gumprich

Walter Gumprich – Reflection On Life

Walter talks about his family and his philosophy of life

INT:So all in all what message would you give to anybody listening to your story? We are going to have a lot of school children listening.

W.G:I think when you look back two thirds is attitude. I don’t want to say successful life, because I do not want to say I have a successful life, but I mean I have a good life and I enjoy life and two thirds of it is attitude.

Unfortunately, a big chunk of that comes from your parents so if you are born in the right circumstances you get more that just a head start.

INT:And your mum must have been a very strong person?

W.G:My dad was pretty strong too. You know I mean my mother was certainly interesting.

They were an interesting pair.

INT:Your sister went to Israel?

W.G:My sister married in 1953 and moved to Israel.

Bridget moved to Israel and got married there and she has lived there ever since. She has four boys and eleven grandchildren. They are all in Israel.

INT: And you married?

W.G: I married in 1964. Tomorrow it will be 50 years – 7^th June.

INT: What is your wife’s name?

W.G: Oh my wife, my wife.

My wife is Lois Kay. We met in Winnipeg. She was just finishing up university and finishing off three years of being Manitoba fencing champion, foil you know, and so I live a dangerous life so you know … every minute. No damage at all.

INT: How many children do you have?

W.G: We have four children. They are all living in Vancouver, in the same area. I can cycle there. The furthest is a 35 minutes cycle run. One daughter lives just across the back lane there and we have five grandchildren. We see them pretty regularly. We bump into them at least once a week.

We live far enough away that we do not see them leave their houses. Every second Friday, we are all together for Friday night supper.

We moved from Saskatoon to Vancouver almost eight years ago.

We decided, as three of them were here, and the one who was in Saskatoon had been working here. They are all very good friends and do all kinds of things together and they have done all their life. The middle two are competitive sailors. For them coming to Saskatoon twice a year – we had the room but it was an awful expense and it meant we did not grow up with the grandchildren.

The climate was not much of a consideration as we got used to the climate.

Walter Gumprich – Integration Into Canada

Walter summarises his working life in Canada

INT:So when you were in Canada and people said, “Who are you? Are you German, Scottish – what were you?

W.G: They just assumed that I was Scottish.

Well I got a job. I got a job within a couple of days, not doing what I wanted, but after 3 months I did.

I was right into the feed business. I was posted to a place called Dauphin, Manitoba, for Canada Packers. They were the biggest in Canada. It was a nice company. Being accepted never came up. It was never a topic of conversation for sure.

INT: Because everybody is an immigrant.

W.G:Yes. There was one man in town, Mr Oliphant. He owned the hardware store. He came from Glasgow when he was six years old. He was an orphan.

When I got to Dauphin I was told to go and see old man Oliphant. He was an older man by then. Nobody could understand him.

So I went to the store, saw Mr Oliphant and spoke to him. He first greeted me. I could not understand a word he said.

I said I was from Glasgow. He spoke quite normal Canadian. He said “That is the reputation I have. Nobody can understand a word I say, except the price!” He was popular; he was a good guy.

He knew his stuff.

He spoke something that was not Glaswegian. It was just something. Anyone from Glasgow would realise this – he made it up on his own.

INT:So you had your job. Later on, was it when you retired that you started working for UNESCO?

W.G:Yea. I worked out of Winnipeg, then Dauphin for 3 years and Northern Manitoba for 3 years and then I moved to Saskatchewan on 19^thNovember 1962 and then worked for International Packers for 25 years and then I did International Consulting for United Nations International Culture Organisation, for the World Bank, CIDA – Canadian International Development Agency –

and they farmed me out to different people. I worked in six continents but I missed one.

INT: Which one was that?

W.G: Antarctica. There you go.

Walter Gumprich – Working Life And Emigration To Canada

Walter explains about his working life after National Service and his decision to emigrate to Canada.

INT: And you were coming back up to Glasgow?

W.G:Glasgow, right absolutely.

INT:So when you arrived in Glasgow, what was the community like then?

W.G: Well, I really wasn’t all that interested. First of all, because we really just circulated in the German Jewish community.

We belonged to Pollokshields Shul, which was just at the end of Leven Street and Maxwell Road there. I mean it was really close and it was turned into a Mosque several years later. And we really just went on High Holidays and Succot and Pesach [Passover].

INT:So there you are, you are back in Glasgow. You’ve done your National Service. What did you do next?

W.G:I started looking for a job – so the long and short of it was that the jobs I was offered didn’t look terribly good; prospects weren’t all that good. I did not mind the initial work at all. It just looked as if I had to get old before I got promoted – that was basically the nuts and bolts of the thing. I think that was generally how things worked. You had to have seniority.

I was working for a guy and after two weeks of sorting Invoices I was getting to know the mix of products that customers wanted.

So if I went to the farm – “I want such and such” – I would ask him does he need this as well, so you know I thought this was okay, showing I was keen. I was memorising all the stuff.

INT-2: You were not just filing; you were absorbing information.

W.G:Yea sure. I was not going to keep my eyes closed. Why not do something with the time. My Dad use to say, very simply, “Don’t waste your time”. He could have said, “Use your time well” – that is the bottom line. So basically if you are doing something it doesn’t matter how stupid the thing is that you are doing maybe you can do it a little better than somebody else, just a little better…. okay.

So the Boss said, ‘We should really be having you do advisory work but you look too young; you do not have credibility.’

INT: Where about in Glasgow was it?

W.G:It was in Kilmarnock but the company was in London. It was BOCM. And so I thought the idea of my getting training somewhere else was almost on a world basis, it wasn’t that it had to be in Glasgow; not that any country was ever mentioned but Dad did business with Canada, in Winnipeg where the grain exchange was and I always thought of experience being all over the place.

So I said, “How would it be if I got some experience overseas?”

“Oh “he said, “That would be wonderful; that puts a different complexion on things. That is experience that is unique and something that customers might be interested in, and the knowledge itself might be of value”.

He said, “Where?” And I thought, got to be an English speaking country. You have Australia, America, Canada. Australia is awful far away but I have a cousin there. I only had two first cousins – one is dead. America just had McCarthyism. That is no good. I don’t like that. It’s not a good way of operating a country and Canada will probably have the same wage scale as America, mainly high, and even better it has got big cars too, which I like.

He said, “Where? Canada. Where about in Canada?” and I said Winnipeg as that was the only place I knew and he said, “Wonderful. Would you want some references?” and I said, “No”.

Okay, the reason why I did not want references was that I wanted to get experience on my own and I didn’t want – ‘He only got the job because they felt sorry. He lost his Dad when he was seventeen’ and all that sort of stuff.

I had to go to the Canadian Consulate in Glasgow and he was very helpful. A young guy… He said, ‘We can offer you a free trip to a job in Canada”.

I said, “That sounds pretty good. Where is it?”

And he said, “It is in Northern Manitoba and you will get a free passage and a contract for three years”. Well that was job security, if ever there was one.

I think all important things over overnight so I said, “I will let you know”. And I came back the next day and I said, “I don’t know the cost of living in Canada and I don’t know exactly where Northern Manitoba is and what the social life is like. Riding in the range has a lot of appeal and it is a lot better than what I did in the Scottish Highlands with the sheep, with an unobedient sheep dog at my tail for two days, after that he was OK. Maybe horses are smarter, but I will look at the contract.

You can put my name on it but I am not going to sign it until I get to Canada and I know what is going on and I will let you know a week after I get there, because by then I will have an idea what is going on. He said that was not exactly what I had in mind but I will pay half, and you will report to the CNR people when you arrive in Winnipeg.

INT:Who is CNR?

W.G:Canadian National Railway. They are the people that sponsor this programme. Maybe CPR – Canadian Pacific Railway, the same thing. Canadian National Railway: they have been colonising Western Canada for the better part of the Century. They were the people that got people out there.

INT: Did they have to do background checks on you?

W.G: Maybe they did. I cannot remember.

INT:Basically they wanted bodies to go out to Canada.

W.G: He knew I had a degree, and I was single. Ten days before I left I got a letter from my father’s brother, who lived in Trinidad, and he said that he had a cousin in Winnipeg. Maybe you should write to him.

So I wrote to him and as I was leaving the house – my mother and I were getting a taxi to the train station because I had a trunk and a big suitcase the Postie, Mr Hawthorn, came running up.

I knew Mr Hawthorn very well as he had been delivering mail for over twenty years. I mean I really knew him. He came running up with a sealed airmail letter. “Walter you need to read this letter from your cousin in Winnipeg. He is going to meet you at the station.” He had opened the letter but that is okay, he was part of the family, but he absolutely made sure that I got this letter.

So the voyage was in February.

I sailed from Liverpool to Halifax but this Consul said, “You can take this boat, and there is no extra charge going Liverpool – Halifax – New York. Not only is the train fare cheaper (for them of course) to New York, but it is a regular train, a regular compartment for regular people whereas the train from Halifax is a glorified cattle car for immigrants, not terribly comfortable at all. So, I recommend that you stay on the boat when you get to Halifax. It is a day’s sail then you get to New York. ‘

The only other thing he told me was that the problem is you have to get a visa as you only have a British Passport to go through the United States. So you have to go to the American Consulate in Glasgow to get the visa, no charge but you have to get it.

But he said they will ask you some questions and don’t be what nowadays they call a smart ass.

When they ask you, “Have been a member of a Communist Party?” just say No. Don’t say, ‘What the hell! I mean what are you trying to do here’.

“Not only that don’t wear a red tie and to be safe where black shoes not brown shoes”.

I did exactly that and I went there and got interviewed by this little kid, the Vice Consul. He said, “Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” I did not say anything. I did not breath. I just said no. So I got to New York.

I took the train. On the train there was a big French Canadian who wanted to see my passport and he saw this two year work permit that I had in there. He said “I am going to give you this.” and I said, “What is it?”

“It is a landed immigrant status”.

I said I didn’t want it because perhaps I would have to do National Service all over again in Canada. I didn’t want to do that.

He said you have to have it or I will throw you off the train. You can’t get into Canada. I said okay, so I got this lousy stamp and that was it. And nowadays that is what everyone had been looking for. It was just a little stamp. I operated with my British passport until 1975 because after three months I was able to vote. I had all the rights of a Canadian Citizen. In 1975 I changed because I had to be a Canadian Citizen as well as a British subject.

Walter Gumprich – National Service

Walter describes his time doing National Service. He tells of a remarkable coincidence: a meeting between a British Major and his father when they were both fighting, though on different sides, in the First World War

W.G:Then I did my 2 years National Service. I could have evaded because I’d been in agriculture. I could have got round it, but I felt that the Government had paid for a lot of my schooling – I mean I had got a bursary through University. So I went in and did my two years.

I volunteered for the Army because by volunteering I could get into what I wanted to. I wanted to get into the Royal Artillery because I did not feature myself being in the infantry which is pretty dangerous, and I certainly did not want to got into the tank corps – sitting in a tin can getting fired at – I didn’t like that.

My father had been in the artillery.

Field artillery is what I preferred because it moved fairly… My Dad was actually in the heavy artillery. My father got his Iron Cross when he was in the German Regiment that looked after what is nowadays called Big Bertha, which was a huge gun, which travelled on railroad tracks.

Interestingly enough when I was at Mons O.C.S, that’s Mons Officer Cadet School (Aldershot). I was being interviewed by a Colonel – I remember his name – Bellamy. He was a First World War man and he looked through my papers and he said, ‘‘Gumprich, I see you volunteered?’’

“Yes, Sir” – you just answered ‘Yes, Sir’ to everything and he said, “Family?” and I said, “Yes, Sir”. “Namely is it a family reason for joining the artillery, following your family.”

And he said, “First World War?”

“Yes Sir.”

”Where? France?”

“Yes, Sir.” He got really interested and he said, “Where?”

He actually had to ask. I did not say something. I kept saying, “Yes Sir” and it sort of got personal, almost.

“It was a place called Lille”, because there were pictures of this church, which was an odd church tower and I had been there and it was definitely Lille, where my father fought.

“When?”

I said, “1916.”

“Oh” he said, “ What is your name again?”

“Gumprich”.

“Shouldn’t I know your father? “

I said “No, Sir.”

“Why?”

“Because he was at the Front. He was in Lens in 1916 and the lines were pretty stationery. They did not move around.

I said, “Perhaps it was because he was on the other side, Sir.”

And he looked back and he said, “Oh, the Kaiser’s boys”. Like this is heaven to know a son of the Kaiser boys … one of his buddies! He tried to kill them but that is all right you know.

He said, “What happened?”

And I said, “My father was decorated Iron Cross First Class” and

he said, “Was he a Lieutenant acting as a Major?” and

I said, “Yes, he was”.

Well the Major was on leave; the Colonel had shell shock; and the Adjutant who was a Captain was out of it or whatever – actually what happened was that this Colonel explained… Dad had never talked about it. But what had happened was that the British attacked and routed the Germans and according to the Colonel a young Lieutenant rallied the German troops and fought off the attack giving the Germans enough time to withdraw Big Bertha along the railway line and get it back out of there.

And that it why the British attacked because they wanted the gun and the Colonel knew that this young Lieutenant, who was later promoted to Captain, was a big deal and he felt pretty sure he would get Iron Cross First Class for this particular deal. Yes. So that was Dad.

INT-2: Why did a British Officer know what was happening behind German line?

W.G:Because they played soccer on Sundays that’s why, they played soccer, football on Sundays. They all got out there and played soccer.

INT: I thought that was only at Christmas?

W.G: Ach, well these guys knew each other. He knew who is who. And he wasn’t in the German Army. I can guarantee that.

INT:So you did your National Service…

W.G: One year I was fooling around taking all kinds of courses. I took a parachute-jumping course. I took a REME course [Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers]. Great stuff. Rolls Royce engines we took apart and put them together. Excellent instructors. In parachute jumping, five jumps was a dream and then of course you never got the final one because they asked you, “Are you willing to sign on for an extra year?” … and I said, well I will think it over and they knew that meant, no. So you never got the few pennies extra so and then I after I went through Mons with the O.C.S.

I wanted to go to Hong Kong and I applied for Hong Kong but I only had 14 months left. I only had 12 months left. I applied for Germany, as I was fluent in German and I was with the British Army of the Rhine doing winter warfare skiing and marathon running in the summer.

I didn’t do too many parades.

INT 2: Which year was this?

W.G: 1954 to 1956.

I got out on the 9^th October 1956. The reason I remember was, it was when the Suez Crisis broke and it broke actually that day or the day after because I was at Woolwich and I was being de-mobbed. They were waiting for the bus to go down to Woolwich station.

I did not wait for the bus. I took my kitbag and I walked down to Woolwich Station, changed into civilian clothes in the waiting room and hopped on the first train, because, as a Territorial, I was not smart enough to get into the Army Emergency Reserve. They were already called up, incidentally, as everyone tried to get in there. I was lucky that I didn’t, though I realised that the next thing was they were going to do was call up the ‘Terriers’ and I was on the train.

Well, they have easily have recognised me because of my hair cut, but nevertheless I was out of Woolwich.

Walter Gumprich – Life During The War part 1

Once in Glasgow, Walter goes to school, his mother finds work, though his father is interned on the Isle of Man.

INT: Why Glasgow?

WG: My father was interned in the Isle of Man right away so it was just my mother and sister and myself that were at liberty so to speak and Glasgow was an area that needed workers and skilled workers in agriculture and my father was and so anyway, he was in the Isle of Man, but nevertheless he figured that one of these days he’d get out and when he did, he’d be in Glasgow so my mother got there.

My mother immediately started work and my mother worked in the factory that made greatcoats.

That’s heavy coats for army soldiers, that’s greatcoats, and my mother before she was married had a certificate for making shirt collars and back in Germany you get certificates for all sorts of things and it was a pretty skilled thing. It was a two-year apprenticeship course and one thing and another and hand made shirts were the thing in the 30s before the Second World War so it was a well-paid job.

So she certainly knew how to make greatcoat collars and at first she was in timework and then she was in piecework, what we called serious money and was able to look after us quite well. I never knew we were poor, I mean we probably were, we couldn’t afford all sorts but it never occurred to me that we were poor.

I mean, I was a kid.

INT:So did she start working while your father was in the Isle of Man?

WG: Oh yes, sure, we didn’t have any money, sure she worked, somebody had to work.

INT:And where were you living?

WG: In Glasgow.

INT:Yeah, but what part of Glasgow?

WG: Sounds good, Pollokshields. We lived in 43 Keir Street, right opposite the Pollokshields Senior Secondary School and then we moved to 248 Kenmure Street which was a little further away but not too far from Melville Street School actually.

Actually we lived on the corner of Kenmure Street and Leven Street and the next street over I believe is Melville Street and the Melville Street School is just down there, very easy for me to get to school.

School

INT:And was it easy to enrol you into school?

WG: I don’t now, I got into school, I don’t know, I wasn’t…I didn’t have any trouble. I was told to go to school, I went to school and the only problem was that the kids were all deaf and dumb, to a man. I only spoke German. I didn’t speak any English and so my mother actually said that she was pretty sure that the kids would all learn German before I learnt English because I spoke.

Nobody told me it was a different language and nobody told me it was difficult so I didn’t have those handicaps.

INT:When you say deaf and dumb, was it a special needs school?

WG: Well they couldn’t hear me. They couldn’t comprehend. I wasn’t sure what their problem was but they had the problem, I didn’t. (Walter did not realise that the children couldn’t understand him and did not answer because he was speaking German).

INT:So you went bouncing in?

WG: Bridget wasn’t as talkative as I am, she wasn’t then, but we never missed a year, we kept up.

In fact they wanted to kick Bridget up a year. My parents said, ‘No, they don’t want that because she wouldn’t be with her peers.

Classes then were about 30. I don’t know if that is large or not but Bridget was always… she, Frances Duff and Helen McNab were always head of this class. It was just a matter of who was up there and the language was not a difficulty; it just was absorbed. It maybe made it easier for us to learn other languages but that was the attitude we had towards learning other languages.

INT:Did the teachers help you?

WG: I really can’t remember.

One thing I remember was Miss Whitson who was my first teacher. My mother spoke some English. I mean she learnt English at school but she wasn’t fluent and I remember my mother coming home and said ‘teacher’ – the teachers generally didn’t pay compliments, like outrageous compliments. They told the truth. Nowadays everybody’s wonderful and everybody passes and every child is a genius, you know, and parents were the same. Parents didn’t tell a child they were wonderful. ‘Work harder!’ that’s what you heard but my mother said Miss Whitson said, ‘You have a very good voice and you sing very well and your fingernails are very nicely cut’.

Well, because instead of cutting my fingernails straight across, one cut, my mother contoured them all the time and this apparently was exceptional at school so maybe Miss Whitson said something else to my mother and it might have been complimentary but I wasn’t told that. Okay, so let’s put that away. What did I know?

I made friends at school. I didn’t have any trouble. Certainly by the time I think it was one year in Albert Road, it’s called Pollokshields Senior Secondary School or Albert Road Academy, whichever name you want to use and then we went to Melville Street and by that time I was fully integrated.

I had a little gang and Monty McMillan had a little gang and Ian McCall had a little gang. This is a thing kids do in the playground.

Walter’s father is released from the Isle of Man and gets a job in Glasgow thanks to his contacts in the internment camp

INT:When did your father come home from internment?

WG: He was interned almost a year, so he came home in the latter part of 1940. Well while he was in the internment camp he met some people who were also in the livestock feed business and there was one guy named Mr Rosenthal who was already gone. He came into Britain in 1936. Well that was the cut off date apparently, so guys who came in 1936, 37, 38, 39 they were all stuck in.

He already had a business but he was still in the internment camp. He wasn’t in very long; he was only there three months, but in the meantime he and my Dad made arrangements that my dad would represent all the agencies that he had. My dad could have them for Scotland because he didn’t have anybody in Scotland. He was in England, he came up short of Yorkshire and so when Dad came he had to start finding customers for the agencies he had. But of course cars were impossible so everything was done by foot and by bus and train and so on and that’s what Dad did. And Dad was 48 when he came to Britain so he wasn’t a youngster and though he spoke some English, he certainly wasn’t fluent but I guess he made it. If you’ve got to, you do.

INT:Did you have a Scottish accent then? Did you have a Glaswegian accent?

WG: I had whatever they had. Whatever they had, I had. I got what they got. I repeated what I heard.

INT:Carry on about your dad.

WG: Well my dad – it came 1945. He had made some progress with his business, although he couldn’t import anything and he started doing serious business and formed his own company, had a Scottish partner, guy named Robinson from Gilchrists from Rutherglen – his warehouse was in Rutherglen, at Gilchrists, that’s where Robertson worked. And so it was pretty hard slogging and in those days people smoked a lot.

Being what we would now consider as overweight was the norm. It was considered if you were skinny, you were poor. You know, things have changed since then and of course my Dad had his share of worries. And so in 1950 when his business was going quite well and he knew he was in bad health and he was too much of a hurry even then. He put on even more pressure. He had three massive heart attacks and died and that was 1950, 9^th of September 1950.

I was seventeen and I had finished high school and the idea was that I would end up going into my father’s business and the way to do that would be ‘A’ to go to university and ‘B’ get some practical experience with another livestock feed company and come back to the business, so I was just at the start of that part.

Walter Gumprich – Immigration

With the help of a Catholic priest, the family escape from Germany.

W.G: My father was released and came home and so then we immediately made an effort to get out of Germany, and to get out of Germany it was not feasible to use public transportation because it was too dangerous and with two kids you would be held up all over the place as we were at the border, so my father’s First World War friend, who he was with right through the four years at the French Front, Franz Grosse-Wietfeld, he drove us to the border. He was able to do this because he was a Catholic priest and he was Papal Nuncio to Westphalia, which meant he was a fairly high-ranking individual.

He was the Vatican’s representative to Westphalia, Münster being a largely Catholic area, and most people there were Catholic. Archbishop von Galen, who was a very interesting individual, was Archbishop at the time but Franz Grosse-Wietfeld didn’t have the okay of the Catholic Church at the time.

The Catholic church were having trouble with some of their own priests like Franz Grosse-Wietfeld who were helping political prisoners who were unjustly being put under pressure and Jews as well, so, but just for the record, the Rabbi [Dr Julius Voos] in Münster who had been there for some years, after Kristallnacht went to seek an audience with Archbishop von Galenabout the pressures that Jews were being put under and being put to death and so on and the Archbishop’s reply was, essentially, ‘You brought it on yourselves. You didn’t accept Christ’.

You can check that out with the book and that was the general attitude. But the fact that people were people – well, Jews apparently weren’t people, even though Jesus was a Jew. But nevertheless I have to emphasise that a Catholic priest – Franz Grosse-Wietfeld, saved my life.No doubt about it because when we got to the border…

I spoke to Uncle Franz in 1951 when I was back in with my mother and I said, ‘What exactly happened at the border’. He said, ‘Well, you know, we went to the border and Franz was a big guy and his nickname was Kürbiskopf, which meant cabbage head [pumpkin head], amongst his friends and clerical colleagues.

He was a big guy, and this little SS guy was trying to give my father problems even though all the papers were in order. He was saying, ‘You have to do this and this’ and so on. Franz walked in front of my father, right in front of this little guy whose nose made it all the way up to the middle of his chest and he said in German ‘Tu mir was’ or as Clint Eastwood would say, ‘Make my day’.

He may hit me but Franz Grosse-Wietfeld would have knocked him really but he had to have the first and then he waved my father and my mother and us over the border and gave him papers and Franz Grosse-Wietfeld said it was that simple.

And he didn’t do himself much good because as a result of his attitude he was put under considerable pressure during the war. All sorts of things like phoning him up at two o’clock in the morning and no one would be on the phone, but he had to answer the phone because as a priest he had to say Last Rights and so on so he couldn’t just say, ‘To hell with the phone!’ so there were all sorts of ways of putting pressure on people.

INT: Did he survive the war?

WG: Yes he did. He actually died in a train accident in 1961 but he survived the war.

INT: Was he arrested or put in a concentration camp?

WG: No, no he wasn’t; no they couldn’t. Münster was pretty solidly Catholic and Von Galen’s attitude was rabidly anti-Nazi, completely.

Now he had a reason because he was actually Graf von Galen.He was landed aristocracy and he gave his title to his younger brother so he wasn’t just an archbishop, he was really somebody, nobility so to speak, and had fantastic sway so even the Nazis couldn’t quite grab this guy; they couldn’t do it. They never went in the Dom, which is the cathedral, so he was an absolute German patriot.

The German aristocracy really weren’t Nazis; they wouldn’t lower themselves to become members of the Nazi Party to start with. That doesn’t mean to say they weren’t financiers of the Nazi Party but I spoke to some of them after the war. It’s interesting.

INT: So you’re in Holland with no car. How did you get…?

WG: Well we were picked up in the morning by my mother’s uncle. My grandfather had three brothers and a sister and one of them lived in Holland. I believe they’d moved there before 1930. His wife was Dutch, I guess, and they didn’t survive the war, though, but that’s another one and we were there a week.

So a week before the outbreak of the Second World War, a week before the end of August, we went to Britain. We moved to Britain.

My father had managed to get a transit visa to Britain. He wanted actually to get a complete visa for the whole bunch to Britain but couldn’t, but he got a three months transit visa through a cousin of his who was already in Britain, who went in 1933.

INT: So he managed to get you visas?

WG: He got us transit visas for three months so we were in Britain and so after a week in Britain the war broke out and all transportation was stopped.

Then we were actually in London with the cousin of my mother’s, my mother’s aunt, and then all Jews that were illegal aliens, which we were, weren’t allowed to stay there because it was a strategic area and they figured there would be an invasion and why would they need German spies there, which we were considered to be – what do they know about us – so we had to get out of there so we went to Manchester en route to Glasgow.

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