Interview Transcript Interviewer: You had escaped from the prisoner of…well the concentration camp, what happened then? Rita McNeill: I was taken by my aunt to her home and I stayed there a week or so with my cousin and then I was put on a train to come over here. And they kept saying, “Your… Continue Reading Rita McNeill – Immigration
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… Continue Reading Rita McNeill – Life Before The War
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… Continue Reading Renate Mackay – Reflection On Life
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… Continue Reading Renate Mackay – Integration
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,… Continue Reading Renate Mackay – Settling In
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,… Continue Reading Renate Mackay – Immigration
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… Continue Reading Renate Mackay – Life Before The War
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… Continue Reading Pat Anson – Reflection On Life
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… Continue Reading Pat Anson – Settling In
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… Continue Reading Pat Anson – Immigration
