before

Esperance David – Before the War

Int: Today is the 18th May 2015, and we are here to interview Esperance David. Hello Esperance.

ED: Hello.

Int: Could you begin and tell us when you were born?

ED: The 7th of May, 1929. (laughter).

Int: Where were you born? And what was your name at birth?

ED: I was born in Baghdad, and my name was Esperance Ovadia.

Int: And what language did you speak?

ED: Arabic, Jewish Arabic.

Int: Is that different?

ED: Yeah, well not very different. It’s kind of, well, botched up Jewish Arabic. A pidgin Arabic if you like.

Int: Can you tell us a little bit about your family life in Baghdad? Did you have brothers and sisters?

ED: I have three brothers and one sister.

Int: What did your father do?

ED: My Dad was an auditing accountant. He worked in the financial office in the Ministry of Finance, in Baghdad. That’s in Iraq of course.

Int: When he was at work did he speak the Jewish Arabic, or could he?

ED: No, no, because they were not Jewish. The state was Muslim, Arab Muslim. It’s not a different language, but the Jewish Arabic has got a bit of a quirk in it, you know. They understand it, and we understand their language, but there are sometimes terms and expressions, and even the accents, sometimes are a bit different.

Int: Tell us about your family life. Was it fun to grow up in Baghdad?

ED: It was fun, it was good. We made our own fun. We lived in a community. They were mostly Jewish in our area, but there were some Arab Muslims there, but we lived together. There was no hiding, but we did not really mix with them. My Dad happened to be working with them, but the schools we went to were Jewish schools. The Alliance Israelite Universaire, that’s a universal[international] Jewish school. They have them in France and in other places as well. But ours was established in Baghdad by someone who was well off in the family, and very well known. Yes, it was a very nice, excellent school.

Int: Was that the common way that things were done? That Jewish children went into Jewish schools?

ED: They were private schools, and there were some who really were very, kind of not really affluent, not poor, but they were not in the bracket where they can afford private Jewish schools. There were some other schools. This wasn’t the only one. The one we went to, and my family, was one of the best. It was a public school in terms of the English schools. Public, not in state school, it was a private school.

Int: Did you have Jewish studies in the school? Did you learn Hebrew?

ED: We learnt the alphabet,we were kind of allowed, but very reluctantly to really learn at school. And at my school we learnt a little bit, nothing to speak. Just we learnt the alphabet, and we learnt to read one or two paragraphs from the Seder books, and things like that. We went to shul, the service was conducted in Hebrew, and we were allowed that. But very kind of reluctantly we were allowed to do these things, and we always had to kind of look behind our shoulders, [that] kind of thing.

We did have a lot of incidents. I suppose like here, when it is high festivals, we were known ‘these are the Jewish people’, going to the synagogue and we were looked down upon [by the Arabs]. But sometimes they were a bit nasty, but not physically, you know.

Int: You mean like name calling and such stuff?

ED: Name calling, yes, and they didn’t do name calling but they were kind of hostile a bit to the idea, but they didn’t do anything. But occasionally they did create problems in the synagogue,people coming [in]. You know, being aggressive, creating a fight if you like, and making life a bit uncomfortable.

Int: Was this organised by the government or was this just individuals?

ED: For sure it was very much the [Muslim] community. It was not organised, just the Muslim public you know.

Int: So that must have been something that marred your childhood a little. Did it? Were you very conscious of that as a young person?

ED: Yes, yes. But not, I mean, we didn’t live with it consciously, we lived our own life, but that was there. I mean we knew it was there. For example; if I walked to school, which is about a twenty minutes’ walk, and it’s very early in the morning, I would go along the river. There were little vendors, they were only teenagers. I must have been something like nine years old at that time, and I would just have to look away, pretending that I’m not seeing them. But they would pass snide remarks and would give very kind of rude, obscene gestures, and that’s terrifying for a nine year old. But I would hoof it and just get out of that place.

Int: So that would be 1938 time?

ED: Yeah.

Int: So while things were happening in Europe. Did you know what was happening in Europe?

ED: Oh yes. Oh yes. We did. I mean not as a child, I was not bothered by that. My Dad is a very good reader and he knew what it was, and we always listened to the radio. And then they [The Arabs] became very anti Jewish at that time, and very pro fascist Hitler.

Int: So you felt the difference because of what was happening in Europe?

ED: Oh yes, oh yes. Absolutely, absolutely. We were more cautious really. We didn’t, we lived very carefully and tried not to create anything. But otherwise we lived our life just as normal as we could. We didn’t allow it to kind of stop us doing things. We had clubs,The community was more maybe like here for us, a lot of family you know, aunties and uncles, and cousins, so we didn’t need anyone from outside if you like.

Int: I remember you told me your Father was limited in his work because of his background, because he was Jewish.

ED: No he wasn’t limited in his work, not at all. He was quite exploited really. He worked in an office, a quite responsible job. His boss was a Muslim Arab from the government, and he did all the work, and his salary was very kind of low compared, when he was doing the work, but he wasn’t paid. And a colleague of m his, used to say while smoking a cigarette, “Well you do all the work and we enjoy it” kind of thing. And he didn’t mind doing all the work because he was good at it. He just got on with it, and that’s it. But it was very difficult when the pay was very low. The same people in the same office I should imagine had much more pay really.

Int: So you come from a Sephardic background.

ED: Yes.

Int: So we have a traditional Friday night. So what do you have on a Friday night?

ED: We are Jews you know! Well back home we did. I live here it’s different for me.

Int: Yeah, so what sort of things…you’d have on a Friday night?

ED: Yes, you’d get the family around, and my Dad used to have the glass of wine. And he said the Kiddush, you know, eating chicken and all this kind of thing, and candles, My Mum used the candles. And you don’t buy the candles like you do here. We had kind of a little bowl with water and oil, the real old fashioned thing. And things that my Mum used to make, like a kind of a little stick, with cotton wool, and dip it in the oil and light it until the oil finished, and there is water underneath and that’s it, very old things, yeah.

Int: Traditions. Had your parents lived there many many years? Your grandparents and before that. Had they lived in Baghdad for long?

ED: Yes, I knew my grandparents. They were all from Baghdad. Yes, I go as far as my granddad. Beyond that I don’t really know. I just heard about them you know. Like my Dad’s father, he used to write. So for him in the shul, handwriting, he was very good.

Int: What about the size of the community? It must have been a very large community. Do you have any idea how big it was?

ED: I wouldn’t say we lived in ghettos, but you can tell in Newton Mearns [Glasgow] there’s a lot of Jews here. And where we were in Batawiin there were a lot of Jewish people there. But not exclusively. It’s not like a ghetto; there were a lot of nice homes for Arabs to live there as well. But they kept to themselves, and we kept to ourseves.

Int: And what types of youth club did you go to?

ED: Well at that time I was too busy studying. I was an eight / nine year old if I remember. And the clubs arrived much later. Social clubs, they would meet and they would blether, and they would gossip and discuss things. Mostly it was the men, but then the women started joining too.

Int: Were they Zionistic?

ED: No. Oh don’t mention that word in Baghdad. It’s enough to be Jewish. If they call you a Zionist, you know.

We had soldiers from the Haganah, [they were ]Polish soldiers, and we did have underground classes, and my Dad used to cringe and get upset because if they [the Muslims]knew, [ that would be difficult as the Polish soldiers] were Zionists. This what they did and they taught us the Hebrew and that wasn’t really in the open.

Bob Mackenzie – Life Before the War

I was born in the town of Chemnitz in South East Germany. I do not recollect my very early years but in 1933 my father lost his job in Chemnitz and we moved to a small town called Neukirchen, about five miles from Chemnitz. My parents bought a semi-detached house with a large piece of ground attached, probably about one and a half acres. As I remember my father took on any type of work available: driving, painting, road building etc and life for my sister and I was quite normal. Our household consisted of my paternal grandfather, my father, my mother, my sister and myself. On our piece of ground we kept a goat which supplied milk, we kept hens which supplied the eggs and while my father was working my mother and grandfather worked on our land. We grew our own vegetables and had an orchard with various fruit trees.

Below our house was a deep cellar and I can remember my mother storing the apples and pears in the cellar for winter use. Although my grandfather was Jewish I cannot remember him attending any Jewish religious service. My father was also Jewish but my mother was of the Lutheran faith and my sister and I were brought up also in the Lutheran faith. We were regular attendees at the church every Sunday but unfortunately because of my father’s Jewish background the whole family was classified as Jewish by the Nazi regime, even though my mother had never embraced the Jewish religion. At five years old I went to the local school. I never experienced any feeling of being an outsider. I played with the lads of my own age; they came to my house to play and I went to theirs. I may be wrong but I think we were the only Jewish family in the town and no one appeared to bother.

One day we came home from school to find my father gone. My mother didn’t say where he had gone to and about two or three months later he appeared again, only then did my sister and I find out that he had been away to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Why, we did not know… On reflection and on information gathered during research for this talk it seems possible that my father was one of the many Jews who had been rounded up during Kristallnacht. Not long after my father returned, my sister and I were told we would be going on a journey. My mother packed a suitcase for each of us and we were taken to the railway station to be put on a train.

Dorrith M. Sim – Life Before The War

Dorrit describes the events surrounding Kristallnacht and the Kindertransport.

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INT: Good afternoon Dorrith. It’s the 26th of September 2010 and I’m here to talk to Dorrith Sim. Dorrith, could you begin by telling us when and where you were born and what was your name at birth?

D.S: I was born in Kassel in Germany in 1931, December ’31 and my name was Oppenheim. Dorrith Marianne Oppenheim – it’s a mouthful.

INT: Dorrith I haven’t asked you about your family life before you came to the UK.

D.S: It was very happy.

INT: You found out why your parents never made it – do you want to tell us a wee bit about that?

D.S: That’s all I know. Mummy Gallimore (Dorrith’s foster mother, Sophie Gallimore) had told (her own daughter) Rosalind that the reason that they never got over here, was because the Nazis said that my father had bronchitis and they wouldn’t let him travel over. And my mother wouldn’t have gone on her own, you know.

INT: And you were an only child?

D.S: I was an only child but I had a happy childhood there. I mean when I hear about other people, you know, and when it was Kristallnacht.

INT: What job had your father had before?

D.S: He was in the same firm for twenty-six years and it was in a foundry. He was a ‘Kaufmann’ and that’s sort of the German for businessman.

I don’t know what he would do. I don’t think he was working with his hands, I think he was in the office.

At Kristallnacht, I had gone to school on my own that day and it was awful. They were vandalising the school and this man had said to me “You’d better go home because it’ll be a long time until you’re back at school again.” And I ran to my grandparents’ house which was quite a distance. My grandmother, she must have had a phone I think, phoned and my father and mother came. My father said, “I think we’re in for a lot of trouble.” I think that would be the day before Kristallnacht. And then he said, “We’ve got to go to the Waisenhaus.” That was the Jewish orphanage.

The kids there had had a bad time but I hadn’t, I was lucky.

INT: And why were you sent to the Jewish orphanage?

D.S: I wasn’t sent, I just visited with my father. It was my father who said, “We’ll need to go to the Jewish orphanage” and he took the children home with him. He took about four children home with him when he found out what had happened at the Jewish school. Then Nazis came. They wrecked our house and the children’s orphanage where many of the children had parents who were in camps by that time. They threw Molotov cocktails through the windows, and the children there had to put the fires out themselves. They didn’t take my mother away but they took my father away but he got back.

INT: It was brave of your parents to send you off as well. As an only child it must have taken a lot of courage.

D.S: I know. There’s a story about this man and he didn’t want his daughter to go in the Kindertransport. He wanted to keep her and he actually pulled that child out of the train window. I think the doors were shut. And that kid went through all these concentration camps – it was terrible.

D.S: Korolla Regent and her sister went away on the Kindertransport and their father jumped onto the footplate on the back of the train and hung on until he saw his children safely into Holland. And then he went back to Germany.

Bob Kutner – Life Before The War

In this section Bob describes his childhood. He was born in Germany into a Polish-Jewish family. The family moved to France and then to Italy when Hitler came to power in 1933.

INT2: When were you born and what was your name when you were born?

BK: My name was Norbert Kutner, and I was born on the 13th of January, 1924 and in a place called Chemnitz (C H E M N I T Z) in Germany. Chemnitz is near Leipzig…

INT2: Yes, I was going to actually ask where it was near?

BK: …Saxony

INT1: And your family in fact had… were they Germans or had they…

BK: No…

INT1: …moved to Germany?

BK: My parents were probably not for the better, for the worst were Poles. So we were really Polish, Jewish immigrants… from Poland. I was born in Germany though.

INT1: Now I’ve heard before about your early years. I know that you’ve had a most exciting set of experiences that eventually did lead you to the UK. So, would you like to tell a little about them?

BK: Yes. Most are in my book, but since the listeners probably won’t have read the book and, yes, first of all… um… in Italy, under Mussolini, we were

refugees from Germany, to France to Italy. Cos France was just as bad. And in Italy we came under Mussolini of course. Um… and then my brother, not…I got into political trouble and he spied for the French. So he was caught by the Italians and put in jail at the age of 19 or 20. I can’t remember. And he served… sorry, he was sentenced to 30 I repeat, 30 years imprisonment

INT1: What was he doing… in what way was he spying?

BK: He was spying for the French and sending information from Italy on… this is unbelievable. He was told to count the number of military aircraft; bomber aircraft…

INT1: Can we go back again now, where… maybe I should have begun with what happened after um… I suppose it must have been after Hitler came into power in Germany, how did it affect your family and then what then happened to you?

BK: To the best of my recollection, remember I was 9 years old, 10 years old; and Polish Jews, foreign Jews knew they were in for a hard time under Hitler who had come to power in ’33

INT2: Mm

BK: Um…. German Jews thought they were safe – they had been in the war fighting for Germany, they’d had their medals, their ribbons so they thought, “we’ll be alright. But these bloody, dirty Jews from the East let’s get rid of them.” Believe me the German Jews were as pleased to get rid of us as the Nazis were. So my father had to make the decision to stay or run, and we ran which was the best decision he ever made because they caught up with the German Jews soon after.

So we left Germany, and by the way stop me if it’s too detailed but…

INT1: No

BK: …We left Germany and went to France to a small town called Neuville. It was a charming little town, and I remember there as a little boy it was a lovely, idyllic life. Everything a child could want; including a wonderful school, where I learned French from the bottom up with no difficulty and found that I can’t sing but I can do languages. So um, I went to school there and learned French pretty well, made a lot of childhood friends, and then my father went broke. He started a little business by Neuville.

My father was quite good at going broke as you find out in the later years. So we moved to Paris thinking that was salvation and, as many people know, Paris was as anti-Semitic as anywhere else, in fact, it was highly organized anti-Semitism. The only thing is it was never officially recognized. The difference there was they didn’t give you labour permits or permission to do anything so you starved on your own quietly. I discovered, but this was afterwards, there was a Jewish refugee organization which took care of young kids like me. In my case they sent me to Switzerland to stay with a Swiss family for a few weeks and I fell in love with them. They were very good to me.

So I went back to France to the same misery, by the way we had one room and kitchen for the five of us. When you came in at night and switched on the light, the bed was covered in lice And have you seen lice- the little, tiny black things. I think they were black. Um and the minute you switch on the light they disappear – it was like bang bang magic. But the next morning all the blood spurts were all over the sheets

This I have a clear vision of – I was ten, eleven by then. Anyway that was awful life, awful, and my father couldn’t get permission to work so with little money we had, if any, went. Then my father got cancer and cancer in the middle thirties was something else.

It’s bad now but it was unbelievable, it was death sentence anyway and he was taken to a hospital that looked like… something out the movies, really horrible. I went to see him, it was very hard. And when he came home again, he came home to die. And I do remember, just happened to be the last son with him, and he looked at me and said, “Norbert” and died. Another memory, a definite one. And … then… the misery started in because we had no money. We couldn’t live. My mother took in lodgers, what doesn’t kill anybody, but she had to take in lodgers who took up most of our bedroom space in our flat in Italy. But anyway life in Milan had been pretty good until this thing with my father, and then it became terrible and then Mussolini started…

INT2: We thought you were in Paris

INT1: You were in Paris, you were in Paris

BK: Oh sorry, sorry, of course. Well we left Paris with great difficulty. Oh no… I been sent back to Switzerland again to those lovely people and stayed with them for 6 months. And then had to start school all over again- not the language, but the history, the geography, everything, all from the bottom. I was started in the bottom class but was promoted very quickly to my own level. So that was Switzerland 6 months in bliss with a wonderful family. The guy was quite an important big shot in his own village and it was lovely.

And they were good to me. And then I got word from my parents not to come back to Paris but to go straight to Milan. I started school again there, again from the bottom. All of it, the language and whole works. Again it didn’t come to me very hard. I wasn’t a particularly good student but languages yes

So that was life in Milan. And for a couple of years it was great until my father got cancer, then everything collapsed. As I said, my mother started taking in lodgers, and when…

INT1: You mentioned five of you… were you?

BK: Brother and sister

INT1: Brother…and were you the oldest?

BK: My big brother…no I was the youngest

INT1: Right.

BK: My brother was 6 years older than me, my sister four years older. My brother was very much the leader in every kind of mischief, he was the leader. So, when the Mussolini thing got very difficult because although, to begin with life in Italy was lovely. The Italians didn’t know from anti-Semitism. They had no idea, they didn’t want to know I think. But then suddenly because of pressure from Hitler, Mussolini introduced an official anti-Semitic policy.

Alice Malcolm – Life Before the War

INT: Alice Malcolm, in her house in Giffnock on Tuesday the 11th of March and you’re going to tell me your name, your age…

AM: 2014.

INT: 2014. You’re going to tell me your name and your age and then we are going to, basically, talk about your life story. So go for it.

AM: Very good, very good. I am, as declared, Mrs Alice Malcolm and I am eighty-nine and I hope to celebrate my ninetieth birthday in August.

INT: OK. So basically I’m going to ask you to just talk through your life story and I will prompt you if you stop. So start at the beginning; tell me about…Tell me about growing up, tell me about your family, your background, where it all started?

AM: Well I was born in Vienna, my mother was Viennese, my father came from Istanbul, Turkey, and unfortunately my father died young and my mother was a very young widow. And in those days young… woman didn’t work but my mother had to work. She was extremely talented and very beautiful, and so she had various jobs. I went to the same school as where my mother went. In 1936 I was twelve and Hitler’s Nazi regime was raging in Germany. Everybody in Austria was worried. Well my mother at that time was working in a political office, which was Social Democratic (it would be called here now) and she was called by her boss into the office with windows and doors closed and locked.

Basically she was told that, although on the front their office was still democratic, they were already taken over by the Germans and he would have to dismiss her at once and if she did not leave Austria within the week, or yesterday if possible, both she and he would be dead meat. He declared that he would destroy all records of her having worked there because she was Jewish and he understood that she was a widow. I came home from school that day, not to home because I always went to the business which my grandmother ran, and my mother to my surprise was sitting there, telling my grandmother what I have just said. So…Mum took me, snow white in the face as she was then, by the hand to buy an international newspaper, I think it was The London Times, and from there we went [to see] an English teacher to whom she said, “Find me a job at once.

The only way I can get out of here is by going into domestic service in England. ” He did and when we left there we went to a photographer to get these passport photos. I was inwardly shaking. The only idea that I had, that I was going to be on my own, no mother and no father. But I was already living with my grandmother. My mother left very, very quickly and I continued at school[in Vienna] for two more years.

INT: Wow.

AM: Nobody knew that Hitler was coming in 1938. However, I was in a class of forty [students]; twenty of us were Jewish. We normally didn’t really mix very well with the non-Jewish girls and they didn’t mix well with us, but we were not with ‘pistols at the ready’ [so to speak].

Well, from there on I start my life that you want to know now. I just continued at school and corresponded with my mother. She obviously was not expected, or wanted, to come back, but she was a heroine. She [only] came back [once] to warn her own friends and my friends’ parents if they had any relatives to let the children go.

INT: Wow.

AM: We were not allowed to see her; she did not live at home because we didn’t know [which civilians were already part of the Nazi party]. I found out later that my grandmother’s next-door neighbour came out the day Hitler marched in, in full SS uniform.

INT: Wow.

AM: His mother was a friend of my grandmother’s; they both came from the same village. But we didn’t know until that day that her son [had joined the Nazi party]. And I wonder whether she [his mother] even was aware of it. However, that was it. 1938 came; the shock to me was so severe. My brother was not [living] with my grandmother and me at that time and when he came the following morning he said, asked me, what had happened to me. I said “Nothing. I was in the house with Grandmother”, who had earphones and turned pure white when Schuschnigg, who was the President of Austria, announced on the radio, “God Bless Austria, you are now being taken over by the Nazi regime.” And poof! I heard the bang through the earphones. They shot him because of what he said. [Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg, the man who had defied Hitler, was arrested by the Gestapo and spent several years in a variety of Nazi concentration camps including Dachau and Sachsenhausen.] My brother said…

INT: And she turned white?

AM: Yes.

INT: Her hair? Or her…?

AM: No…she was…

INT: Her face.

AM: She turned…She had high colour but she was in bed with the earphones. Now, my brother said, “Go to the mirror and see what happened to you.” I went to the mirror and I saw…My cat-green eyes, that everybody remarked on, had changed colour. I didn’t realise the depth of the shock that I personally received. But we carried on going to school, coming home and taking the remarks we got from other pupils. Then…

INT: Remarks like what?

AM: “Don’t speak to me,” “Just don’t associate…”

INT: Wow.

AM: There was one little girl; she was very small, and she was the baker’s daughter. She was very ill, she had broken glands, mumps had broken through, and she was very sweet and she sort of whispered to me, “You can still come and buy cakes.” But, as for the rest… we knew we had to get out. The very next day I saw what nobody should see, let alone a child.

The worst…adult men with hats and coats, in particular Jewish looking men, religious people, climbing monuments with a toothbrush in their hand and they had to scrub the top of the monuments with a toothbrush and heaven help them if it wasn’t done properly. I stood only for a minute and then ran away…but what did I run into?…Across the road from where we lived with my grandmother then, was a leather shop. The man who owned the shop hung himself with his leather. And various other things… When the bad weather came along I found out that I couldn’t skate anymore. With the shock I lost my balance, not just the colour of my eyes. At school I was very wiry. I could swing off the monkey rings whether there was a safety net or not. I could run on the planks whether they were high or low. [Suddenly] I had no balance; I could do none of it anymore and it never, ever came back.

The way things were, not pleasant to say the least, I wrote a letter to my mother and I said, “If I don’t get out of here quickly I will never get out.” My brother didn’t live with us because it was obvious that men were taken away very quickly and people actually said that the Austrians went mad like the Germans never did.

INT: Wow.

AM: The Germans did things by strategy; the Austrians just let their wrath go wherever. There were some that were helpful, like my grandmother did…sold jewellery, put it into pawn, beautiful linen that she had and she traded that for food for us. You can ask me what you want to know…I can’t carry on unless you ask me.

INT: So tell me a bit about your Jewish life in Austria before all this.

AM: Oh, well I lived very near to the Reform Synagogue that was called Tempelgasse and the beadle, the Shamash of the Orthodox Synagogue, which was in the third district and we lived in the second district, the orthodox Synagogue beadle always invited me because his daughter bore the same name as me, Alice, and we were friends. So he always invited me. But Jewish life was what I made myself. School was seven days but on the Saturday we went in the mornings and to the temple in the afternoons. And the Reform temple was filled to capacity with children because many schools had you come in from eight to one.

INT: But you, did you have Hanukkahs and Shabbat candles and things like that?

AM: When we could afford it because we didn’t have much money.

INT: Right.

AM: And we didn’t have much of anything. My grandmother traded for us to be kept alive and was as cheerful as she could be and cheered us up.

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