Isabel Webber

Isabel Webber was born Isabella Schneider in 1930 in Düsseldorf. She was the daughter of Polish-Jewish parents, Abraham and Cecilia née Mannheim, who had settled in Germany before the rise of Nazism. Her father left for Spain in 1933 and Isabel never saw him again. She was raised by her mother alongside a younger brother Dieter in modest circumstances, sharing a small flat with another family. Although Isabel was very young, she recalls a sense of fear and tension, as well as early encounters with antisemitism, including abuse directed at her mother by neighbours.

Isabel attended a Jewish school in Düsseldorf and remembered Nazi marches and growing hostility towards Jews. In October 1938, following the Nazi expulsion of Polish Jews (the Polenaktion), Isabel, her mother, and her brother were forcibly removed from their home and deported to the border town of Zbąszyń in Poland. She described the experience as traumatic: being woken in the night, ordered to wear layers of clothing, detained, and transported under guard in overcrowded conditions. At only eight years old, she found herself living on a mattress in a makeshift reception centre.

After arrival in Zbąszyń, Isabel was taken in by Orthodox relatives, Zyl and Herta Grunberg, while her mother and brother remained elsewhere in difficult circumstances. This separation deeply affected her. She remained in Poland for several months and was later transferred to a transit facility in Otwock, where she became seriously ill and was isolated in hospital. During this time, she received what would be her last letter from her mother.

In August 1939, Isabel was among a group of children permitted to leave Poland for Britain. She travelled from Gdynia aboard the ship Warszawa, arriving in Harwich on 29 August 1939, just days before the outbreak of war. She did not speak English and had no relative to receive her. Initially placed with a Jewish family in London, she was soon evacuated with other refugee children to rural England.

Isabel was billeted in Devon, first in Sheldon and later in Talaton, where she lived with a foster family who treated her with kindness and stability. For the first time since leaving Germany, she experienced a sense of belonging and security, becoming integrated into village life and school. Despite efforts by Jewish authorities later in the war to relocate her again, Isabel resisted further displacement, valuing the home she had finally found.

Throughout her life, Isabel remained haunted by the fate of her mother and brother, who did not survive the Holocaust. Despite Red Cross inquiries and later visits to Poland, she never discovered their exact fate.

As her foster parents could not afford to pay for Isabel’s further education, she worked in various jobs. At a young age she met her husband at a dance and married soon afterwards. They settled in Plymouth and had three children. Isabel had four half-siblings from her father’s first marriage who had emigrated to Israel before the war and who later reconnected with Isabel.

Isabel is mentioned in the historical drama by Tom Samson "Talaton A War-Time Refuge" telling the stories of six Kindertransport children who lived in the East Devon village of Talaton during the Second World War.

Key words: Düsseldorf. Schneider. Mannheim. Polenaktion. Zbąszyń. Otwock. SS Warszawa. Kindertransport. Sheldon. Talaton. Tom Samson "Talaton A War-Time Refuge" telling