Rosa Sacharin

RS: Well it was…. it wasn’t my own decision. My sister, who was in Glasgow, actually was working in a nursery school, which was run by the Church of Scotland and she, I think, told one of the ladies about me being in Edinburgh. I had a visit from… she was a minister’s wife, and she thought I should really come to Glasgow. And, you know, somehow, I don’t know how all the arrangements were made, but I certainly packed up my things. I left the family and I came to Glasgow and that was in March 1941.

INT: And did you live with the minister and his wife?

RS: Oh no, no.

INT: Right.

RS: I stayed… It was a peculiar situation because I had nowhere to stay. But there was one house in Hillhead Street which was a district nurses’ home and the lady who ran it, Miss Currie (she was a gem of a person) she took in refugees.

INT: Right

RS: Whenever she had any empty beds – ‘You can stay here’. So I stayed there and then I went to the Committee, to the Children’s Committee to report, and I was told I had no business to leave Edinburgh. After all, she said, ‘You have a bed to sleep in.’ And I said ‘I think I have paid back what I owed and I am entitled now to learn something so that I can earn my living.’ They were very angry with me and wouldn’t do anything for me. But I stayed in the hostel in Renfrew Street and that was not a particularly nice place. However, it was the minister’s wife who then took things upon herself and she thought I should really go back to school and initially I went to a primary school – a sixteen year old going to a primary school, but it was very useful. I learned the rudiments of English, Arithmetic, handling things.

INT: It gave you a good foundation.

RS: It gave me a good foundation. I was only there for a few months but it was… I learned something. And then she took me to the… in Pitt Street was the Commercial College.

INT: Oh right

RS: So she took me there and they wouldn’t have me because I had no secondary school education and she somehow arranged for me to be accepted into a secondary school and that was in Springburn.

RS: The Committee had said ‘Now we’ll give you six months and then you will just get out and work’. However, I went to school in Springburn and one day I was called to the headmaster and he said, he thought I would do, would be able to sit my Highers (mind you, I was only there for a few months) and he said, ‘You could sit your Highers’ and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I won’t be able to do that. The six months are up and I really have to leave.’

His wife was Baillie Roberts,

INT: Would you like to explain what the role of a Baillie is? What is a Baillie? What is the role of a Baillie?

RS: A Baillie was really a Councillor at the Corporation, as it existed in those days.

INT: Right.

RS: Well it was the Council, obviously. She was part of the Council of the City of Glasgow.

INT: So she would be quite powerful then?

RS: Sorry?

INT: She would be quite powerful?

RS: Oh very much so. I would imagine so yes. I mean she certainly arranged a meeting with the Lord Provost.

INT: Right

RS: And I was taken by the limousine to the City Chambers and taken to a room and had a lovely cup of tea there and the Lord Provost asked me what I would like to do and I said, ‘I would like to teach. I do know that it’s possibly, it’s not a possible thing to do for me, but that is really what I would like to do.’ And he then said to me. ‘My dear, just you continue with your education and don’t worry about a thing’.

INT: Excellent. However, we do know Rosa that you didn’t become a teacher.

RS: I did not become a teacher, not a schoolteacher.

INT: Why did you decide to go into nursing?

RS: When I finished school, I had to make a decision what I was going to do and the minister’s lady suggested I should go into nursing. There were three options: the ATS, munitions or nursing. And she actually said ‘You know, I think you should go into nursing.’

And she suggested that I should go to the Sick Children’s Hospital. I should make application there. I was not keen. I knew nothing about hospital life. I knew nothing about the role of nurses and I could not see myself as a nurse. However, I made my application hoping it would not be accepted, sent it in and was called for an interview. And Miss Clarkston, the Matron, very gracious, she said to me, ‘Is there any question you would like to ask me?’ and I said to her, ‘How long would I have to stay before I could leave?’

INT: That must have gone down very well!

RS: And she said to me ‘Miss Goldszal, if you don’t like us and we don’t like you, you can leave after three months.’ I said ‘Excellent’. So I was accepted and my whole attitude when I started nursing was really, I hated it. I think I had the totally wrong approach to things. I was also very terrified. Very early on you had one week in classroom to learn the rudiments, how to take pulses, temperatures and that was it.

And you then went into the wards and the first ward I went to was a surgical ward and the burns, the smell of burning skin, the crying of the children – I just couldn’t cope. I became quite friendly; there were only five of us who started actually the training, and I became friendly with a girl in our group, who also hated it and we fed on each other’s misery and after three months, we decided we would hand in our resignation. She wrote her letter; I wrote mine. She went in first and Miss Clarkston told her to go and pack her bag and go. When she came out she said that she was leaving. I said, ‘Well this is easy’ and I went into the room and Miss Clarkston asked me to sit down and she didn’t ask very much but she said to me, ‘I think we should send you to the country branch.’

I think she may have realised that I was stressed out by the acute areas that we were immediately sent into… But I also knew that I would have to go back to Yorkhill. So I was sent to Drumchapel, to the country branch, and while there, there was a senior nurse there. She was such a bubbly person. She was so full of life, so full of fun and the children loved her and she sort of drew me out of myself. I was never like that and I could not be like her – it’s impossible, that’s not my makeup. But I began to realise that I was wrong, that I really should make a go of it. After my… I was three months at Drumchapel, I went back to Yorkhill and just continued my training.

INT: Excellent, excellent. So you became a nurse?

RS: I became a nurse and actually it was very interesting. When I sat my first Finals (the sick children’s) and we had oral exams at that time (we don’t have that now) and after the orals the sister tutor said to me, ‘Oh, the examiners were so impressed with you.’ I thought that was really quite nice.

INT: I think it’s lovely actually; it’s important, I think, to receive praise.

RS: Yes.

INT: So you worked in…

RS: Well I finished. I wasn’t keen to go any further, to do my general training. I liked the sick children of course and I enjoyed working at Yorkhill. I learned a great deal. The training itself was good. Theoretically, I felt there was a lot left to be desired. During my training there I actually attended a course, not a course – this was a Conference on Psychology and I was asked if I would like to go and I went and it really was beyond me. My own educational level was relatively low. It was so high powered, I felt terribly frustrated but it also stimulated me, really, to improve my own education. I became a Staff Nurse in Yorkhill. I went to the Outpatient, West Graham Street. It was really very interesting there and after that I decided to do my General, and I went to Stobhill to do my General. I didn’t like Stobhill. I didn’t. I mean I did the training. I can’t say I enjoyed it but at the same time it was a worthwhile experience and after that I decided I would do my midwifery training and really enjoyed that.

INT: It’s a bit like a bug isn’t it. You know, once you catch that kind of learning aspect you want to continue.

RS: That’s right. I really felt I had to. I realised that with having only a Sick Children Certificate there were limitations to the amount of work I could get. If I had experience of other nursing plus midwifery, it was a much more complete picture.

INT: Absolutely.

RS: I could deal with so many different aspects of caring at the time.

INT: And did you mix with any of the Jewish community at that time or were you staying in nursing hostels?

RS: No, not at all. I had no contact with either refugees [or the community]. My sister, of course, at that time she was living; she was allowed to go and live in a flat, well, not a flat, one of the rooms…

INT: In the hostel?

RS: Bedrooms, that they could live in and she was living with another refugee girl, Jotta, and they were very good friends. But I felt out of it. I was never really part of that very close friendship that they had but Jotta became ill and she developed tuberculosis and, then other events came because my mother then came and things really began to change. But at any rate as far as my own training was concerned, I decided after I finished Midwifery training I would work as a midwife.

INT: Right

RS: And I went to Redlands Hospital for Women. Now it was not a training school and my attitude was that I was not interested in going to Rottenrow or a big training school. Once you finish training, you have to consolidate what you have learned and really become proficient and Redlands to me was ideal. They did everything. You had antenatal; you had the labour rooms; you had the mother-child relationship; you had the delivery of the baby; you worked in every area. And it was an excellent place to consolidate what I had learned and I became really, I was very fond of it, I enjoyed it. And in between, of course, my mother came, so in a way I would have to diverge because while I was doing midwifery work, I was then living with my mother.

INT: because that must have been very emotionally difficult.

RS: It was indeed, yes. My mother arrived. We heard that she was alive. I was still at Yorkhill while I received two letters and one letter was from an American soldier, another one from a British soldier, each telling me exactly the same – that my mother approached them at a synagogue service in Berlin and asked each one of them to contact me to tell me that she was alive.

INT: Which is wonderful.

RS: It was tremendous. And they said in the letter also, if you want to send any food to them they would make sure she would get it, so we did that. And then we had a letter from my mother to tell us that she was alive, obviously, and that she would not want to stay in Germany.

And we at the time were not sure what was happening to us because we were told that we were only allowed to stay here for the duration and then we would have to go back. And of course after the War when Germany was really virtually destroyed, there was a question in the House of Commons and Churchill was asked, ‘When are the refugees leaving the country?’ Because people didn’t want us to stay here; I mean there are a lot of issues and things I haven’t talked about, that’s one of the things. And Churchill said, ‘You cannot do that. There is nothing for them to go back to.’

Then we were told, if we wanted our mother to come, because they were not keen for any refugees to come, we would have to apply to the British Commandant to allow permission for my mother to leave Berlin. And we did that and then that was a whole lot of things. We had to promise to look after her, that she would not be a burden on the British Government.

INT: The state.

RS: That people did not require their funds. Both Betty and I were not earning very much; I was earning very little. I was still in training. Betty, already, was earning three pounds a week so that was always something and after the War we also had to get out of our digs because the men came back from the War and…

INT: They needed somewhere to stay.

RS: So Betty and I decided, Jotta at that time was in hospital, and Betty and I decided we would buy a flat. We hadn’t a penny to our name.

INT: I think that’s quite ambitious.

RS: Ambitious? It was absolutely idiotic! However, we went to a number of places, there was even a bungalow we looked at!

INT: Start at the top, I think.

RS: However, eventually…We had a very good lawyer, who was very good to us. Again he knew the minister’s wife who was very, very helpful to us and also the lawyer was very helpful to us. And there was this flat in Trefoil Avenue in Shawlands and we looked at that and it cost £750 We didn’t have a penny.

INT: No.

RS: So we said, ‘Well we must get it’. But we had to put down a deposit of £100.00, £150.00. We had no money so we went to the Board of Guardians, cheek of us, and asked for a loan and they wouldn’t give it to us and said, ‘There is no guarantee that you will pay it back to us. We can’t give you any money’. I could understand that. We were strangers. They really knew nothing about us. We had not a penny to our name and I could understand it. Eventually they said if you can get somebody to guarantee for you then we will give it to you and there was another refugee, a Mr Doktor. He was a marvellous person and he suggested going to Mrs Geneen.

INT: Ah!

RS: And Mrs Geneen said, ‘Yes I will guarantee for you’.

INT: She was a remarkable lady.

RS: A marvellous, she was such a good person and she eventually gave work to my mother. She was really a very kind person. So once we got that we bought the flat in Trefoil Avenue and paid back every month our mortgage. So we had our own flat but we didn’t have much furniture. We used orange boxes for bedside tables, things like that. It didn’t matter.

INT: I think to have your own place must have been wonderful.

RS: Absolutely, at least we had somewhere and we had somewhere where my mother could stay, because otherwise where would we put her? So she arrived in February 1947 and it was really quite emotional. The minister’s wife was with us at the station when she arrived at the station and she was the same bubbly, little mother that she always was, full of life, and the first thing she said to us – ‘I must help you. I must help you’. As if she felt guilty of what had happened, but really didn’t, needn’t…I mean she did a lot for us in her own way. And we took her up to the flat.

And one day we got a visit from one of… a lady (she also had been a refugee) telling my mother how much they did for me and I exploded and I said, ‘And what did you do for me?’ She was very upset and she walked out and my mother trying to calm me, and trying to calm the woman…But that’s how I felt. I mean as far as the Jewish Community was concerned, I got no help from them. And maybe…And just because, at least, they did give me some money so I could pay the hostel until I went into nursing, but it’s the attitude towards me at the time, where they were not willing to help me. I felt very upset.

INT: So your mother lived with you and did she learn English?

RS: My mother wasn’t allowed to work.

INT: Because of her status?

RS: My mother was desperate to work. She was desperate to help us as well and she was also very lonely in the flat when we were out. Betty was working; I was working and she was alone and couldn’t speak the language. Eventually she worked, although she wasn’t allowed to do it, with Jewish people who were selling second hand clothing and my mother helped with repairing the things. At least she was with people and they gave her a few pence and that was important. But psychologically, she was really suffering and at the time we knew a lady, Dr Winifred Rushforth. She was a psychologist, and she ran the clinic in Edinburgh, the Davidson Clinic, and it was actually that clinic that created the conference in psychology, which I had attended. And it was she who wrote a letter to the Labour Exchange at the time, and said unless my mother would work, then mentally she would deteriorate and then she was allowed to work. She got a work permit.

INT: So you worked in Redlands and after Redlands you…is that when..?

RS: Well I worked in Redlands and then there was an advert that they were looking for midwives in Israel and I thought to myself, well, that’s really where I should be. I should help there. So I applied and eventually went to Israel. I took Hebrew lessons before. I already had rudiments of Hebrew but not the modern. It was Modern Hebrew that we were taught in Berlin, but I’d forgotten a great deal. But there was an Israeli student and he taught me and helped me so that when I reached Israel, I could communicate with people. To me that was important.

INT: Absolutely. And you left your mother and sister?

RS: My mother by that time was well established. She was working. She was satisfied; she had Betty around her and she didn’t stop me. ‘If that’s what you want then that’s it.’ So I went to Israel.

INT: Which must have been…Well it was quite different in that time, I think.

RS: Oh absolutely. I went there in 1952. In fact the plane I was on, it was delayed because Chaim Weizmann had died and they were waiting for his son from America and he was catching the same plane to come for the funeral of Chaim Weizmann. So that’s the plane I was on. And I actually was supposed to work as a midwife in Israel and when I arrived in Lod Airport, I had actually been given some car parts. Henry my brother-in-law’s cousin was in Israel and they had asked us for some car parts that you couldn’t get in Israel.

INT: Car parts?

RS: Car parts.

INT: Oh right OK.

RS: And so I took them with me. I was met by a lady from the Israeli Health Department and when Asher came (who was the husband of Henry’s cousin) he said ‘And where are you taking her?’ and she said ‘To Tiberias.’

‘No you can’t do that; she needs to be acclimatised first.’ – It can only happen in Israel.

INT: Absolutely, everyone has an opinion.

RS: So I was allowed to stay in Tel Aviv to get acclimatised but eventually actually worked in Sarafan Hospital and when I arrived there I said I wanted to work as a midwife – ‘We don’t need midwives’ She looked at my certificate and said ‘We need somebody like you for the children’s wards’.

So I said ‘I don’t mind where I work, if that’s where you want me to work I’ll work there’

And that’s what I did and eventually had two wards. There were one hundred children but it was a very, very interesting, very difficult time, but very interesting time. It was still a time when there were so many survivors coming in. Israel was in turmoil, it was just trying, it had just fought a war. They had tremendous difficulties, they couldn’t pay us and we just had tokens so we could have dinner or meals in the hospital. But there was a camaraderie there, which perhaps isn’t quite the same today as it was then.

And it was a tremendous education. It was really quite tremendous. And I remember I had one of the nurses, she was not a trained nurse, had been in a concentration camp and Chaya just walked round the ward singing all the time and some of the young nurses were saying ‘You know, she’s not really pulling her weight’, complaining to me, so I said ‘Well how can I help Chaya’ So I spoke to her, I said ‘Let’s have a wee chat. How can I help you to make life easier for you? What is the particular problem?’

And she said ‘We have so many babies on drips’ (Some of these babies were extremely dehydrated) and she said ‘If these drips stop and the babies die, I couldn’t stand it’. So I said ‘Look I do look after these things, I’m sure, I’ll make sure that the drips are running, that there is no swelling of tissue. But if it’s easier for you why not take a chair, take a baby who needs to be fed and you can still watch the drips.’ And she did that and that seemed to calm her a little bit. There was another one who was just walking around like a zombie. I mean the people were really in a terrible state some of them. The mental hospitals in Israel at the time were full of people like that.

INT: They would be.

RS: But they were trying to give work to as many people as possible and then of course there were people coming in from the Yemen, from Morocco and the area that the hospital was in, in fact had a lot of Yemenites and a lot of Moroccans. And it was, it was fascinating actually to watch how people were actually absorbed and how they themselves contributed in their own way.

INT: So why did you decide to leave Israel because it sounded a very exciting time?

RS: Yes I was asked to become, to take charge of the maternity hospital in Tiberias and I was quite interested in that and then I heard from my sister that she was expecting a baby and was due any time, that her husband was mentally unwell. He was actually admitted to Crichton Royal. And my mother had difficulty walking due to the problems that she developed during the war and I felt that I had a responsibility towards them. I couldn’t leave it all to my sister, that was wrong, so I went back.

INT: So you came back to Glasgow and did you go back into midwifery?

RS: No I went back into Sick Children’s.

INT: Right

RS: And became a Ward Sister at Yorkhill and decided that it was really time I moved up the ladder, (I was very keen on teaching) that I wanted to do the tutor’s course.

INT: Right

RS: I went into the classroom (and I did some teaching before the course. There is an episode there which wasn’t successful as far as I was concerned). However while I was there I realised I always had the feeling that the theoretical part of the training, of any nursing training, was really very badly thought through and particularly the sick children’s ones. It was based on the general nursing and there was no attempt made really to look at the variations, the differences between the child and the adult. And there were no books available on the management of procedures pertaining to nursing children so I decided I would write a book. That was the first book I wrote and Miss Clarkston was very encouraging. So I wrote the first and the second edition but I still felt that my own knowledge was actually so limited that I could not write a book which really encompassed not only basic nursing but looked at anatomy, physiology, psychology and all different aspects which should really be included in a course of that kind. But that had to wait until I married.

INT: So tell me how you met Joe?

RS: One day, oh yes, during, while I was doing midwifery I had delivered Mary…

INT: Mary Finkel

RS: Mary Finkel’s daughter. She had been at Redlands and I delivered her baby so she knew of me. Joe evidently was without a girlfriend, so I’m told, and my sister said we were invited out to Mary Finkel’s. I said ‘What for?’

‘Well it’s quite nice to meet other people’ says she. And Mendel [Plotkin] was going to take us because we didn’t have a car.

INT: And Mendel was Mary’s brother

RS: Correct, that’s right. So Mendel took me and Betty to Mary Finkel’s and when we arrived at Finkel’ s there were other women there; two other women and a man and I hadn’t a clue who they were. And we had our meal, we talked and once we finished and we were going home Mendel said to me ‘I’m not taking you home. Joe can take you home.’ I said ‘Why should you not take me home?’

‘I’m not taking you home. Joe has to take you home.’

So Joe went into his car, I had no idea who he really was. I was very naïve let me tell you.

INT: Absolutely

RS: And when Joe took his sisters (I didn’t know they were his sisters) home then took me home and then he said to me ‘Can I see you again?’

I said ‘What for?’

He said ‘I’m interested in you’

I said ‘But you’re married’

He said ‘I’m not married.’

I said ‘Well who were these others?’

‘They were my sisters’

INT: And how many years have you and Joe been married?

RS: Well it was a very, very short…During that time he was away doing tropical trials.

INT: Right

RS: So I didn’t see much of him. I said, Ach well there’s nothing more coming off, that’s it, forgot all about it. And then he came back and then he wanted to continue, which we did. So that year we actually got married.

INT: Right, and you’ve been married how long?

RS: Fifty-two years.

INT: Which is, these days, I have to say Rosa, remarkable; just wonderful. And you have had two daughters.

RS: Yes. But actually all I can say – I couldn’t have married a better person. Not only did he bully me into improving my education, I have rarely met anybody like it. I mean I have these two children, I went to evening classes, went to Glasgow University, extra mural classes, that, it was quite tremendous. And then Joe became a Counsellor at the Open University and he said to me ‘Why don’t you join the Open University?’

I said ‘No way, couldn’t do that’

‘Of course’ he said ‘You could’.

So he bullied me into it.

INT: And one of the things I have to say Rosa, is that your book is still in Glasgow Caledonian University.

RS: Yes. I think actually it is one of the best things I’ve done. When I look at nurses’ books, nowadays, I don’t find them very informative but that book which I then, I had the first and second edition and it was also translated into Spanish and Indonesian, Bahasa, I mean I thought these were really good books. It covered embryology, it covered anatomy, physiology, it covered psychology and it covered disease processes and nursing management of children.

INT: Which is very important, very important.

RS: And to my mind there isn’t a book like it. I’m not being facetious about it.

INT: No, no.

RS: I really mean that.

INT: No I know what you mean. There are but they’re all in different books.

RS: Absolutely.