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Gathering The Voices Scotland

Gathering The Voices Scotland

Testimonies of Holocaust survivors who settled in Scotland

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Karola Regent – Settling In

INT:     And then after the war, what happened after the war?  Did you go on to university, did you get a job?

PR:     You had to do war work during the war.

KR:     Yes, I did some war work, now what was it, yes, because of my ability to speak German, the Ministry of Economic Warfare, I had to do translations and plan routes for our troops to, in Germany where to go and so on.

INT:     That’s a very responsible job for a young girl?

KR:     It was, yeah [laughter].

INT:     And were you still at school at this time or had you left school?

KR:     Oh, I had left school.

PR:     You were 18 and liable for national service, national service at 18.

KR:     Yes.

INT:     That would have been very responsible indeed.  And then what happened after the war ended?

PR:     You could have gone to Germany with the Control..

KR:     What?

PR:     You could have gone to Germany with the Control Commission?

KR:     I didn’t.

PR:     But you chose not to.

KR:     Yes, I could have gone to Germany with the Control Commission, but I didn’t, I wanted to go to university and so I took a crash course in Latin, which one needed in those days and other courses.  And applied and got into Bedford College in Regents Park.

INT:     To study what?

KR:     English literature, English and literature in particular and I had to do Anglo-Saxon of course [laughter].

PR:     How could you afford to go to university?

INT:     Did you get a grant?

KR:     A grant, didn’t I [say] , oh yes, because I’d worked for the war work, for the Minister of Economic Warfare, so I got a grant.

INT:     That was very good.

INT:     Were you still living with Lotte at that time?

KR:     Yes.

INT:     And were you aware by the end of the war that your parents had perished?

KR:     Well, in 1942 we heard that father had died.

KR:     A Red Cross letter, yes.  And we didn’t know quite what happened to my mother, ever did we?

PR:     No.  They were

KR:     We think she was taken to ?

PR:     Lodz.

INT:     Going to back to your studies after you got your degree did you go into teaching or what did you do with it?

KR:     Well I did have to do some teaching, yes, I went into teaching, but I didn’t really want to stay in teaching, so I took a course in shorthand and typing and applied for a job in a paper for, on a paper.  And this was a sort of a weekly paper I think, but then afterwards I switched to a very good daily paper and wrote, I wrote reports and that sort of thing, but I had my own, what was it called?

INT:     Column, your own column?

KR:     I wrote a diary, I pretended to be somebody or other and wrote a regular diary.

INT:     Oh, that’s great, for which newspaper?

KR:     The Eastern Daily Press.

INT:     Oh, very good.

KR:     In Norwich.

INT:     Excellent.

INT:     And when did you meet your husband?

KR:     Well, I was married before, but not for long, he got, it was the year of the flu, when everybody died of, you know, and he died and that’s when I went into journalism.  And I didn’t meet my husband until, we got married in 19.. [laughter]

INT: So you were going to tell us when you met your partner, your current partner Peter and where

INT:     So you think you met in 1954?

PR:     Well, this is the story there you’re often telling the world, I’ll leave you to tell it. It’s a very unexciting story. Do you not recall?

INT:     You tell us.

KR:     Well, I remember seeing him, when I used to with my boss go for walks I used to see a handsome young chap sitting under a tree reading and I …

INT:     And that was Peter?

PR:     I’d come down from university at a loose end, I was working as a forestry labourer, in fact, in my hometown and I was applying for jobs and I needed someone to type my curriculum vitae. I had no typewriter, it looked better if it was typed.  And so I asked a friend to do this because I knew he ran a typing school and he said yes, on one condition you can come and help with the church fete.  And I went to help the church fete and she was the reporter that came.

KR:     Yes, I was a reporter then and that’s right, that’s how we met.

INT:     And did you come to Scotland soon after that or did you spend most of your married life in England.

KR:     No, no, we came to Scotland when my daughter was eight and she’s now 50 something, she’s now about 55.

INT:     So in the 1960s you came to Scotland?

KR:     Yeah, I think.

INT:     What brought you to Scotland and to this beautiful house overlooking the Tay?

KR:     Anyway, I got a job here.

INT:     As a reporter here?

KR:     I was teaching to begin with and then yes.

INT:     And so you have a daughter?

KR:     Yes, just one daughter.

INT:     Lovely, and does she live in Scotland?

KR:     No, she lives in Bristol and she’s, you may have seen some of her programme, wildlife programmes on television.

INT:     She’s a producer of these programmes?

KR:     Well, she has produced some of these, but she’s now freelancing.  Yes, she had a regular spot of wildlife things on, Peter will remember better than I, and she still does some wildlife work, but she lives in Bristol.

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Listen to the Testimony

https://gatheringthevoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/karola-regent-settling-in.mp3Press the play button to listen

Links to Other Testimonies by Karola Regent

Life Before The War
Life During The War
Immigration
Integration
Settling In
Reflection On Life
School Naming

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