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Ruth Sellers

RS: Both RS’s grandparents and parents, Karlsruhe, 1932

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Arrived in Britain:

Place of Birth:

Born:

14 December 1938

Karlsruhe

Mode of Arrival:

Kindertransport

Interview Summary:

Ruth Sellers (nee Hirsch) was born in Karlsruhe in 1922 to a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother who converted on marrying. Her childhood before 1933 was happy before she suffered increasing pressure of antisemitism. She was sent to Britain on the Kindertransport in December 1938. Her parents and younger sister remained in Germany. Her father and sister were deported to Theresienstadt towards the end of the war and survived. Ruth went to Cambridge, met her husband there and settled with him and their three sons near Chelmsford.

We used to go out weekends, my father had a car, and we had picnics, and it was a jolly happy life, until of course it got a bit more difficult, really when Hitler took over in 1933, it all went downhill. My father didn’t have a proper job, my grandfather’s factory, he had a flags factory, that was gone, and on the whole it was getting more and more difficult once Hitler came. I went to school, I was very good at sport, and I used to win things and, in the end, because I was Jewish, I couldn’t do it anymore and every year it was more and more difficult. And then, when I got to about 13, I think it was, I had to leave the school. I went to a Jewish school.