大象传媒

In my parents' bedroom there was a chest with several drawers which we would investigate regularly. In my father's section was an automatic Luger pistol, a momento of the first World War and a Nazi swastika flag which he had brought back from Germany as a momento in 1933 when he had been staying with a German family in order to learn German. He had campaigned very vigorously to get Jews out of Germany so there was no question that he had ever had Nazi sympathies.

On this particular day during the war my younger brother and sister who can't have been more than 4,5 or 6 were busy playing in the garden while our mother did housework when a neighbour telephoned to say
"Mrs Tucker I think I should tell you that someone is flying the Nazi flag in your garden"

On going outside my mother found my brother and sister happily playing tea parties under the flag which they had fixed to the fence.

That was difficult because the house had been owned or rented before we moved there by a family called Schmidt who were then interned. So my parents had been visited and questioned by MI5.

It was lucky the children hadn't brought out the Luger. As you can imagine the flag was very swiftly struck and Patrick and Elisabeth spoken to sternly. Once again this wasn't held against us.

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