember, The Kindertransport is something quite unique. It didn’t happen before. There were Spanish, 3,000, but they went back most of them. But…remember what the British- They saved nearly 10,000 children. They, in my view, yeah? Contributed an enormous amount to making sure that some of the children got out. On the other hand, you’ve always got to remember that the children contributed back.

We were never separated. This, I think- People have said, many times to ask me about, “You know, you are refugees…” But my answer’s always been, you know, if you were on your own, and if you came as a child, then all sorts of things happen. You’ve lost your parents or… your siblings. You’re alone in a strange environment. Your language… isn’t what the one you’re used to. And many problems arise. But I think, the status and the sanity of those who came with parents and children, it’s a different story.

I remember as we left Prague with my mother’s parents on the platform, weeping. And …then my, Edith, my cousin, and my mother went out into the corridor …to weep. And then there was the great anxiety, of going across Germany. And the amazing relief which I as a small boy even, felt, as we entered Belgium. And… came to Ostend. And we were clear of the Germans. And of course all across Germany there were these guys clomping in with jackboots and …pistol holsters, looking at our papers. And how my parents, who had greater appreciation than me of the situation, must have been anxious is you know, mind boggling.

After my parents died, again I went through my mother’s papers. And I found that when she came, she was looking for work, writing to schools for…for work as a, as a modern language teacher. And I found one letter which read roughly, “You seem admirably qualified for this post. But if it should be the case that you’re of the Hebraic persuasion, that would disqualify.

We were never separated. This, I think- People have said, many times to ask me about, “You know, you are refugees…” But my answer’s always been, you know, if you were on your own, and if you came as a child, then all sorts of things happen. You’ve lost your parents or… your siblings. You’re alone in a strange environment. Your language… isn’t what the one you’re used to. And many problems arise. But I think, the status and the sanity of those who came with parents and children, it’s a different story.

Terrible, ja. My poor mother, I don’t know, it must have killed her. I don’t know how they lived. I remember them seeing me off, seeing my brother off first. And then me.I forget [which station Ruth left from]. I've forgotten. And of course she didn’t hardly speak, because of all the Nazis were on the platform. And then… it wasn’t until we came to the… Holland border, you know the border where Germany finished and Holland started. And it was tulip time; I remember that when I came. But my brother had been; he’d been earlier [her brother had been on an earlier Kindertransport]. And I remember the tulip fields after we could breathe, you know, after we left Germany.

It was terrible, cause especially when we had to cross on the boat, you know, the channel. And all those kids crying, those little ones, little - younger ones, three years, five years old. They were crying, and I remember the children crying. And…

I remember that [leaving with the Kindertransport from Westbahnhof], and I remember, that was the last glimpse I got of my uncle- The family that was shot in Yugoslavia. Because they all came to the station. And I still- There were so many people milling around, you couldn’t find anybody. But when I looked out of the window when the train started moving, I saw them. And we waved, and that was the last I ever saw of them. Ja. I was sad, really.

We had meetings with the YCL, you know, the ‘Young Communist League’. And the rambles we went on with the ‘Young Communist League’. And so much so I became so... enthusiastic... that I had a very good job in the early 40s. I worked in a lovely, very elegant shop in Piccadilly. And I earned a lot of money. And suddenly the... the ‘Young Austria’ authorities said, “Everybody has to work in munitions work.” You know, ‘nobody can work privately’. And my mother begged me not to leave, but I did. And I worked in the munitions factory, where I earned next to nothing. The war effort.

Well we left Hachestraße [ in Essen] at - at dawn. Light was just breaking. And I remember that I had a particular blanket, which I see in retrospect was a comforter. Comforter blanket. The station was immediately opposite our flat, so we had a very, very short walk. The train journey is vague, but I remember …coming over on the ferry. And I was one of the few people who was not sick. The sea was rough and I saw everyone else being sick and I couldn’t understand why.

No I didn’t [feel lonely] cause I had my lovely [foster] mum and dad. I was bullied of course, if you call it bullying, when I first came and went to school because... I was German. Because I was Jewish meant nothing to the children, but remember, that these children’s fathers were fighting the Germans. So... I wasn’t too happy at the first school. So when I came to Kidderminster, I went under my [foster] mum and dad’s name. Not my German name. But all the children at the high school know me because I had a dark brown uniform; their uniform was navy blue. And I had a German, possibly a - a Yorkshire accent. So people I know in high school would say, “You did sort of stick out like a sore thumb.” [laughs] I was very happy at the high school. Very happy. I you know, I met lots of good friends.

The good Lowestoft people, the first breakfast we had there [arriving in England with the Kindertransport], gave us kippers. And not just good Lowestoft kippers, not boiled kippers, but roasted kippers.We thought this was an attempt to poison us.

There was a little girl [on the Kindertransport] who was in absolutely frantic, because she'd lost a case of- it was clear [key] to her suitcase. I mean, whether she ever found it or not, remains one of the unanswered questions in my life. She was in a terrible state about that, and my sister was very good to her.

…At the end of 1937… one could see what was going on and my father was vouched for by Sir Henry Dale, a very eminent British Scientist. …he came to England and had to take his medical exams again. 1938 and my father had passed all his exams, he had a paid research job at Leicester University College, and the Principal was the father of Richard and David Attenborough… I remember going there for tea…

As we know, whatever criticism one might make of the attitudes of the British government, there was no doubt that the private and voluntary efforts to aid refugees in Britain were second to none. And, in the end, through the good offices of a clergyman’s family in Hertfordshire, we were able to come out in February 1939.

My first day in Manchester? Do you really want me to tell you? They were very nice people, but the first day we were having tea and I cut up the lettuce. I was told you don't eat lettuce cut up. It was London lettuce and you eat it with your hands. So I got tears in my eyes. That was my first day. I don’t want to .. I should imagine it isn't easy taking on another child when you have got three, but they saved my life. They were very good people, but maybe it was home-sickness? I don't know.

Well, I understood I was going to school. My mother always said, “If you do well in your chemistry, you will be able to work for Solly.” (My cousin was an analytical chemist - he had a laboratory in town). But I never went to school. Whatever I learned, I learned. Later on I went to live with an aunt. Then the Refugee Committee put me into a factory to learn to be a machinist. I was not very keen on that so I learned shorthand and typing at night... I worked in offices later on.

Well I only know from the- the... person I came with. Gerti was her name. She said- she told me that I held her hand all the way, on the journey [with the Kindertransport from Vienna]. And I remember stopping. It must have been at the border. And people came, and they gave a- a sweet drink. And then we carried on. And when we got to Liverpool Street, my uncle- my- an older brother of my father's, he- he was waiting at Liverpool Street for us. And we spent the night in London. ... And then the following morning, my uncle took Gerti and me to Hinckley. ... Well she said I just clung to her the whole time, and that even when they wanted me to give me a bath and put it to bed, you know, I still wanted her to come with me. But then you know we were separated.

I was evacuated with the Westminster Jewish Faith School, we were sent to Wiltshire. My headmaster was Mr Silverstone. It was a large school so we were divided, I think, into three villages, and every, he was a very kind man, understanding man, but he had an impossible situation, because he had English Jewish children and continental Jewish children and the village people didn’t accept us very well. As far as they were concerned we were Germans, or we were Austrians, so we were the enemy, and I think there were 16 of us from Austria and Germany and we used to get together and gabble away in German until the headmaster separated us and put us into English speaking families, and we soon learned English. We were going to a village school. I was there for two years.

They [the parents] tried not to show it [the struggle as a refugee] as far as we, we were concerned and so on. But it was a real struggle for them in a sense. But my mother showed her qualities in the sense because she could cope much more easily than my father. My father was a businessman, but she was an artist. And she made these- and she made these handbags. Brilliant things. She designed them… and… cut the cloth and, and so on. And then went out into the- into the fashion shops in, in, in Mayfair and in Regent Street and everywhere and showed them.

I remember throwing a tantrum at the station when we were setting off to go to England on the Kindertransport. And I connected that in my mind with being a very, very naughty girl and that's why I was sent away. And if only I could be good, my parents would have me back home. And I never succeeded in being good, because I could never understand what adults wanted of me. I was always getting into trouble, particularly in the first foster family.

Well, they’d sent us to a Quaker boarding school when we were so unhappy in the first placement. Martin said that he got- a doctor came to give us vaccinations. And Martin told the doctor he must look at his sister's back, because I had been beaten regularly with a leather strap, and my back was just welts. I remember having to sleep on my tummy. And I think that got out- reported. The doctor would have found out who our sponsor was, and then we were rescued.

But [at Dovercourt Camp] I was absolutely dumbfounded and disturbed, deeply disturbed by the fact that there was a huge amount of rivalry between the Berlin and the Viennese boys, less boys, the older ones. Older than I was. Berlin and Vienna have a long history of enmity that would appear. And this was carried forward among Jewish lads who just escaped from Nazi Germany. And I actually couldn’t believe it. And there were actually knife fights between them. It was absolutely astounding and distressing, and really unbelievable that children who were just being rescued should continue this rather stupid enmity that existed between the two cities.

The first school, I was with the nuns. My parents didn’t want a girl to go in a rough school where the boys are, because my father had a lot of trouble there as well. Because we went past the cross and didn’t say prayers, didn’t bend down to it and they used to hit us. And the nun school was very nice, they looked after us. The only thing, we got in the wrong religion there. I wanted to be confirmed and said, ‘Can’t I have a white dress like they have a white dress?’ I was only little- five or six years old.

Mother must have just told us. I mean, never thinking that we wouldn’t see my mother again. I remember, sorting out what we could take. What can an eight-year-old carry? Just took a change of clothing and drawing books and pencils. I remember people coming to the house …And a lot of talking going on and they must have been the ones that arranged it all. I think the majority of Dr Schonfeld’s children went into Jewish homes. A lot of the Kindertransport children didn’t. They were only too pleased to find homes for them.

We went to Lyon’s Corner House and had lunch, which was absolutely fantastic because we hadn’t, of course, been in a restaurant or anything like that in Germany for years.

I had the domestic permit. We had to clean the rooms every day - although there was nobody in them. I also had to clear the grates, then the butler came after and laid the fire. The butler and the cook were the most important people. We were supposed to be in the servants’ hall with the others. So if I sat in the room, I had either the choice of sitting there in the cold or joining the others in the servants’ room.

My mother was in charge. She was very capable, even though she was so young. Any money that we had, you had to leave behind. So she decided that we were going to fly to England and spend the money on an expensive air ticket. It was February the 4th, I vaguely remember this, 1939. We went to Berlin by train and from Berlin to Amsterdam, from Amsterdam to Croydon. And then we went straight to Manchester.

On the S.S. Washington we had orange juice. Oh that was delicious. Never had it before. In Germany it was guns before butter; you just couldn’t get that. I remember the orange juice; it was beautiful.

Everybody had to have some kind of either job or somebody who could vouch for them in England. So, in August 1939 we had permission to go to America, see? England was only a transit. But being so close to the war, I’m not so sure we weren’t the last boat out- we landed up at Harwich. And then war broke out, so that was the end of that. We couldn’t go to America.

King George the Sixth I think it was called. It was a coal-carrying ship. That is all it had on board… and all the sailors smelt of tea, which was a new smell to us, tea … They were very, very nice to us, but of course they had no facilities for refugees.

I was lying in bed trying to think which ways could I escape? Going on a train, underneath the train, on top of the train, in the toilet maybe? I decided that I’m going to go across and find my way into Belgium. When I mentioned this to my parents, they were aghast, ‘No you can’t do that. What made you think of doing this?’ I explained that though 14, I looked only like 12. ‘The Germans won’t do me any harm. They’ll probably let me through and then I’ll find my way.’

When I left on the Kindertransport train in Munich and my brother left a couple of months earlier, the feeling was: we’ll all be together again. We never thought we wouldn’t; that was inconceivable. I was then a little girl of 14 going on 10 by today’s standards. I went to Peru [at] 27. I had met my parents before, but I was able to spend two years with them and in a curious way, almost caught up with the childhood that I had missed out on.

I think without knowing anything, it lifted a weight off my shoulders when we arrived in England. I remember the feeling of joy as we drove down Market Street into Corporation Street. It was just like arriving in heaven, you know. I didn’t know enough about what was going on in Germany, but I did feel that something had been taken off my back, and that feeling has never left me. Even during the worst period in England, during the war. Somehow that feeling of having left Germany has been with me ever since.

I thought I would go to what is now Belsize Square [Synagogue], called the New Liberal at the time. To my utter amazement there was an awful lot of German in the service. The second day and that was all of German - that I couldn’t stand. Already on the boat I had decided to myself, ‘I am not speaking any German anymore.’

[Leaving on the Kindertransport:] Only one parent was allowed to come to the station. It was another little Nazi thing. We sat in the waiting room. Our names were called. Gestapo everywhere. And you just went. You were escorted to the train and you got onto the train. And then the train went off. That was it.

I loved my violin. But I wasn’t allowed to take it with me, and I was very sad about that. But what my mother did was to pack violin music in my suitcase, hoping when I got to England somebody would realise and give me a violin, which they did.

I had to take a job on Saturday afternoon. I saw an advertisement by a Cambridge professor for a gardener. I applied, and it turned out to be Professor Lauterpacht, a very famous international lawyer. I started gardening and he started talking to me and found out what my ambitions were. And he would tutor me for an hour and then insist on paying me for the gardening. So that was very good.

I’ve often been asked about the St. Louis. Not so much about what happened to the passengers, but the fact that the world could not take in 900-odd people and save them from what would have been certain death if they’d been sent back to Germany. It shows that the world did not care sufficiently to save us, and in those days there was no such thing as illegal immigrants. Goebbels wrote in the papers to say “nobody else wants them either. At least we’re building camps for them.” For Hitler it gave him carte blanche to do what he wanted to do, because he knew the world wouldn’t do anything about it.

I don’t know how it came about, but all I remember is that my parents told me, ‘You’re going to England’. And bags were packed, and one evening I found myself on a train for Amsterdam. As a boy I felt I was going on an adventure, a nice long rail journey, and I’d never travelled an awful lot. But I shall never forget my father’s face when the train pulled out.

When I first came to Manchester, my uncle said at fourteen years of age I wasn’t compelled to go to school. I would just have to educate myself and that is what I did. As soon as my English improved, I started reading some of the classics and so on, and I picked up English very quickly.

I found myself in a boarding house in Finsbury Park and a couple of people, older than I was took me to a cinema. My first visit to an English cinema was amazing. Half way between the two main programmes, the cinema organ came up from the floor and words appeared on the screen and people sang along with the cinema organ. I had never seen anything like this before and I thought I’d landed in a lunatic asylum. It was the strangest thing that I had seen.

I remember getting to England. And my first memory of England, it was Sunday, 3 September 1939, the day the war broke out. We arrived at Liverpool Street Station. And as the train slowed down and we were getting out of the train, the sirens went. When the sirens went, everybody started running; we had to go to a shelter. We went with the crowd, but there was also a Jewish Refugee Committee on the platform, and they went with us.

We didn’t know where my father was, we had no idea. My father came to England in June or July of 1939. When we arrived, we were put into a hostel, and the first thing my mother did was to go round the men’s hostels to see if anybody knew. She went with a photograph, if anybody had seen him, heard of him, knew of him, knew what had happened to him. ‘Cause I mean that’s what people did. And she knocked on this door, in this Highams [Lane] hostel. And my father opened it. And that was- That is quite remarkable, isn’t it? And that’s how they found each other.

And I had three suitcases and a pair of skis when I came to England. [laughs]...Well I’d had one skiing holiday with the school and this skis- this pair of skis had actually been given to me by somebody who no longer wanted them. But [laughs] it does seem rather ridiculous that there I came with- and in those days you could arrange for luggage to be sent… on my train. And so these three suitcases and my skis did arrive in London, much to my surprise.

And so in the course of two years I was with eight different families. Some were wonderful. Some had a Rolls Royce and a television in 1939. Amazing. And others were- dreadful. Where there was a spinster – no it couldn’t have been a spinster. She was a lady who had lost her husband in the First World War and still had a swagger stick. He was a sergeant in the British Army in the First World War and… she beat me with that swagger stick if I didn’t do exactly as she said. So there were good times and not so good times. And I wrote to my mother once a week. …And that- she wrote to me once a week and that’s how we kept in touch. I saw her at Christmas basically as twice only in that time.

It was an opportunity to have a cheap maid. I'm quite sure of it. But how could you not understand, being a Jew? That you know, I mean I didn't go there- I told them what was happening in Vienna, what happened to us... that we lost everything, et cetera. So it wasn't that she was ignorant and didn't know. She just was not a very nice person.

[after arriving in London staying with distant relatives] I cried a lot. But fortunately there was this little baby, so I was able to push him around in a pram. And I think they were quite good to me. But of course they didn't speak German, so I had to learn to speak English quickly - and I did.

Well strange was of course the food and me being cook. I found it very strange because a lot of the food, of course, I didn’t even know. For instance, one of the daughters got married just as the war broke out, and the reception was at home, and I was asked to make veal and ham pie. Well the ham didn’t worry me, the veal didn’t worry me, but the pie bit worried me, because that’s a totally not continental thing, to serve meat and pastry. Pastry is jam or cheese, or God knows what, but certainly not meat. And it was an absolute disaster that I produced there, and somehow we survived it, I don’t know, the pastry, so called, was that hard, they needed a chain saw to cut it. However, it was OK.

I seem to- I have a...a- a picture - whether it's made up or not – of being with lots of children. This train- I think I had actually a teddy bear thing and my parents - my mother I remember, I think on the station. I don’t know how they let me get there or anything, but it mean- it may be an imaginary thing. I don't know. What you- I think what you think you remember is probably more important than what actually happened. So... And I don't remember anything of the journey or at the other end, coming in here.

It was called- it had two names. Chestnuts because of the- obviously the... trees. And also a misnomer if there ever was one: Shalom House, right? Which... it was anything but. And I was there for six years. There were other refugee children there- at the end probably about forty children altogether- something like that. We- we did most of the housework, cleaning, make beds and that before we went to school. Or also you know they, they used us pretty well for- for all their domestic needs. And it was- it was a very bad place and, and punishments and... and hitting. And was really- it was very bad.

It was the first time I saw television. The television was in the hall of that little hotel in Bloomsbury and all I could remember is it was a tiny screen, it must have been nine inches across, and it was standing in the hall and the pictures were blue and white. Not black and white but blue and white. I don’t know why. And it was flickering and I said to my father, I said, papa look, a film, a Kino, a cinema here in a room. And he said yes that’s a new invention and so on. This was 1938.

But all I remember is, sitting in a train, travelling northwards across Poland, with my parents, sitting on wooden train seats and the four of us almost frozen with fear. Sitting in that train, not speaking and just sitting there praying we'd get to the port of Gdynia, to get on that boat. As far as I know, I think it was the last time that boat actually left Gdynia, to put to sea, to go to England. And that was in middle of June ‘39.

So, quite suddenly, I was told I was going to be taken to London. Packed a little suitcase, was taken to the Hauptbahnhof, the main station in Berlin. And I remember my carers, an uncle and a grandparent, walking up and down the platform, saying to the people who were going on that train, “Fahren Sie nach London? Fahren Sie nach London? Fahren Sie nach London?” And in the end, they found a couple who not only were travelling to London, but were willing to take me with them. And so I said to my family, on the platform of the Hauptbahnhof, and of course, I never saw them again

They [the people he was travelling with from Berlin to London ] were photographers. And on the frontier with Holland, the Germans instituted a thing called “Eine Stichprobe”. It was a [random] sample- search of people who they thought might be smuggling, who were taken off the train. The train departed without us, so I - because I was in their care - was held back on the frontier while they went through a twenty-four hour search procedure. So I actually got onto the train on the following day. But being held back by the Nazis was, even for an eight-year-old, pretty scary.

I remember I had Erika, my doll. I remember we went on a boat. We must have had a cabin, because I remember a table, and you lifted the table up and it was a wash stand. I thought that was absolute magic. When I say I remember, I now remember remembering it but I haven't been told. These are not things I've been told. This I remember. I remember we arrived in a London station. I don't know which station it was. My uncle Alfons met us. And that's all I remember of the journey.

Caerau. It's a little mining village in Glamorgan. Very small, very friendly. We were all put in a local hall. They gave us orange juice and then people chose. “I'll have that child”, “I'll have that child”. And the family that took me, tell me- I was the last one chosen, because they thought I was mentally deficient. Because I didn't speak English. And I was really lucky. I mean, really lovely family.

I get the impression, in retrospect, that it was really presented as a temporary measure. It wasn't a- going to be a big deal. I would go- we’d go to London, and, as I say, a temporary measure. To the extent that I didn't bring any photographs with me. Possibly in order to- not to underline the fact that this could take a long time. I didn’t learn any English and once I arrived with absolutely no knowledge of English. There was no preparation and I- the only way I can think, only reason for that, I think, could have been that - I was not to be alarmed. A slight miscalculation.

And I sat there just minding my own business for most of the journey, and… was terrified. As we stopped at the border, at [Bad] Bentheim, as the train- the border police came on board - came through checking, mainly checking- checking luggage. I mean, there wasn’t much in the way of paperwork, because after all we were on a group visa. But a number of things got confiscated, including my stamp collection. I didn't have an export licence for it, so I couldn’t argue.

I was trying to get Claire over. And I thought she would have made a wonderful domestic servant. And I tried, I pleaded with the people you know to find a sponsor for her. To find somebody who would employ here. And I assured her that she would be a treasure, unlike me. [half-laughs] And she did find somebody. But the Home Office wouldn’t have her because she was two years too old. She was fifty-seven, and they said the age limit was fifty-five. But although I know people who were older and got over. My aunt was older, and she got over, because the Quakers got her over. I suppose it depended on the sort of clout you have. And, and I couldn’t get- And I never got over that, you know, that I... I couldn’t save her.

The Moncrieffs were unbelievably good. With a tact that really needs remembering. The first day we came and you feel like the last dirt on earth. You have no money; your language is very bad; and you have nobody. You have no doctor; you have no uncle; you have no aunt; you have nobody, in a strange city, in Edinburgh had no relatives .. and what did they do? She lays the breakfast table for me, my husband and Hannah, who was nine months old, in the lounge, and she lays a table for herself, her husband and the boy in the kitchen. Wonderful! You know, makes you feel like a Mensch again. Wonderful! So they were very, very good to us. And I mean I did the housework for them.

Opposite where Marks and Spencer is, where the Arndale Centre is, there used to be a refugee committee office, and we used to go every week and collect our half a crown pocket money. And every week we were told how lucky we were to get this half a crown pocket money. And, I used to bring my friend, and we would say, this much we spend on pictures, this we spend on that, we used to go every week, every week we used to go to the pictures, and one evening to the theatre. And I remember once we had, a shilling left of something, and we passed a fruit shop, and they had a pineapple, and it was unheard of, and we said, “Should we buy this pineapple or should we go to the pictures?” And in the end we went to the pictures. That was our pocket money until we started working.

I will tell you what I thought of Manchester. When I lived in Broom Lane I used to walk down Bury New Road, that far down there used to be the Assize Court, where the prison is now, and there were all Jewish shops, and every Jewish shop used to have a name in, and I used to walk up and down and I used to read the names: Goldberg, Lehman, Jacobs, Cohen, and that was my idea of freedom, because in Germany, people still had businesses and they used to take the names off. And then of course the Jewish businesses were closed. And here were Jews, displaying their names, so openly, this is absolute freedom. I wouldn’t like to tell you how many times I walked up and down Bury New Road just to read the names. Strange isn’t it how people are affected differently, yes, freedom, absolute freedom, you can display your name and you don’t have to look over your shoulder, you don’t have to be afraid, what a wonderful feeling.

All I know is that I came with plaits and the next day my cousin said to me, “You don’t have that in England.” And he cut them off. That was my first impression of England.

On the train through Germany there was another girl who came from, Leipzig I think, I don’t know, who was a furrier’s daughter, she was older than I was, and she had a fur coat with her, and when we got to Germany they took a knife and they cut through it, and she was quite stern faced about it, and when we were on our own again I said, “Are you not upset about this”.
And she said, “It can be mended quite easily.” That was her capital if you see what I mean, she could sell that.

I had a cousin in London, who was no use at all, very well to do, not intelligent, very snobbish, and much older than I was, ten years older, which is a big difference, and I went and I had dinner with him and he was very unhelpful, and he said to me, “Well, you know, you have to realise that you’re not a little princess any more”, which I never was, and you will just have to do what people want you to do. So I said, “Thank you very much”, and you know … and I ate my last bite and I said, “Goodbye Fritz”, which he didn’t like, he liked to call himself Fred and that was that

My sister and I, we vowed to ourselves if, when the time comes, and we are lucky, we were to meet our parents again, we wouldn’t tell them how unhappy we were here, and we’d never write them that we were unhappy here. They didn’t give us… they didn’t feed us properly either, didn’t clothe us and didn’t feed us. We had no cardigan, my hands and my sister’s hands were chapped up to here, we had chill blains, and we didn’t have any winter clothing, and I don’t remember getting any shoes or stockings or anything, but we wore what we had.

I was on the train and I saw my father crying. Of course that made me cry and my mother said "Perhaps she doesn't want to go." And I said, "Yes, I do want to go." I remember saying that but not in English of course and the next thing we were gone. It was a very quick goodbye. Nobody thought that we would never seem them again. I thought it would be a matter of six or seven months and we would be together again.

I was so surrounded by everything new. I was in a different world and all I did was write, write, write to tell them everything. I used to write sixteen or seventeen letters in a week. All my family I used to write to, friends and family. That is all I did in the evenings - just write letters.

I stayed the night in London. Again, my auntie's cousin was in London who called for me at the station. She took me to her home and let me sleep the night there. Took me the next day to what I presume was Euston and put me on the train for Piccadilly. All I had was Auntie Lena's address on a piece of paper. I got on the train and I got to Piccadilly. I knew there would be nobody waiting for me. I took a taxi. I showed the taxi driver this address and I got there.

We were all put into hotels round Bloomsbury Square and we spent some time in the hotel and then they had to decide what to do with us subsequently, because as you know, there was no social security in those days, and you weren’t allowed to do any work except cleaning, and so one of the girls on the boat and I were sent to a Jewish convalescent home in Broadstairs to do the cleaning there. I was fifteen then.

When I was sent to that Jewish convalescent home in Broadstairs, I must say it was not the hard work that made us unhappy, but the fact that we got so little to eat. The matron wasn’t very kind to us and we were always hungry and then we walked along the beach in Broadstairs and we met Czech soldiers, Jewish Czech soldiers, that had come from Czechoslovakia and they took us to their canteen and the cook fed us, so that was quite good.

It was a doctor’s house with 23 rooms, including the surgeries. That’s what I had to do. That’s what I had to do. And, after seven weeks, my hands were shaking, then it was really-, I couldn’t do that. It was such hard work. It was from 8 o’clock in the morning to 11 o’clock at night, with one hour lunch-time and nothing else, so it was very, very hard going. And, I’m sorry to say, I don’t know if I should say it, I’m sorry to say, my brother phoned my employer to say that it’s such hard, long hours and so on, and she said: ‘Well, if it’s too much for her, I send her back to Hitler.’ True. And I left. I had to leave. My next job was as a nanny with a little child. And there we were friends, they were so kind, they were really friends to me and to my brother, he came to visit, and they helped me to bring my parents over.

I used to cry a lot at night, I used to go to the room and just cry, because they didn’t know, I wanted to keep Shabbat and they didn’t know what that was all about, and then to ease the pain they thought they would buy me a pair of roller skates. I used to live on those roller skates, I used to go to school on them, come home on them, but of course that couldn’t go on, that wasn’t a life. Eventually I pleaded with … and I went back to Davidson.

I was very homesick for a while. But I soon got under the way of the school. I noticed the huge difference between the English schoolchildren and German school children. The English school children were all very kind. They’d been told who we were - there were about 3 children who arrived in the school, and they helped us all they could. Whereas in Germany you would have expected, if you were different in any way, you would have been bothered or discriminated against. In the English school it was the opposite; you were helped.

The train eased itself over to the Dutch Border where the Dutch came in, and the cry for joy that arose from everybody there, such a sense of release, was spontaneous, overwhelming, I will never forget it, I mean … that was.

Had we known that we were, when you lived in a dictatorship like Germany, we grow up there, things become normal, you know you took it for granted that you mustn’t do this, and mustn’t do that. The minute the shackles come off, when you feel released, it was fantastic, I mean at the age of fifteen and a half I was certainly conscious of it, and most of the people that were in our group were about the same age.

The whole upper class English way of living was strange. Tea with milk. Shrimps. He was a Colonel. My mother used to roast 1 piece of meat & they would eat it the whole week. Very strange, not very homely. Not… not nice.

The journey should take 36 hours by train. It took us 4 days. We got to Cologne & the Germans caused us some problems. We were turfed off the train. It’s midnight, pitch dark, I remember Cologne as an absolutely empty station, just us sitting around not knowing what to do. We found a train the following morning & went to Holland. This time we were in a bigger train, about 200 refugees. Once again we were thrown off with quite a number of these other people, but by some miracle we got onto another train & managed to get through to Flushing. A funny recollection: in those days Dutch engines had a very unique feature, highly polished brass sort of round turrets on their engines. I can still see these polished dome things sitting on the engine. Anyway, we got to Flushing and then we went across to Harwich. We arrived at Liverpool Street Station. It’s always midnight, every time we arrive it’s midnight, I don’t know why. They threw the luggage out from the luggage van. My aunt had a huge duffel bag for the family shoes & this thing ripped & there on the platform were all the shoes. That’s my arrival at Liverpool Street Station.

It was a horror. I mean, you can imagine. All of a sudden I'm with an elderly couple who don't know a single word of German. I don't know a single word of English. I'm six years old and I don't know what's happening to me. And… they- I think they thought they would have to return me somewhere, because I just could not stop crying. And eventually they put me to bed and… …I eventually went to sleep. I distinctly remember the next morning… By then I’d obviously stopped crying. And I don’t know whether there was some sort of innate… response in me to all this that was happening, and I realised that there was nothing I could do about anything. And crying wasn't going to get me anywhere. And… I think this is a philosophy I've now had for the rest of my life, that bad things happen and getting oneself into an absolute tizz… doesn’t make it any better. It just makes it worse.

My mother took me to Woburn House and said: "my daughter is very clever with her hands." What was offered was a position in a big laundry. I can still see my mother: "What, my daughter a washerwoman? Out of the question."

We got a connection to a domestic science training college for teachers. It was called National Societies; it was in a Protestant church. It was very nice & I was very happy. Everything was new to me. You put in your hand in the letterbox to fetch the key to get into the house. We only had one bath a week. And the English system: in your bed the upper sheet became the lower sheet and you had a clean sheet once a week.

[It was] wonderful, wonderful. The Lyons Corner House made a great impression on me. No, I was free, you know, the feeling of freedom. I stayed with family friends. It was a sort of a different – I could feel it was a different atmosphere.

I remember throwing a tantrum at the station when we were setting off to go to England on the Kindertransport. I recognised that we weren't at the zoo station & I wanted to go to the zoo. I didn’t want to go to England. I connected that in my mind with being a very very naughty girl & that's why I was sent away. If only I could be good my parents would have me back home. I never succeeded in being good because I could never understand what adults wanted of me. I was always getting into trouble. Particularly the first foster family. The rector & his wife. He wanted to rescue children but I don't think he consulted his wife. She clearly didn't want to have to look after refugee children, which is difficult because they're not sweet & nice. They're homesick and bewildered. I don't think she knew anything about how to look after children. She was very cruel to us. But the Quakers who sponsored us, realised we were very unhappy & sent us to a lovely Quaker boarding school which really saved our sanity. A doctor came to give us vaccinations. I had been beaten regularly with a leather strap, my back was just welts. I remember having to sleep on my tummy. The doctor found out who our sponsor was & we were rescued. Being in England felt like being in a mad world.

It was an adventure. You did not realise the seriousness of it. You never thought you would never see your parents again. It’s sad. My father said 'you're going to go to a completely different way of life. You’re going to live behind a shop. You just have to get used to it.' My father couldn’t walk very well so he didn’t take me to the station. My mother took me. It was very sad. I never thought I would never see my father again. We met all the other children.

I had a little money bag with ID card & some money. Somebody had given me a new ring as a going-away present. I was frightened they would take it off me. You didn’t know what to expect. In London we were met with lovely ladies from some committees. They took us to a place in Whitechapel, a horrible place really but it was adequate, where we slept the night & they gave us herring. The next morning a quick tour of London & I came to Manchester. My uncle met me. I didn’t recognise him because he was wearing a bowler hat. Then he took me to the Needoffs. It was all very traumatic. Everybody came to have a look at me, all the relatives, at this little girl who had just come. That evening they said 'We are going to the pictures.' Well the pictures to me were pictures on the wall. So I got my little dictionary out for pictures on the wall & we went to the pictures. They were very good people. Everybody wanted to see me. They were very well known, very good charitable people that helped a lot of people.

My first day in Manchester? Do you really want me to tell you? They were very nice people but the first day we were having tea & I cut up the lettuce. I was told you don't eat lettuce cut up. It was London lettuce, you eat it with your hands. So I got tears in my eyes. That was my first day. I don’t want to… I should imagine it isn't easy taking on another child when you've got 3 but they saved my life. They were very good people, but maybe it was home-sickness? I don't know. What was strange was the fires—the black grate. In Germany we didn't have that. It was very strange. I was nearly 14. All of a sudden you were away from your parents. It was very difficult. I was very fortunate. It was a nice home. A kosher home. She was a wonderful cook. They thought they had a cheap help as well, you know. But they were good people. Maybe in those days—I wasn't 14 yet, 3 months before I was 14—maybe in those days people got girls to help them in the house at that age, you know. But it didn't matter. But I never went to school.

I think my life in particular—I’m not sure about all our lives—seems to have been punctuated by tragedies that turned into… good luck in a variety of ways.

I don’t remember much of the [Kindertransport] journey. I have this feeling I had a lack of feeling.I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t particularly pleased. Apparently I said to my sister 'I bet the people who receive us have a car.' They had a Rolls Bentley. I was very pleased with that. They lived in a house. The house is listed & quite famous. An architect called Walter Gropius came to England at that time & this was the only house that he designed for private residence–ever. A Gropius & Fry design: 66 Old Church Street. I slept there through the Blitz. There’s one vivid memory of the Blitz. I slept next to a curved bit of glass which was a house feature. I’d got up. There was a lot of noise. Looked out through another window at searchlights & then went to visit the lavatory, at which time a landmine exploded not very far away. It blew in that window, that curved window. I came back & there it was on my pillow. That was my only near-miss of the Blitz. We had a shelter in the bottom of the house which nobody ever used.

He learned how to hold a spade & make the coal fire. He swept the floors & did everything which he never did before. As my mother said 'Better to eat a piece of dry bread in England than a goose leg in Vienna'. There’s something to be said for this. But it doesn’t take long before you also want to eat a goose leg in England. Because you see other people doing it.

[Internment] Probably Holloway, you know, or Pentonville. One- one of those ladies’ prisons. They dumped us there. And then I- well, we went in to the dining hall. And you were- well, it was a long, long room, and long benches, and long tables. And I was sitting there. And I thought, well, I’m going to try and find my sister. So we had a whistle. So I whistled. And a whistle came back! It was absolutely the other end. And then I- we stood up. You know, whistled. And so once we knew we are there, we would meet. And we did.…Only that one night, because we went from there to Liverpool, and- then from Liverpool we went all to Douglas, Isle of Man. And from there we- they split us up again. That’s why we ended up in Port Erin.