大象传媒

The Jewish situation has caused comments about the Island Authorities allowing Jewesses to be taken from the Islands without doing anything to prevent it and also that they had been betrayed. None of this is true. The real story is quite different. Therese Steiner was an Austrian Jewess. The Steiner family were Viennese and fearful for their fate as Hitler took measures against the Jews. They were not practising Jews, but this fact had never been registered as they had not been concerned in the early days. One of their sons was in the German Army and he was serving with the forces invading France. The other son aged 27, a graduate, was in Dachau four months before the war and managed to get out and away to China via Russia where he spent the war years in Shanghai. After the war he went to Montreal in Canada where he joined the University and became a professor of music. Therese went to the U.K. to find a job and perfect her English. She had some training as a dental nurse and then became employed by the Potts family, Mr Potts being a dental surgeon. Mrs Potts and her two children took a holiday cottage in Sark and Therese accompanied them to act as nanny to the children. As the Germans advanced to the coast of France Mrs Potts became desperate to leave the islands and return to the mainland. Because of Therese's Austrian passport there was some difficulty for her to leave immediately until certain formalities had been satisfied, Mrs Potts would not wait for this and Therese remained in Guernsey and was trapped there when the Germans landed. She was employed as a nurse by the States and worked at the Castel Hospital.
My mother was the assistant Matron at the hospital and spoke very highly of Therese as being a gentle intelligent girl and a very accomplished pianist. She used to entertain the staff at evening concerts and just loved the piano. The Steiner family were a loving and very close-knit family, always concerned for each other, always kept in communication, so when after eighteen months Therese had not heard from her parents or of any of them she became very desperate for news. She talked to the other nurses about it and approached the Matron asking for permission to go to the German High Command at Grange Lodge to enquire about them. The Matron was most concerned as were all the doctors and strongly advised her not to speak to the Germans or approach them fearing that she would put her life in danger. However she did not believe that this was the case and felt that any adverse comment about the Germans was merely enemy propaganda. So one day she went to Grange Lodge where she said that they had been very helpful and would contact her parents to find out what had happened to them.
Unfortunately the action taken by Therese and that alone alerted the German Authorities to the fact that there were Jews in the Island, and eventually caused their death. A short while after this contact the Germans issued a command that all Jews and Jewesses had to register as the Nazis imposed the anti-Jewish laws in the island. Criticism has been made of the Island Authorities in regard to this incident. Sir Abraham Lain茅, the States Controller did refuse to sign this order, to no avail. Sir Ambrose Sherwill, HM Procureur who felt ashamed that he did not do something in the way of protest, did not oppose the law, but he was in a very difficult position as he was in the process of trying to save Nicolle and Symes. In September 1940 the British Government had landed these two Guernsey Servicemen by submarine on the south coast of the island in order to find out what had happened to the islands. Because of rough weather the submarine had failed to meet the rendezvous at Petit Bot as a result of which the two spies were left high and dry in the island. Sir Ambrose had been told of this fact and was trying in some way to resolve it as the Guernseymen had sought refuge with their families. He arranged an amnesty and the soldiers gave themselves up only five minutes before it expired. In spite of the amnesty they were tried and convicted and were awaiting the outcome, expecting to be shot. It was this negotiation that Sir Ambrose was trying to resolve and could not afford another clash with the German Authorities. When resolved their relatives and Sir Ambrose were sent to prison in France. Later they were released but Symes' father had died previously in Cherche Midi prison in Paris. Sir Ambrose was not allowed to hold any office on his release.
Later Therese was called to Grange Lodge and told that she would be taken back to Austria, although she was sorry to leave the hospital and Guernsey she was not unhappy in the knowledge that she would be going home. My mother was
responsible for staff welfare at the Castel hospital and provided food for her and the other Jewess Auguste Spitz, who
was a maid at the hospital, for their journey to France. Therese assured her that she would return at the end of hostilities to see them all. Everyone at the hospital was very apprehensive as to their fate once they left Guernsey, but no one heard anything more from them even after the war.
About eighteen months after the liberation my husband and I and my mother had a motoring holiday in Normandy. My mother was bi-lingual and was very keen to see if we could find out what happened to Therese and 'Guste' (as she was known to them) when they were landed in France and we visited the Marie in St. Malo. Here we learnt that the two girls were put on a train with a German officer to Avranches. This was a large railway centre. Again we visited the Marie in Avranches and were given the name of a guest house where they had been taken. We contacted the landlady, who well remembered the two girls. Apparantly they were there for a few weeks with the German officer, but were not badly treated and became friendly with some of the people in the town where they were all invited to their houses. They had become popular and were happy awaiting further transport to their homes. However all suddenly changed and the situation became very ugly when in the middle of one night a convoy of German SS arrived, arrested them and took them away. The townspeople were very upset and convinced that they would be killed.
After the war the Matron received a letter, which Therese had smuggled out of the prison where she was held at the French concentration camp at Orancy, telling her what had happened to her and should she not hear from her after the end of hostilities she would know that they had been killed and something dreadful had happened. The records show that the two girls were taken from Orancy to Auschwitz where they were put into the gas chamber on arrival. Unknown to Therese her own mother had the same fate in 1942. Her brother who was in the German army also made a similar mistake and enquired about his parents. He was arrested and taken to Auschwitz and also died in the gas chambers. Karl Steiner told us when we saw him in Guernsey in January 1993 that all his relatives, cousins, uncles and aunts had suffered the same fate and he was the only member of his family to survive. He had only heard about Guernsey through a television programme in Montreal and until then had not been told of what had happened to his sister in spite of all his enquiries. He was afraid that Therese had been betrayed by the Guernsey Authorities, so came to Guernsey to find out the truth, but left fully convinced after much research that this was not the case and that the Bailiff and other high ranked island officials were definitely not to blame for his sister's death. He understood very well his sister's concern for their parents and how that had unfortunately led to her death.

Lily Mauger.

Written from notes in 1995.

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