Erna Grace

Listen to the transcript of the Erna Grace Interview in a podcast format.

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ERNA

I think when I had my children.   Children are my life still.  My daughter looks after me so much   I am very lucky.  Some children don’t even want to look after their parents.

INTERVIEWER

And it’s wonderful also for you that Suzanne is in the same town as well.

ERNA

Yes, yes.  Oh, she never moved away.  The two boys, I have a son in London, and a son in Florida, the youngest one.  Yes and my oldest son’s in Glasgow nearly forgot. Suzanne added that her oldest brother lives just up the road in Newton Mearns in Glasgow. All Erna’s sons are good at keeping in contact via telephone e

INTERVIEWER

I think that that’s quite understandable when you have four yup, I can understand that.

INTERVIEWER

Well, I think Erna you’ve had a wonderful life despite everything that has happened.

ERNA

 Yes.  

INTERVIEWER

 And I would like to thank you for giving me the time for me to have a wee chat with you.

ERNA

Thank you for coming  and taking time.

INTERVIEWER

Thank you.

ERNA

I loved that, I loved mixing with all the girls, and we went dancing to the Plaza on a Tuesday.

INTERVIEWER

And how did you meet your husband?

ERNA

There was a place called the ‘Jewish Institute’ in the Gorbals and everybody went on a Sunday, and he had just come out the Air Force.  They were doing two years then.  I met him then.   His parents didn’t like me by the way.  I wasn’t good enough.  I was a German refugee.

INTERVIEWER

I think, sadly, that kind of thing happened in some families.

ERNA

It happened a lot, unfortunately, but most of the people in Glasgow are very kind and nice.

INTERVIEWER

And so, you met your husband?  And you had children?  I’m saying that because one of them is sitting behind you.

ERNA

Yes.  My daughter.  I only have one daughter.  My husband wanted five daughters. I don’t know why but unfortunately, but fortunately, he saw my daughter grow up.

INTERVIEWER

I think five daughters would be a bit of a handful actually.

ERNA

But I had four children.

INTERVIEWER

So, I would imagine it would be a very busy household

ERNA

Yes, yes.  They bring each other you know; they bring each other up, almost….

INTERVIEWER

And so, what did your husband do?

ERNA

He had a…    what do you call it Suzanne?

INTERVIEWER

Electrical business. Suzanne added that her father was a wholesaler of electrical goods. The business was started by his father.

ERNA

I did not work in it.

INTERVIEWER

I think if you have four children, probably you’d have been very busy anyway.  Did you not spend a lot of time emptying the washing machine?

ERNA

Yeah, I did have a washing machine.   One of the uncle’s gave it for my wedding present.  Really lucky in these days to have a machine like that.

INTERVIEWER

But you still would have to load it.  And I remember that my mother, every time she did it her hair went all limp with the steam, coming up. But actually, I think the spinner was better in the old machines. And so, whereabouts did you live then?

ERNA

So, we did move to a place called Bannarbay Road in the West End. Suzanne added that Erna went with Nurse Livingstone and her family.

INTERVIEWER

Before you married?

ERNA

Yes, that was before I married.

INTERVIEWER

And so, you mixed obviously with a lot of people in the Jewish community in Glasgow.

ERNA

Yes. Yes. Yes, I was at Shul, not all the time, but I did go quite often.

INTERVIEWER

So which Shul did you belong to?

ERNA

Well, I started off Rabbi Rubinstein used to come and stay with us for the weekend.  So he stayed with us for the weekend so we were at Netherlee and Clarkston Shul.    Somehow, we got to Giffnock Shul.  I don’t quite remember so much, then we joined Giffnock Shul later on, when I got married anyway.

INTERVIEWER

Do you remember where you got married?

ERNA

In the house. Rabbi Rubinstein married us in the house. I don’t know why that was. In Nurse Livingstone’s house, I think.

Interviewer.  Oh how lovely, I think that was more of the custom then.

ERNA   Oh wait a minute was she alive? I think she was already dead when we got married.

INTERVIEWER

So, when you said her sons went to America, did they stay in America or did they come back.

ERNA

Yes, they came back. They came back and they were both in the Forces.   One was a sergeant, a gunner, and the other one was a paratrooper.   The only one time I remember, he never told us, what he did in the airforce.  But he came back one day, and he was smiling and laughing, and we asked him what it was all about, and he had, they had, bombed Dortmund where I came from to pieces, he just thought it was very funny.

INTERVIEWER

So, your sister did she get married as well.

ERNA

She got married in London.  She met a London boy.  She left when she was 18 she left.  She didn’t get on so well with the lady that brought her up, and she left and went to London and met this Jewish fellow in London.  She got married there and then came up to Glasgow and got married again.  It was just a registry wedding, and then they came up made a wedding up here.

INTERVIEWER

Which is nice actually,  because you would have been able to be at it.

ERNA

Yes.  He was a very nice fellow whom she married.  They didn’t always get on so well.  He came from a very rich family. But the thing was he didn’t want to take anything from his family, so they made their own way. She stayed in London and then she became a lawyer.  Afterwards she went to South Africa, the whole family…. She and her husband went,… they wanted  him to take over.  He was an accountant …they had a few shops there.   Strange thing it was the same shops as my husband had Here.   They stayed there a long time.   He was actually, um he was murdered, you might say. He came out of his office one night. There was 4 of them I think and there was three black men and  one white man and one of them killed him.. Suzanne added that her aunt eventually came back to the UK and settled in London.

INTERVIEWER

And so, she came back after that?

ERNA

No, she stayed there it was beautiful.  She stayed there a beautiful country and her family were very good to me too, and  they invited me to all the weddings in South Africa.  Unfortunately, she died very recently from Alzheimer’s.  Six years younger I was shocked I didn’t think she’d go first.  Her daughter now lives in Cyprus.  I phone her and she phones me; she also has a son who is still in South Africa.

INTERVIEWER

So, when you look back at your life, what do you what do you say is the highlights, would you say for you?

INTERVIEWER

So, you went to Netherlee Primary School, and what happened after Netherlee Primary School?

ERNA

Well, I left school at 14.  I was a year at Eastwood, the old Eastwood and then went into hairdressing.

INTERVIEWER

Which is why your hair is always lovely.

ERNA

No, I go to the hairdresser.

INTERVIEWER

But from the time I first met you Erna I was always quite conscious that your hair was very well cut.  And so where did you work as a hairdresser?

ERNA

Oh, the one I worked for the longest was Lewis’s.   I worked there on the third floor.  There was thirty girls.  They were mostly, nothing against religion, they were Catholic, and on a Friday, they would go up to the canteen and they’d say “ I Christen thee ‘fish’, and eat meat”. it was so funny.   The man that brought me up, my father I called him, said to me, now you’re going to work with all sorts of girls, keep quiet, don’t say anything. Listen, and don’t say anything.  And he was right because some of them were real……….

INTERVIEWER

I think you probably had your education broadened a bit.

ERNA

Yes, yes. But he said don’t open your mouth.  Just listen.   He was right and that’s what I tried to do.

INTERVIEWER

It must have been really busy though. I mean, 30 girls, I’m just saying you must have loads of people coming in.

ERNA

We did cheap perms and all sorts of things like that.  It was good working in there because if you bought anything you would get money off as well and we also got commission on our work.  So, you got a good wage and got anything like that. 

INTERVIEWER

And perms were very popular.

ERNA

Yes, oh yes. 17/6.

INTERVIEWER

I’m not even going to work out what that is.  I remember this lady who used to work for my mother and then she went over to work for my aunt, and she had her always had her kirby grips were like crossed.  She had hundreds of kirby grips to keep her perm in place.

ERNA

I didn’t have that; I know they did that.

INTERVIEWER

I always thought it would feel uncomfortable and how you could sleep with all the kirby grips.

ERNA

I still sleep with them in.

INTERVIEWER

That explains your lovely hairstyle then.   Absolutely.  And so, did you enjoy, you sounded like you enjoyed working as a hairdresser.

INTERVIEWER

So, you came up to Glasgow, and so where did you live in Glasgow?

ERNA

That’s when they took me straight to Nurse Livingstone then.

INTERVIEWER

And where about did Nurse Livingston stay.

ERNA

She stayed in Stamperland, Stamperland Hill, and she had bought this house.  There wasn’t much room.  I slept in the same bedroom as her sons we slept in bunks.  I slept in the bottom, and they slept in the top, there was two of them, I don’t know how these boys, they were slim at the time.  And that’s it, then they went away to America, the children from Britain were going to America.   I don’t remember at the time, but the boats were being torpedoed and Nurse Livingstone asked me if I wanted to go.  But I said no, I didn’t want to go.  So, she kept me, and the boys went.

INTERVIEWER

So, you would have gone to the local primary school?

ERNA

Yes.  And then there was two girls I met there, one was called Myra Gaskovtich and one was called Myra Shulman.  They have gone now, one went to South Africa, One went to Canada.  I know they both died unfortunately, and they used to take me down the road to the school.   But I was in a class with children of five because I couldn’t speak the language.  And it was the headmistress actually, it was Netherlee School, it was the headmistress that taught us.  I just tried to make out the best I could, you see. There was a German teacher there. She was German, she married a British guy and when other children left at lunchtime because they were five-year-olds, I went on to a class with this German teacher.  She just taught sewing.  She taught me English at the same time.  So that helped me and then later on Nurse Livingstone sent me to elocution.  She wanted me to lose my…my German accent,…which I don’t have as you can hear.

INTERVIEWER

Absolutely.

ERNA

That’s yes, my English got better, I think.

INTERVIEWER

And did you hear from your parents while you were here.

ERNA

Well we did, and Nurse Livingstone tried to get them jobs.  She even said she wanted a gardener.  I mean these gardens how small they are, and a cook. She did not need a cook; she was a very good cook herself.  But she couldn’t get them.  She tried different things.

So, I never saw them again.  But I saw two of her sisters and her brother.

INTERVIEWER

That’s your mother’s sisters?

Erna

Yes.  I’ve only met a sister of my father’s once; she was in Poland. I remember she was a tall redhead and I looked very like her only she was tall, and my father was small as well.

INTERVIEWER

And where did your aunts go?  The two aunts that you met.

ERNA

Oh, they were in the Camps.  They were in Belsen, and they were in Auschwitz, but they got out. Whereas my mother and my grandmother died there.  Whatever happened to them we didn’t exactly know, and we never found out what happened to my father. We never found out where he went.  I believe he was taken to the Camps. But we could never find out.  

My sister tried and my husband tried as well, but we could never find out what happened to them at all.  

So that was that you know, and Nurse Livingston used to say to me put it all to your back don’t forget it, but don’t dwell on it.  You’ve got a life now.

INTERVIEWER

And so, did your sister come to Glasgow as well?

ERNA

Yes

INTERVIEWER

Oh that’s nice!

ERNA

Yes.  They sent her to a lady called Minnie Shear he was a Fogel. Did you ever hear of Fogels, they had a shop at the Gorbals, and Minnie was the youngest one.  She couldn’t have children or something and she took my sister in.   I lived in Stamperland Hill, and she lived in Randolph Drive round the corner.

INTERVIEWER

Oh, that was great.

ERNA

We were very lucky we could do that.   Nurse Livingstone couldn’t take her she was too young.  She was still working; it was very difficult for her husband he also worked.  He made the guns that shot the planes down you know.  So, I was left on my own overnight very often, as her sons were away.  

I remember one night, I locked all the doors, and she came home.  We had a phone, and I didn’t hear the phone.  They tried on the phone. They tried throwing stones at the window.  No, I slept on – they could not get in.

INTERVIEWER

Oh dear, So, what happened? Did they come in?

ERNA

The next day I let them in.  There was a big row.

INTERVIEWER

And did your sister also come in the Kindertransport?

ERNA

No, no she came with this woman.  She arrived in Glasgow the day before the war was declared. And we don’t know who the woman was.  My parents must have sent her with this woman.

INTERVIEWER

Suzanne (Erna’s daughter also attended the interview) thinks she maybe came via France. Suzanne added that she remembered her aunt showing her papers that suggested she came through France. She had the correct paperwork and arrived in September.

INTERVIEWER

And how did you find living in Glasgow?

ERNA

I did not know much better.

INTERVIEWER

Once you had got over the shock of the tea being served incorrectly?

ERNA

Yes. Yes. They were very kind to me.  I mean, it was rations and the boys fought over everything.  ‘You got more than me but give it to Erna’ I was very lucky, very nice family.  

There is nobody left now the only one that’s left is Sylvia. I call her my cousin.  She was a cousin of the family.

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