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
I went to Bradford first to secure the job. Irene’s papers weren’t quite ready so she came 6 weeks afterwards. I still remember, I had never crossed the Channel of course. I went with the train to Holland and then with the boat over to Dover, then to London. In London some of those committee … Read more
We had the same job in the household. We were in interned (in the Isle of Man) together. After the internment we both worked in the same factory sharing the same room until Irene and I got married we both were continuously together and we really were good friends which helped tremendously to have always … Read more
I was born on the 9th December 1916 in Kreigshaber which is on the outskirts of Augsburg, (Bavaria, Germany). We lived in a very spacious villa. We lived on the first floor and Lee (Fischer ) and her parents lived on the ground floor. My parents were very loving well adjusted people and in our … Read more
INT: One of the very interesting things as well which I think happened Moniek, was the fact of your family being traced. MG: Oh yes. INT: Yes. MG: This was. I didn’t know what had happened to my family and I actually tried to keep a low profile on the basis that if any of … Read more
MG:I then went to London and wrote to London University, sat an entrance exam and got through and then I realised that my one thousand and something pounds was not going to stretch to take a degree so then I got a job in Bradford, again in textiles which wasn’t very much. Then I got … Read more
Then in 1945, just two/three months after the war, the Polish government sent me to Oxford. So I was escorted to the commanding officer’s office and told to pack my kit bag and off to England. INT: To go to Oxford University? MG: Yes. INT: Why you? MG: This is a letter from my commanding … Read more
INT: And the rest of your town, what happened to them? The 80%? MG: I would say 95% were probably executed.INT: Right. MG: In two actions. I don’t remember the details actually. My cousin was particularly interested in this MG: Yes. It’s not just himself; several people took part in it. So, some people did … Read more