大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from Reading on behalf of Anne and has been added to the site with her permission. She understands the site terms and conditions.

I came to Britain from Austria in 1938, when the Nazis took over control. My father had seen that, for Jewish people, things were going to get increasingly hard. He was a paper manufacturer and was probably warned by his company. Anyway, one day when we came home from school, my parents told me and my sister to pack our suitcases to go away for the weekend, which we sometimes did. They didn鈥檛 want us to worry about leaving. My father had booked train tickets to Switzerland for us all, but we actually left for Germany two days earlier, from a small railway station in Vienna, to avoid any problems with the police. That way, we got through the German border guards and then slipped out again into Holland. My father had business connections in Britain, and was able to let his company know that we had arrived safely.

When I first came to Britain I couldn鈥檛 speak any English, but I learned it in no time at my boarding school in Wimbledon, where there were children from many countries. Everybody just accepted you without question. When war came, restrictions were placed on the movement of foreigners, but as children we were OK. My mother ran a special nursery for children who had been bombed out of their homes. She took us out of Wimbledon to a school in north London, near where they were living.

After that school, I went to learn about agriculture on a farm in Wiltshire, and was soon able to milk a cow. Many of the tasks, including milking, were done by hand in those days. I learned some basic rules for mucking out the byres:
1) Set your empty wheelbarrow down in the direction you want to take when it鈥檚 loaded. It鈥檚 hard work turning when full!
2) Store your yard brush with its head upwards, so that the water drains down.
3) Stand your rake with the tines upwards. Its painful being hit on the head by the handle if you step on them!

Sometimes, children who had been evacuated from London came to help us. Most children wore clothes handed down to them by older children, that was just the way it was. I remember one little girl who came to us with no shoes or overcoat. It was really very cold in those early mornings at 5-30 AM, so the farmer had to find proper things for her. I had never seen poverty like that, except in the very poorest slum district in Vienna.

Wartime meant that many things were short, particularly food and coal (for heating). Because of the German submarine (U-boat) menace, supplies of all imported things were limited. Under rationing, you were allowed maybe 2 ounces (55 gm) of butter a week and very little sugar. Sweets or chocolates were great luxuries. On the farm, we were fortunate to get extra cheese, meat and dairy products. At home, my father grew potatoes, brussel sprouts and other green vegetables. To save use of coal, he marked a line round the inside of the bath a few inches above the bottom, which was the limit of the hot water we were supposed to use! Of course, there was no central heating.

In London, you saw and just accepted the damage done by bombing. Later in the war, the V1 flying bombs were a particular worry. When the drone of the motor cut out, you knew they were about to hit the ground. One awful tragedy occurred when a bomb hit a tube station where people used to sleep at night.

I went on to Reading University to study Dairy Science. The University was quite small in those days, perhaps 250 students all told. The Dairy students wore white uniforms and we girls were known as Dairy Maids. We could have made almost any cheese you care to name, but the demand was only for Cheddar. Just once, we were allowed to make whatever cheese we wanted. Every gallon of milk had to be accounted for in terms of butter or cheese. To get around, we used bicycles and in those days there were trams. I used to help out at the Royal Berks. Hospital rolling bandages and also, once a week, worked at British Restaurants in Whitley, serving munitions workers. That area has now all been built up for housing.

In 1943, I joined the Ministry of Agriculture and became an assistant milk production officer in Cambridgeshire. At the time, hygiene in milk production was very poor: people did not wash their hands nor the cow鈥檚 udders when milking. So, one of my first tasks was to train dairy workers in improved standards of hygiene. A programme to drain the Fens and put in hard surface roads (鈥渄roves鈥�) was underway. The area had been very poor and neglected, but by the following year, it was growing all of London鈥檚 vegetables and producing a lot of milk. It is still a very fertile area.

My father worked for army intelligence. He used to travel in the trains carrying German prisoners of war and make notes on what he heard. Doing this one day, he was arrested by British officers as a suspicious individual. He was taken to the War Office and questioned. When they realized the mistake, he was promoted and put in charge of evaluating the state of the paper-making industry in Europe, with a view to post-war rebuilding.

Yes, we had some fun. When I was in the countryside, there were dances at the local Young Farmers Club. And I was once taking a romantic evening stroll with a friend when I stumbled and tripped over a cow: how dignified can you get?

Throughout the war, particularly towards the end when you began to hear about Nazi atrocities in mainland Europe, you counted your blessings for being with your family in Britain.

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