大象传媒

SOME EARLY CHILDHOOD RECOLLECTIONS OF MY REFUGEE FAMILY

I was born in London in September 1935. My German Jewish grandfather had established a very large department store business in west Germany. This is why the writing was on the wall for my prominent family soon after Hitler took over as head of state in 1933. As a result, my parents could leave Germany in 1934, with a certain amount of order albeit a great deal of fear, taking furniture and household goods with them but a very limited amount of money. For several years my parents' permission to remain in England was only temporary until they were given refugee status and later acquired British citizenship.

Apart from my parents, my sister and myself, our household in a west London suburb consisted of my widowed German grandmother (in failing health) who joined us in 1942. She had been living in Holland with her
eldest son and his family. They had decided to go to Israel, but she had been too fearful to make the dangerous sea journey. Her passport photo, issued in 1934 and stamped with the swastika emblem, shows a fearful, bewildered looking old lady of 83. Also living with us were my mother's White Russian parents and our German, Aryan nanny who had loyally also left her homeland as she couldn't abide the Nazis.

I remember a constant coming and going as a succession of family members fleeing the enormities of the Nazi regime, came to stay in our five-bedroomed house for periods. My parents gave them a roof over their heads while they found their feet and a place to live or emigrated abroad, and my sister and I then slept in make-shift, uncomfortable beds to make room. One couple did not manage to escape from Holland and in 1942, had to go into hiding in a farmhouse for 2陆 years, separated from their 16 year old son who was at a boarding school in England.

The adjustment my parents had to make was enormous after the spacious, servant-filled accommodation they had had in Cologne and where they had lived such a carefree life. My mother learnt to cook, and grow fruit and vegetables in the garden.

When war was declared, my father, together with most adult and near-adult male German and Axis nationals, was interned. His camp for enemy aliens was in Norfolk. A Pioneer Force was created after the government decided that these refugees could make some useful contribution to the war effort. My father joined this force. When he come home on leave, my mother refused to let him bring his rifle into the house - it was left on the porch(!) or out at the back. His coarse, khaki uniform material scratched horribly when he hugged us. We were each issued with a gas mask and had to practice donning the wretched things from time to time. I absolutely hated putting it on; the rubber stank and fitted so tightly around my face that I felt my head was being squashed in and I couldn't breath.

The iron railings from our front garden wall had been removed to contribute to the munitions drive. My grandfather (who had been an engineer in Russia), was then aged 68, and, single-handedly, built an Anderson shelter which took up all one side of the front garden. It needed quite a bit of excavation, as only the domed, corrugated roof, covered with earth and grass showed roughly three feet above ground level. He also constructed a Morrison shelter - a steel girder affair with the top covered by a thick metal sheet - in my German grandmother's room (formerly the living room), for her to sleep under. It must have been a real struggle for the old lady to enter this rather low contraption and then to be extricated from it. After her death (1943), we children, with our mother, would sometimes use it when the sirens sounded. My grandfather also built a 7' high brick blast-protection wall about one meter away from the French windows of his bedroom (it later reverted to being a dining room). This of course totally blocked out the view of the garden and 9O% of the day-light.

We were quite often roused from sleep by the air-raid warnings, and then we all spent some of the night in the outside shelter, apart from one adult who stayed in the house with the old lady. I don't remember having spent much time in the garden shelter during the day, but there were certainly some day-time air-raids. The wailing sound of sirens turned my stomach with dread for many years to come whenever I heard them in films or if they were being tested in peace-time. Those nights were very uncomfortable, as the shelter, only about 1.6 meters wide, was dank and cramped. The cheap candles let out a strong smell, the bunks were hard and the blankets very scratchy. Using the chamber-pot was another smelly discomfort but it was worse for the adults who had to use a drainage hole in one corner. I complained vociferously through the fitful nights which we spent there as long as the air-raid lasted and listened to the ominous droning of the aeroplanes above, and the thud of explosions - some distant, some too close for comfort.

Everyone was issued with little square ration booklets - consisting of several pages of rows of cheap, printed paper coupons between well-thumbed, thin card covers. The coupons were cut out with scissors by shop assistants. To get a piece of meat for a week-end roast (if available) entailed saving up the coupons from several books for a few weeks and making-do with perhaps egg powder for a while or fish. A few very welcome food parcels arrived from my aunt in New York.

Horse-drawn vegetable carts would ply the streets a couple of times a week. The vendor would call out announcing his arrival and people would come with their shopping baskets to queue. The milkman also had a horse-drawn cart and the horse would know the route by heart and move forward to follow {or even lead) the milkman when he whistled or called to it. Drinking troughs were positioned at various street corners for their use.

Other things of which I was aware during the war years were the crisscrossed, anti-blast webbing stuck to all the windows, which created a gloomy light even in summer - these were also fixed over train and bus
windows; the black-out blinds which had to be pulled down before any light was switched on; the electricity which was often cut off so that torches and a supply of candles were essential, but not always available. There was a general ethos of parsimony, and make do and mend.

In the autumn of 1940 when I was barely five, my parents had to make some hard decisions as to where to send us for safety. At first my mother had thought of sending us to my uncle and aunt in New York, for the duration of the war, but then a shipload of children sailing to Canada for the same purpose, was torpedoed and sunk. So, a boarding-school was found for us in Cornwall, near Tintagel, which was run by two women with the sole and laudable intention of harbouring around 30 pupils of mainly refugee children. Aged five, I was the youngest boarder. It was a long, cold and very tiring journey. We arrived at Camelford station in the dark, with snow patches on the ground. My sister and I were put into a large double bed in a chilly dormitory which had about four other children in it. We were asleep in no time and my mother went off to a small hotel in Tintagel, a mile away. When I woke up it was not yet dawn; the other children and my sister were still sleeping and she was the only familiar thing (sic) in my whole field of vision. I prompfly let out unending loud wails of anguish, thereby jolting awake all the other people in the building. I screamed for my nanny and my mother in German, which was all I could speak, and had no intention of being consoled by the head mistresses who had come running. The hotel was called urgently and my poor mother had to come at a jog, no other means of transport being immediately available. I eventually calmed down in her arms.

The two headmistresses coped manfully with their vulnerable charges and kept in close contact with the parents where possible. A few of the children were orphans and had been traumatized. One Polish-speaking boy in particular behaved in a rather frightening manner, shouting and throwing things about unpredictably.

On Sunday mornings we would walk down one very steep hill and up another in our crocodile to the church service in Trevalga, a picturesque neighbouring hamlet. The fact that most of us were Jewish somehow was
not an issuel The vicar was old, blind and lame, and I was petrified that he would keel over going up the aisle or negotiating the steps to the choir unaided. (I was similarly scared stiff when King George VI spoke on the
radio and began to stutter.)

At the end of the war in Europe, my sister and I spent a summer holiday near Worcester where Nanny was now working. The highlights of our days there were the numerous convoys of U.S. lorries heading for Liverpool and home. We would hear the rumble of the approaching vehicles and run to clamber onto the two pairs of iron garden gates - here somehow saved from the war effort - to wave to the passing G.I's. We would rush to pick up the Hershey chocolate bars and chewing gum which they threw out of the truck cabins, before the neighbours' children beat us to them, and competed to collect the highest tally of the frequently returned waves and gifts.

We then returned to London and the celebrations. The atmosphere, as can be imagined, was extraordinary. I can remember being with my sister and father in a terrific crush in the middle of the throngs in the Mall. People were clamouring for the King and Queen. Soon two tiny dots appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, one white the other black and a great roar went up. My rather distant view was further greatly restricted by the fact that one of my cheeks was pushed up against someone's ample bosom and the other squashed by a stranger's large behind! Somehow we managed not to get separated. After nightfall there was an exciting display of fireworks, the first I had ever seen. Buildings were illuminated and the city's dingy, dark nights were a thing of the past. It was all very uplifting.

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