Rita describes her new life in Rutherglen, Scotland. She talks about the difficulties and challenges she faced and the impossibility of remaining Jewish in this new environment. INT: And whereabouts in Scotland was that? [Where were you taken?] RM: Rutherglen. INT: Ah, and that’s why you ended up here? RM: That’s it. But I couldn’t … Read more
Rita describes her journey from Germany to Britain and her continuing belief that her mother would be arriving there too. INT: You had escaped from the prisoner of…well the concentration camp, what happened then? RM: I was taken by my aunt to her home and I stayed there a week or so with my cousin … Read more
Rita describes her family background in Hannover, Germany and the night the Nazis arrested her and her mother. She explains how she was able to escape but that her mother did not. INT: Good morning Rita. I’m here to interview Rita McNeill. Rita, could we begin by asking you where you were born? When you … Read more
Renate talks about her love of Scottish scenery. She then tells the interviewers about her children and grandchildren. INT: I know that your life took on many twists and turns after that but we have to come to a close and ask you a couple more questions. If you look back now on your time in … Read more
Renate talks about her career in nursing. She describes the coincidences that led to her meeting her first husband, Fred Goldschmidt. INT: And at the end of school you decided to become a nurse, am I right in saying? RM: Yes, well, my older brother, who had gone to University at a time when a lot of … Read more
Renate describes her experiences as a schoolgirl in St Andrews’s. INT: Now let’s just take you to St Andrews, Renate. They must have been very pleased to have your uncle because he’d come from such a prestigious position as Director of the Einstein Tower in Potsdam. Tell us about what happened when you got there. RM: Well, … Read more
Renate explains that her father was in St Andrews in Scotland being interviewed for a job on the day the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia. Renate then talks about Lawrie Wardale, the man she calls her “Scarlet Pimpernel,” who brought her and her family to safety in St Andrews in Scotland. INT: So, eventually you had to leave, … Read more
Renate describes her family background. She talks about her mother’s premature death, her father’s arrest and the reason she was adopted by her mother’s sister and her husband. Her new ‘father’ was the eminent astronomer, Erwin Finlay Freundlich, and she soon found herself joining him and her aunt, first in Turkey and then Prague. INT: Today … Read more
All in all I must say I have been extremely lucky. People have been enormously friendly, even when we worked and more work and things were rationed people would invite us to share their meals in their houses when food and everything was very, very short. There was never any word of being the enemy … Read more
The food on the Isle of Man was very British which our landlady cooked – we were all dying for potato salad. Whenever we had to peel the potatoes we kind of pinched one or two potatoes and put them inside the gramophone and when our landlady went for the day to Douglas we took … Read more