大象传媒

I was born in Germany, but I was able to join a group of 60 children leaving for Palestine during 1934.
We waited for six months and eventually got permission, and finally allowed to leave.

We had one small suitcase and ten marks each (about 拢1). We went by train to Trieste and then boat to Haifa. We joined a kibbutz, working in Jaffa鈥檚 baby unit as nurses before moving on to work in the General Hospital.

One of my English patients persuaded me to go to England and take a diploma in nursing, and stood as my legal guardian.
By this time I had lost touch with my family who were held in concentration camps.
Later I travelled to England as nurse to twins of British officials returning from leave.

I trained as an Assistant Nurse at St Mary鈥檚 Hospital, Paddington, and continued to work there after the war broke out, when I was classified as a 鈥渇riendly alien鈥� (鈥渆nemy aliens鈥� were sent to the Isle of Man).
It took time to become fluent in English, but I found travelling round on the Underground easy as all the stations were clearly marked 鈥� the only one I could never find was 鈥楤ovril鈥�.

I was transferred to a hospital near Basingstoke, built during the First World War to take casualties. There was a railway line running into its yard. It had been a mental institution between the wars, but in 1940 those patients were all transferred out to small units in the country.

One night I was woken by a tremendous noise. A train had arrived full of casualties from Dunkirk, hundreds and hundreds of wounded men, dirty, hungry, exhausted, in rags, some on crutches.
Some had discarded their uniforms and were wrapped in blankets, others were civilians.
Most were British but there was a sprinkling of French, Polish, Dutch and other nationalities. Everyone worked through the night and the next day, the operating theatre never stopped the doctors working 6 hours on and 6 hours off.

Later I was asked to look after all the foreign patients because of my knowledge of languages, and transferred to North London. When I married in 1943 I had to leave (no nurse could work in a hospital if she was married), and worked for various local doctors.

My husband was also a refugee from Germany, and volunteered for the Air Force, but was refused. He was called up into the Army and became a staff sergeant in the Commandos.
My husband was made to change his name from his German name to 鈥淲hite鈥� on the battlefield by order of the staff sergeant.
After fighting across Europe he worked in the Control Commission in Germany.
We had moved to Hendon leaving me alone in the house.
I soon received an official notice asking me to let my spare rooms to war workers.
I didn't relish having men in the house so advertised for a lady lodger and soon had six women 鈥� one English, one Czechoslovakian, two French and one German refugee.

I was pregnant, and when I rang for an ambulance to go to hospital I found the ambulance station had been bombed and was asked to come on the bus.
This was pretty slow, including a change of drivers at somewhere along the route.
I could visualise headlines in the newspaper about a baby born on a bus.
When I got to the hospital the maternity unit was full of casualties, so they put me on a bed in the corridor with screens round it.
I fainted, and woke up with a new baby.
For my second child I decided to have the baby at home to avoid the difficulties of travel. A very heavy fog came down and the midwife and doctor arrived in the morning, quite some time after my son was born.

That was my war and how it affected me.

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