immigration

Edith Forrester – Immigration

Edith describes her journey to Britain and arriving in London. She then talks about arriving in Scotland and meeting the gentleman and lady who soon became her beloved Mum and Dad.

INT: So how did you come to Scotland then? How did that happen?

EF: Well, when we arrived…I’d never been on a boat before but when we arrived, oh my, they took us to a great big hall in London and would you believe it they had white tablecloths, white, and they served us drinking chocolate and sandwiches and biscuits and cakes. And I was shaking so much that I spilt my cocoa, drinking chocolate, and it made a lovely brown river down this thing and that was the first time I ever shed a tear from when I left Germany.

INT: Was that because you were advised not to cry? Some people have told us that they were told it was dangerous, or Kinder were told it dangerous to cry.

EF: Dangerous to try what?

INT: To cry.

EF: To cry? No, no.

EF: No, nobody ever said that to me. Uh-huh, no. So then we all had labels of course so then after we’d eaten they said… you know we were in different groups.

INT: So they pointed to different areas?

EF: Uh huh, that’s right. And then they put us on a bus and we sat up all night on this train… no idea were I was going but then I had no idea on the first train where I was going, or on the ship. And on the ship, I had…I was with a girl much older than me and she made me go up on the top, you know. No, other way round; I was at the bottom and she was at the top.

INT: On a bunk?

EF: On a bunk each. And she was very, very sick during the night. So I had to look after her and she just had to stagger into my bunk.

EF: You know, and I had to climb up on top of this one but she kept being sick so neither of us had much sleep so that was a nightmare, and yes, that was coming over. And then when we were on the train we were of course on our way to Scotland and again I had no idea what was happening so when we got off they took a photograph, which I think you’ve seen? Bob’s [McKenzie] on that photograph, and his sister, at the very end. And they just put us on a bus again and they took us to an orphanage in Selkirk, which is now a hotel.

I’ve been back there. I was invited as an honoured guest at their Ridings – you know, the annual event, many years ago. And they took us there and it was a, och at that time, it was a dismal place, you know, and we were in a long dormitory, one for the boys, one for the girls, and I was at the very end one and because there were mice running around the floor, when somebody wanted to go to the toilet they’d say, “Edith, komm doch mit!, komm doch mit!” [Come with me] And of course, poor me, I had to get up and go to the toilet with them for company. Oh dear…

INT: To scare off the mice?

EF: I know, I know.

INT: Oh dear that’s terrible. Were there a lot of children there with you at that time?

EF: Difficult to tell, probably maybe about thirty of us, difficult to assess really. But there were a lot of older ones, there weren’t so many…I was the youngest one actually so…yeah. But that was something. And we got porridge every morning and it was runny…oh no…So that was a nightmare too. I didn’t like porridge.

INT: I’m sure. And did you have any English? Had you learned any English?

EF: No, not a word – kein einziges Wort, (not a single word) Nothing. And now the funny thing is whenever I think of anything or if I’m caught in a traffic jam or anything, Helen always declares I speak in German, “Du liebe Zeit!”[Dear me!] “Was ist das?” [What is that?]“Was ist los? [What’s the matter?]” You know, things like that so…crazy.

So I had not a word of English, not a word, and we were sitting one day, having a meal actually, and they said “Edith” and I went. I was taken into one of the lounges and a lady and gentleman got up and she was dressed in powder blue dress and matching coat, tweed, and he had plus fours in chocolate brown and he had very brown eyes, you know. And they couldn’t speak a word of German; I couldn’t speak a word of English, but somehow I felt I could trust these people. For the first time since I had left my home and my parents I could trust them. And we smiled at each other and there was nothing else but all the paperwork was to be done then and they were going to come and collect me. Well that wasn’t discussed with me, but other ladies came as well, elderly ladies, two elderly ladies came to interview me and look me over and, I didn’t react one way or the other, not at all.

So anyway, when it came to the bit, Mum and Dad came to collect me and they said, “I’m very sorry. She’s been promised to the ladies – Naimes.” “Oh no. No, no” My father said. “That is not on because we’ve signed all the papers and we are definitely getting Edith.” “Well,” she said, the matron said, “I’m so sorry but you won’t get her today. We’ll have to look into this.” And they did look into it and in the end, of course Dad being a very determined person and a legal person, he knew all the tricks of the trade and so on… One day it was arranged that I would have my case packed and we got on the train. That was when there was still a connection between The Borders and Edinburgh and when we got to Edinburgh and got off the train, who were coming along the platform but Mum and Dad.

And they took me on another train and we went to Sinclairtown, which is another district in Kirkcaldy. The station is no longer there, and we got off there. And long stairs up and just a short walk and we came to the bank where Dad was in charge, a bank manager. And bank house on top, and brand new, a flat, and just when we went in, suddenly whoosh! And down the stairs came the most beautiful white and brown cocker spaniel and that was my friend forever, licked me all over and we have been inseparable until he died. So he didn’t die until he was fifteen…I’m maybe adding things that are irrelevant?

INT: No, no, no, not at all. So I suppose that gave you a very good impression of Scotland when you first came?

EF: Oh yes, yes.

Bob Mackenzie – Immigration

Bob mentions what he can remember of his journey to Britain and his arrival in Selkirk. He goes on to describe his first introduction to the Mackenzie family of Forres.

BM: I’m not sure where we joined the train and to this day I have never found out. Unfortunately there is a complete blank from the time we were put on the train until we arrived at The Priory in Selkirk. I’ve been told since, this is possibly the only way a child of eight years old could cope with the trauma of this upheaval. To suddenly be torn from a happy, comfortable family life with loving parents, put on a train to nowhere and end up in a country where no one spoke my language, except the other children travelling with me, must have been a severe shock to a young child.

I know we landed at Harwich on the 16th of March 1939 because that is the date stamped on my Kinderausweis, the travel permit used by the Burgermeister [Mayor} of Neukirchen on the 13th of March 1939. That same permit also described me as ‘staatenlos’ which means stateless. Germany got rid of me and didn’t want me back.

After some weeks at The Priory at Selkirk my sister and I packed our belongings and went on another train journey accompanied by two ladies from the ‘Refugee Movement’. We eventually arrived at the station at Forres, Morayshire. We didn’t know it but we were to be placed with the family Mackenzie. We found out many years later that the Mackenzie family had originally applied to take refugees from the Spanish Civil War and being told they had all been allocated families and there were child refugees from Germany looking for accommodation they agreed to take my sister and I, as my mother had asked, if possible, that we should be kept together.

On arrival at Forres two strange occurrences took place which have never been explained. On getting off the train I walked through all the people on the platform, straight over to Agnes Mackenzie, one of the daughters of the family. No one in the family had ever been to Selkirk, and yet I somehow knew that this was the person who had come to meet us. The second strange thing that happened was also puzzling… Mr Mackenzie had a car to take us to his home. On arriving the car stopped outside a small shop with a gate on either side leading into gardens. When I stepped out of the car I did not try to enter any of these two gates but walked approximately fifty or sixty yards up the road and entered the correct gate of Mr Mackenzie’s house. How I knew it was his gate to enter I still have no idea.

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.

Suzanne Ullman – Immigration

And so that would be about ’45, ’44/’45 so the Russians are in. So now she made contact with London, my parents. So we were in contact again and now was the business how do we get out? So she went every day and put in petitions here and there and I suppose our luck was because we were too young to be of use to the communist state, the grandmas were too old, so eventually they let us go, end of ’46 she got the papers and we emigrated. So I’m not a refugee, I am an emigrant. And we even got some of the furniture out. So we were reunited in 1946, so we met our parents for the first time, well yes, in London.

INT: Do the boys have much of a memory of….I was going to say

SU: No, the boys don’t remember as much as I do.

INT: And would they have remembered their parents because they were only 2?

SU: No they were only 2, they didn’t remember the parents. I hardly remember my father, I just remember one or two incidents with my mother; jumping up and down in her bed or, you know, her teaching me how to pray and things like that. But, no…

INT: And how was it?

SU: Pardon?

INT: How was it when you met them for the first time?

SU: Well the wonderful thing was that this little grandma of mine was a really remarkable woman and she always talked about my parents, so much so, showed us pictures, that we felt we knew them.

She told us stories about their childhood, everything, so that they weren’t strange. And showed us photographs, she says in her letters that I kissed the photographs every day, you know. And why aren’t they coming back but I didn’t…I myself, you know, I felt I knew them because she made it so. I mean I think back now how clever she was, how insightful, you know she was a wonderful, wonderful woman. So but then I was very disappointed because I was dying to see my brother and sister, John and Eva, the English ones. But they weren’t at home. I was desperately disappointed. It wasn’t until December that I saw them because, unbeknown to me, they had been evacuated during the war. And they were, at first, in a Jewish nursery in Knutsford near Manchester, in a Jewish Nursery. And I was bullying my parents so in December they took myself and my two grandmothers, I don’t think the boys were there, to Manchester and we spent the night there.

And I remember there was an announcement on the news that in this particular nursing home a fire had broken out and a child had died and my father went berserk, but it wasn’t my brother and sister. So the next day we went there and, we went to this nursing home, and my father went in with the grandmothers and I was just sitting outside and this little girl comes in, out to go to the loo or something, and she looks me up and down and I later on I was introduced to her as my sister. And of course we couldn’t communicate, they were 4 years old and I was 11 and we had no language in common. So I spent the night there in the nursery with them. It was December and it was cold, I remember lying in a cot beside my little brother John and we just sort of held hands in the dark, you know, across the bed. So they stayed there and we went back to London and, you know then our life began in England.

INT: What did your father do during the war?

SU: My father, he first worked in, I think, in a book shop, and he had some Hungarian contacts in London, he was a jeweller by trade. And then he worked for a man called Mr. Vees who was a jeweller. I think he was a jeweller anyway and, in an office, and eventually that’s what he did during the war, yes. And after the war he went into partnership with another Hungarian and opened a shop in Hatton Garden. And my brother Joe eventually carried on. Two of my brothers are in the trade.

INT: And is that jewellery?

SU: Yes and little grandma in one of her letters says to my parents during the forties, you know, maybe one day Joseph or one of them will carry on and that’s what happened.

INT: So you went to school in London? And you said you must have had…

SU : I went to school in London for a year.

INT: Right which as you said was a very steep learning curve

SU: Well yes, I couldn’t speak. I went first in Golders Green. My parents had to buy a new house, and moved to Golders Green because of, you know, the family was going to be enlarged and I went to the local school in Golders Green. They put me in there the first week I arrived. I couldn’t speak. I had a few words like window and pencil and nothing else. And two of the little girls from the school came and picked me up and walked me to school and all I knew was that when they said 54 I had to say ‘yes’ because I was number 54 in the class.

INT: 54? That’s a big class.

INT: On the register?

SU: On the register. And during lunchtime because there were too many children in the school we went, there were British restaurants, wartime restaurants, and a bunch of us went to the British restaurant and I remember sitting there crying my eyes out because I didn’t know how to use a knife and fork. These little girls were eating with all sorts of strange things like spam, which I thought was terrible with these jelly bits in it and custard, I’d never eaten custard, and I didn’t know how to use the implements. But anyway after Christmas my parents put me into a boarding school, a weekly boarding school in London, in Sheen, to learn English, and I’d go home and I was crying and I said “Why’d you put me off, I’ve been waiting all this time and now you send me away again”.

You know, I was devastated. But anyway I went to school there and I just learned English, I just had to. If I didn’t know what grass was they took me out and they showed me, that’s grass, you know, and it took me about a year. And then they put me into a French school in Sutton Waldron which was really away but by this time I was 12 and my contemporaries were learning a second language, and it was desperate for me to learn French when I could hardly speak English, and, you know, I’d have to conjugate verbs and I couldn’t do it, you know, and the teacher in desperation said “well do it in Hungarian”. So I put it on the board, conjugated in Hungarian and then he’d be pleased because he recognised the Latin, you know, he went off and I was left off the hook.

So I was there only a year because, no only a term, because they had a, infantile paralysis broke out and one of the children died and my parents whipped me out, you know, didn’t want me to get it in my sort of still dilapidated state. And I then went to a school, which was an extraordinary school, it was a progressively coeducational school and my brothers were already there in Kent, called Longdean school which had its foundations actually in Scotland I discovered, in a school called Kilquhanity somewhere in Ayrshire. And it was run, they put me there because it was run on, well it was very free. It had a farm attached, education wasn’t the high priority but, you know, the arts and farming, you know it was to build us up. And so I was there until I was 16 and managed to fail most of my O levels, but undaunted I went to another school and started on my A levels.

INT: So were you…was that residential as well?

SU: Yes

INT: Right

SU: It was in Kent, yes. It was in Chiddingstone, near Tunbridge Wells, in a castle, Chiddingstone Castle. An old pseudo castle. And it was a wonderful place really. The friends I made there, schoolchildren, I still have, you know. So it was the beginning of proper education. From there at 16 I went to Welwyn Garden City to a proper school where they taught you lessons and concentrated on the academic side so I was there for a couple of years and…

INT: And then you went to university?

SU: Well they fortunately, well, I was allowed to give up things like maths, and you needed maths. I didn’t know the difference between arts and sciences so, you know, I had to do a lot of work during the holidays. And when I went to the school in Welwyn Garden City I had to take up science and maths, you know, at 16 from scratch because, you know, I was allowed to give it up. That wasn’t so important. In Longdean school, the teachers…only the headmaster had a degree. They were refugees and, you know.

INT: Were they Jewish refugees or…? Was it a mixture of refugees?

SU: The teachers?

INT: Yes.

SU: Well, one was a Sri Lankan,

INT: Right

SU: And he wasn’t Jewish. But I think, I only learned recently that the nurse was Jewish and the German teacher was half and half.

INT: And the children who were there were they…?

SU: The children were mostly, well, delinquents sent by London County Council because of the free atmosphere. But the trouble is that the balance was tipped in favour of the… you know, because they paid for it, you see my parents paid for us, but they had too many of these children so the school really went…In fact in 1952 it went into dissolution because it, some of the staff were a little delinquent too! But it was a sort of free and happy place. We got plenty to eat and the arts.

INT: And I think compared with what you’d gone through

SU: Yes. This is why my parents put us there and, you know, I think you could be vegetarian there, you know, it was all health, it was avant garde. It was…you know.

INT: And you could be a child.

SU: Pardon?

INT: You could be a child. Which I think is…

SU: Yes and, you know, we had a wonderful time there. We built a lorry with the biology teacher, and on this lorry we went to Italy and Spain.

INT: Good grief, fantastic.

SU: And we made costumes out of sack cloth and dyed it and acted out Shakespeare plays. You know, we had real fun but academic education wasn’t too seriously taken.

INT: But on the other hand it’s a holistic view of education.

SU: Yes it was, it was. I never regretted it. It was wonderful.

Susan Singerman – Immigration

Susan explains that she had some distant relatives in Scotland and that is why she went there after the war was over

Int: When you came to Scotland, how old were you then?

Susan: I think I was 19.

Int : You were liberated by the Americans and somehow you ended up here in Scotland. How was it you ended up in Scotland?

Susan: It was because I had a great-uncle and a great-aunt in Scotland. I don’t know if you know Mrs Kubie?

Int : So who was your great-aunt and uncle?

Susan: Dr and Mrs Banyai. They lived in Ayr at the time and I discovered meanwhile that I had my cousin to whom I gave my papers; I was Chairman or Vice Chairman of HaNoa HaTsioni (a Zionist Youth Group).

Int : In Hungary?

Susan: Yes, in Hungary. So they sent us some false papers for me and for a number of reasons I didn’t want to go.

Int : False papers so you could emigrate to Palestine as it was then?

Susan: Yes, I suppose so, but it didn’t specify on it of course.

Int : So you chose not to go to Palestine?

Susan: No, if you went illegally then you had to go to Cyprus and I felt nothing on earth would put me behind barbed wires again so again I was too young and I was too naive and there was a regiment called the Jewish Brigade and I don’t know, some of them came over, they were in Italy at the end of the war, and they came over and took me translating and interpreting and so on, and they thought of the great idea of marrying one of them, one of the Jewish Brigade, but in name only, but as I say I was too young and too naive.

Int : What age were you then?

Susan: 19, but I had lived a very sheltered life in Hungary. Anyway..

Sidney Mayer – Immigration

Sidney describes the kindness of his new family – the Goldwaters. He talks about his early working life and his views on the Nazis.

INT: They were lucky. So tell me about Scotland. What were your first impressions when you arrived?

SM: When I came to Glasgow? Well, I was never in a big city before and it impressed me very much. I noticed there were a lot of picture houses which I’d never…I’d been to the cinema once in my life in Germany. And when I came here, after about two days, I got homesick. And Mr Goldwater took me to the pictures every day. He was a bookmaker and he worked mostly in the evenings so he was free during the day and we used to go to the cinema and that’s where I learned quite a lot of my English, at the cinema. And then I went to school in February.

I went to Langside Primary School in Tantallon Road and I was there until the holiday time and then the barrage balloons were put in the playground and we got schooling in different houses… every day in a different house. And when it came to August I asked the headmaster if I could leave because I was almost 14 and he said ‘yes’, I could leave. I then left and got a job in Gerber Brothers as a message boy. And I worked there until Mr Goldwater opened up, he had a tool shop in Saltmarket, and he opened up another one, a bigger one in Saltmarket and I went and worked and ran that shop until after the war. And he had a son and a daughter. The son..when, he came back from the army, he then came into the shop and we didn’t, agree with each other. And I then got a van and started selling tools all round Scotland and the north of England [which continued] until I got married and then I went into the clothing industry. I opened up a factory with my brother-in-law then and we manufactured raincoats.

INT: Did you have any previous training in making things?

SM: Well I did the selling. And I learned the trade slowly while I was there.

INT: Right.

SM: I was never a qualified machinist or a cutter but I could do it. And eventually that business was bought over by a public company called Edward MacBean and Company Limited. It was one of the biggest waterproof manufacturers in Britain. And I carried on working for them for a little while and then started on my own again. And I got premises in a place called Muirkirk in Ayrshire and I ran a factory there for 31 years.

INT: Also making raincoats or something?

SM: Making waterproofs, yes. Yes.

INT: And you did that until you retired did you?

SM: Yes, until I was 70 years of age.

INT: Really? Does it still exist, this factory?

SM: No it doesn’t exist any longer no.

INT: Oh that’s a shame.

INT: Excuse me Sydney, you said you started up a factory with your brother in law…

SM: Yes.

INT: …was that the husband of Mr Goldwater’s daughter?

SM: No

INT: No?

SM: No that was the husband of my wife’s sister.

INT: Ah your wife’s sister, I see.

INT: Did you ever find out why the Goldwaters took you in? Were they keen to…? Why did the Goldwaters decide to take a Kinder, a Kind?

SM: Well they had one son and the daughter was also adopted, it was the daughter of Mrs Goldwater’s sister who died when she was born.

So Mrs Goldwater brought her up and I think they were just fond of children and I got on very well with them. It was like being at home. And there was no difference between me and the other two children, we were level, in fact, I think I was… I got more privileges than the other two.

INT: Why, because you were the youngest or because of what you had gone through do you think?

SM: No, I blended in very well with the family, you know.

INT: That’s very good.

SM: In other words I assimilated.

INT: Yes. And talking of assimilation did you feel that you assimilated with the wider Jewish community in Glasgow or the wider…?

SM: Yes, yes of course. But I was always ashamed of being German at that time. I didn’t want people to know that I was German. And that’s probably one of the reasons why I don’t speak with an accent.

INT: Even though you knew you weren’t a Nazi and had suffered under the Germans you still felt that it was…

SM: I was ashamed of being German, yes.

INT: Yes, that’s interesting.

SM: Well I mean the war started and Germany was an enemy country. And, oh yes, during the war I joined the A.R.P, the Air Raid Precaution. I was an ambulance driver during the war. When I was…from 1942 when I became 17 I was a… I drove an ambulance, until the end of the war.

INT: And what about mixing with the wider Scottish community, did you find that easy to do?

SM: No problems. No problems whatsoever.

INT: And was that partly because you blended in?

SM: Yes.

INT: And did people know you were Jewish? That didn’t matter?

SM: Oh yes, I had a friend, a non-Jewish friend. We were very, very close. His name was Gordon Gunn. He died last year at 90. And through him I learned a lot of English, you know.

INT: That’s good.

INT: You spoke before about being unfortunate and fortunate. What would you say were the most fortunate aspects of your life?

SM: The fortunate aspect was that I was taken up by a family, Goldwater, which helped me a lot. And I grew up like one of them and, as I say, I couldn’t have wished for a better home. The fact that I didn’t have one; I lost my own parents and they made up for it.

SM: I never called them ‘mother’ or ‘father’, they didn’t adopt me legally. I still kept my own name and I called them ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’.

INT: And when they originally found you did they actually come and see you at Dovercourt or they just asked for a young man of a certain age?

SM: No, no, they came, they came to Dovercourt on a Sunday and it was quite funny how it happened. I was very small for my age, I still am small, but when I was 13 I looked a lot younger. And on the Sunday the boys played football and I wanted to play football but in January, near the seaside, the weather, it was raining; it was muddy and they wouldn’t let me play because I was too small and they thought I would get lost in the mud. And they sent me back home, back to the hall, and I ran back and I accidentally bumped into a lady, I apologised, and then went away. I didn’t know whether I hurt her or not. And I sat at the very end of the hall. It was a huge hall with three stoves in the middle, and I went to the furthest away and sat behind the stove and they spoke to an attendant of the camp, a lady, and then they pointed to me and I said; ‘I must have done something wrong, I’m in trouble’.

And then they called me and that was Mrs Goldwater and then Mr Goldwater said would I like to go to Scotland? I said ‘yes’ and the girl then said ‘no you can’t have him, because he’s only been in here two days. There are other boys here who are here for a month or two’. And he turned round and said ‘Well if I can’t have him, we don’t want anybody’. So that was it, that’s how I came to Glasgow.

INT: That is very fortunate. She must really have liked you. That is very fortunate.

SM: As a matter of fact, a funny thing, in 1949 when I went to South America to see my uncles and grandmother I was stateless, you know, when I left Germany the condition was when I left I became stateless. And I became a British resident, not a British subject. And the passport I had was green, it wasn’t dark blue the way they should have been and on the ship I shared a cabin with three other men, well boys and they called me ‘Jock’. And they did not know that I was German and I didn’t let them know that I was German and anytime we went ashore, you know, you had to hand your passport in to the purser. And I never did that – I used to make an excuse when we got there, ‘I must go back I’ve forgot something’ and I handed in my green document and that was it.

But they never knew that I was German. So…because as I say I was ashamed of being German, about what they did during the war and the countries they occupied. I mean they were, the Nazis were a horrible people. They weren’t normal. And this friend of mine in Germany he…if he would have been alive then he would have certainly been in the concentration camp because he maintains that to be a good Nazi you had to be stupid, and the more stupid you were the better a Nazi you were, that was his definition of the Nazis.

INT: And do you agree with him?

SM: Absolutely, absolutely. They believed lies, propaganda. And all of a sudden from being good people we were bad people, overnight virtually. And I don’t think that sort of thing ever happened in the world before, the way the Germans, the Nazis, behaved towards not only Jewish people, anyone they felt was an enemy of theirs. They treated them the same. There were gypsies, communists, certain political people who didn’t…Well, there was only one set of politics in Germany and that was it. Anybody that belonged to another party they were locked up in concentration camps and done away with.

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