Gathering The Voices Scotland

Testimonies of Holocaust survivors who settled in Scotland

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Esperance David – Integration

INT:    Did you find it easy to integrate into Scottish society, or did you feel different?

ED:      Jewish society or anything?

INT:    Jewish and the wider society.

ED:      Well, the wider society, I went back to work when we had another…

INT2:  You had a son in between all that.

ED:      A son in between, I didn’t work for five years and Lil was about four, five years, and Tony was two years, two, three years, and I was working at that time.   Michelle was born in Scotland.  Yes, she’s a Scottish lass.

INT:    Ah, that’s nice.  And the people here, were they welcoming?

ED:      The people here, well, the people here, the neighbours were nice, where we were in Loughborough. We didn’t know many people, but the house we rented was from a Jewish woman and we had, David had a friend who was Jewish and he was working with him in Loughborough, and his family, and they came and saw us.  With two small children, there wasn’t really much chance to go and socialise or do anything, especially when we were strangers to, let’s face it, to the Jewish community as well. I don’t think they took to us very much.  We were just as foreign as anyone else, you know?  People from Baghdad, you know, that was a different world.

INT2:  You weren’t there for that long, because you were in Sandhurst for eight or nine years.

ED:      Yes, well I’m just abridging a bit.  We were in Sandhurst.

INT2:  But that was a big bit.

ED:      That’s a big bit, yes, we went from Loughborough to Birmingham, Sutton Coldfield, and Tony was born there, and then David, you know, had to move in the job.  He was offered a good job in Sandhurst and we moved to Sandhurst for a few years, there, for five, six years.  Tony was going to school and Lil was just going to grammar school, and David was offered a very, very promoted job, by an American firm, Honeywell, very well…you see Honeywell boxes everywhere, and he worked there and I was working as well, but I stopped when Michelle came.

And then he couldn’t take it. He couldn’t take the American way of life. It was a rat race, whatever he did wasn’t enough and it was a very worrying job, and he became really ill.  So, he had to just leave. He just couldn’t take any more, he was very, very ill.  So I was working and we managed, took Michelle to nursery school, while he recuperated a bit

Bob Mackenzie – Integration

Bob starts work and moves to Renfrew as an apprentice mechanical engineer. He changes his name to Mackenzie to thank the family who rescued his sister and him.

He learns about the survival of his parents and the death of his grandfather. He marries and then joins the RAF. He describes his mother’s first visit to Scotland from communist East Germany.

BM: After leaving school I started my apprenticeship with a local electrical contractor. In 1948 The Refugee Council, who were my legal guardians, decided to move me to Glasgow. By this time Agnes and Janet were both married, Jessie was about to get married and Mr Mackenzie was going to move to Motherwell to live with Janet and her husband.

I couldn’t find a firm to complete my electrical apprenticeship in the Glasgow area so I started my apprenticeship all over again in a shipyard in Renfrew as a mechanical engineer. After about a year, I went for an interview with an electrical contractor in Paisley and was accepted to complete my electrical apprenticeship. It was during this time that I was given the chance to apply for British citizenship. I applied in March 1949 and my citizenship was finally authorised in February 1950. Once that was approved I decided to change my name as well; my name was Eberhard Rosenberg (mount of roses) and the Scottish equivalent would have been Montrose but after kindness shown to my sister and I over the past years I decided to thank Mr Mackenzie by adopting his name as he had no sons of his own to carry his name forward.

After the war we were overjoyed to discover that my parents had survived the war. My father and grandfather had both been taken away to concentration camps and, although my father survived, unfortunately my grandfather did not. My parents had been ejected from their home and my mother survived the war living with friends and relations. At the end of the war the Russian forces controlled the area where my parents lived and when the authorities discovered that my parents had been ejected they, in turn, ejected the German family who had moved in and the house was restored to my parents. My father tried to persuade me to come back to Germany but after being used to the freedom in this country and hearing of the tightly controlled life under the communist regime we decided not to return to Germany. Being in a Russian zone my parents were not allowed to travel to the West.

By this time I had met my future wife and we got married in November 1952. Shortly after this I was called up for National Service.

I went in to the RAF, in married quarters and…oh aye, got a letter from my mother saying she was coming to visit us in the married quarters and we went down to Kidderminster to meet her at the train and we sat there for a couple of hours, still nobody there, and we came back to the camp. And next door to us in the quarters was a sergeant who was married to a German woman who was interested in meeting my mother. When we returned home they asked us in for a cup of coffee and we talked about what could have happened to my mother.

And then there was a knock at the door and a gentleman asked if anyone knew where the people next door were as a lady wanted to see them. It turned out to be my mother. Someone on the train had told her it would be better getting off at Bridgenorth instead of Kidderminster and didn’t realise that we were waiting at Kidderminster. She got off the train, no idea how to get there, made a few questions in her halting English and started to walk it, not realising it was three miles to the camp and a December day. Anyway, this gentleman stopped and got her up to the house and that’s when we took her next door and I raked up the fire after dampening it down and the chimney went up in fire. So, as I said, the RAF married quarters have an RAF Fire Service and their idea of a chimney fire is ladder against the roof, hose down the chimney and turn on the water.

It was very effective but as you can imagine, the mess down below…So after we started to clean up. My wife was going to help but my mother said “No, no, no. Setzen sie, setzen sie” (Sit down) and her and I, after…it must have been seventeen/eighteen years since we had seen each other, spent the first hour together on hands and knees on the floor cleaning up the mess! What a reunion! Anyway, after we had cleaned up the mess there we asked how on earth she had managed to get out and that’s when she explained. Now I think it was…who was it she went to see? Permission to visit her brother, her brother in Köln. She got permission from the Russian authorities to visit her brother and when she went there he took her up to the Burgermeister and, as I say, the Burgermeister there issued the passports.

So he gave her a West German passport, took her East German passport and said when you come back give me back the West German passport, I’ll give you back the East German passport and no one is any the wiser. And that’s what happened. But as I say, we got her home, up north to meet some of the family and meet my sister in Glasgow but she wouldn’t take any photos home with her. It was… I think it was fear of the authorities; the travel restrictions were so tight, you know. And eventually…well many years later…I’ll come to it later. Many years later my father did manage to come out.

But to carry on with the story…After three years in the forces I was demobbed and found it difficult to settle down. I had several jobs then joined the government service. We were writing regularly to my parents and in ’56 my wife and I decided she should go and visit my parents with their first grandchild.

We reckoned as they had missed out on their own children growing up they should at least see their grandchildren. The arrangements were made and money was tight; the most economical form of transport was to go by train. So my wife went first to stay with my sister in Blackpool and my sister accompanied her to London and from there it was by train to Dover, then the ferry and by train to Köln where she spent the night with friends of my parents. The following day on the train again to Magdeburg on the border between East and West Germany where my father met her; he worked with the railways in East Germany. When you think it is quite a journey with an eighteen-month-old child and a woman on her own. You know, they weren’t quite as sophisticated as they are nowadays, you know. And my wife and son stayed for a period of six weeks.

When she came back and told me about the restrictions imposed over there, I was glad I had not gone back home after the war, as my father had wanted. On arrival at my parents’ house she had to sign the book at the house listing all the visitors, then go to the police station to register her arrival and inform them of her length of stay. And my parents told her to be sure to keep sufficient English money to pay for her exit visa as you cannot pay for that in German money.

INT: And why did you decide not to go with her?

BM: Well I couldn’t go because I was working with government service and the work I was doing was restricted, security was quite high. And then of course they were in the Russian zone so there was no way I could go to a communist country, working for the British government.

Right… And there was also…the other fault, was there was a possibility they were looking for technical personnel, if I’d gone there I might never have got back out again.

INT: But you were a British citizen by that time?

BM: Only in the British Commonwealth. If you go back to your country of birth, never mind the Kinderausweis ‘staatenlos’. As far as the Russians were concerned – they won the war, they’ll dictate…he’s a German, he’s a German – he stays here. Right? That was it. So the British citizenship, I mean it tells you on the documentation that I’ve got ‘Valid, except in the country of my birth.’

INT: That’s interesting.

INT: Yes it is.

BM: You see? So you’ve got to be careful with these little, all these little quirks upset you. Anyway…while living in Beith in Ayrshire we got word that my father had retired and that his travel restrictions no longer applied. So in the summer of ’58 my mother and my father came to visit us. It was only now that my mother told my father she’d been to see us. At first he wouldn’t believe it but when he saw the photos of us together he had no choice. He had to believe it, you know. The reason my mother had not told him was she was so frightened it would slip out accidentally and they would both be punished for breaking the travel regulations imposed by the East German Authorities. That was the last time I saw my parents. As a government employee with a high security clearance, I was not permitted to travel to a communist controlled country. Both my parents passed away in ‘68.

Bob’s first return to Germany

In ’74 my wife and I took our first trip back to the country of my birth. Due to my government service it was impossible for us to cross over to communist controlled East Germany to visit the home I was brought up in. We toured West Germany, calling on friends stationed there in the forces. Prior to going over we had been in touch with my mother’s sister, who was a governess in Dresden. She was a… I suppose child-minder is as good an explanation as any. A painter there, a widower, who had seven children, she looked after them. Now, during her working days she had been housekeeper and nanny for the widower with seven children. Now living in Rendsburg…one of the children, Maria, was now living in Rendsburg in West Germany. So it was arranged that we would go up to Rendsburg and visit Maria and my aunt would come from East Germany to visit Maria…

it was a good excuse ,’one of my children’, you know. When we arrived in Rendsburg we found Aunt Gertrude was waiting for us; that was our first meeting in thirty-five years. Just imagine it. At great risk to herself she smuggled out my father’s watch to bring to me. This was a watch that my grandfather had given to my father and my father had promised me ‘You come back to Germany and it’s yours’.

INT: Ah!

BM: I wouldn’t go back to Germany so he kept it but Aunt Gertrude got it and she smuggled it out for me. I’ve still got it yet. It was hidden all during the war by my mother. In fact my mother had jewellery which was buried during the war and she got it out…you know, the war was finished, she got it back up…got my father’s watch and got her jewellery back.

And she got the jewellery made into two rings; one was a solitaire diamond with stones either side and the other was five in a row, diamonds. One was for my sister and one was for my wife, Betty. So when my sister died the ring came to my wife, Betty and she has the two of them now. But…where was I? Oh aye, the same watch he’d given me…

Dorrith M. Sim – Integration

Dorrit describes starting work and meeting her future husband. She goes on to tell about us about living in Dundee and having her family. She shares how other members of her family settled in America and Canada. Finally we learn about how she came to write her book “In My Pocket” and about her involvement with the setting up of the Scottish Annual Reunion of Kinder.

Read the Transcript

D.S: So when I was seventeen, that would be 1949, I went out to New York and then to Canada and met them all again. My uncle was quite concerned about my career. The Gallimores had paid for my education; it was really good of them. The school wasn’t the kind of school that you left when you were fifteen but I did. My uncle paid for me to go to Skerry’s which was a secretarial college. They had advertisements for jobs and there was an advertisement came in for a job in a lawyers’ office. Mylne & Campbell it was called. It was in Castle Street and I went there. My boss was the Secretary of the Scottish Lawn Tennis Association so that’s what I was involved in, not legal work. That’s where I met Andrew because when I rang the bell it was Andrew who came to the door.

INT: And he was training to be a lawyer at the time?

D.S: That’s right. That was my first job and I was there until I went to Brazil.

INT: And by that time were you engaged?

D.S: I was engaged just about three or four weeks before I went to Brazil. I was a very naive girl. I really was. I don’t think I could have stayed myself and people didn’t live together at that time.

INT: Oh no

INT: Absolutely not, that would be terrible.

INT: Your reputation would have been tarnished.

D.S: Absolutely. So, I got engaged and then about a month later I was on the road to Brazil. They [the Gallimores]Gallimores emigrated to Brazil when I was nineteen and I went with them and stayed there for a year and a half until Andrew graduated and then I came home and got married.

We went to Dundee where I had the twins in Maryfield Hospital. We had managed to get a couple of rooms. I used to spend all my lunchtimes going around the house agents because we couldn’t afford to buy a house. Andrew was earning £7.50 a week, you know. The house was up two flights of stairs and next door was a rag and bone merchants in the Seagate. It was like something out of the Sunday Post. Andrew had to climb up the pole and hang the rope out and hang my washing out the window.

And then from the Seagate, we went to Kirkton and I was expecting again. And Susan was born seventeen months after my twins.

INT: You had your work cut out

INT: That’s quite a lot!

D.S: She was born in the house. I had to get my family allowance at the post office. At that time people just left their prams outside; they never took the prams into shops. A woman came rushing into the post office and said, “Come out at once! – your twins are throwing your baby out the pram!” It was a big Marmet pram; at one time there were four children in the pram.

INT: So you said you’ve got a son as well?

D.S: He was born ten years after Ruth was born. Ruthie was born I think it was twenty-two months after Suse. I think she must have been one of the last children to be born at home in Prestwick you know, because the doctors always had women going to the hospital. I think nowadays it’s changed. Ruthie was born in ’58 and David was born in ’68 and they were both born in April.

[We returned to discussing what happened to Dorrith, just after the war, when she visited New York and Toronto]

INT: But you never considered before that, going to live with your remaining relatives in Canada?

D.S: Do you know something, I was homesick when I was there..

INT: For Scotland?

D.S: I was homesick for Scotland. My aunt was lucky because when she got to New York the people she had worked for in the leather industry were also living there. They had got out and they were living in New York. Her boss’s sister, Mina Balin used to take me out with her son and girlfriend, Claude and Inge. Claude and Inge have just had their sixtieth wedding anniversary. When, Auntie Alice was working, she went to the boss’s house and introduced me there and there were two things that really, really impressed me. One was chocolate ice cream and the other one was the toilet paper.

INT: Was it soft?

D.S: Oh it was quite different from ours.

INT: Yes ours is rather hard.

D.S: Yes.

INT: Bronco, we had Bronco here I remember.

D.S: Well all those years ago, you were too young to know, but all these years ago it was Izal toilet roll.

And Izal toilet roll had poems on every second or third leaf and that was one of the reasons I learnt English was off these poems.

They were about Izal but it was like nursery rhymes by Izal incorporated. So anyway, I was lucky to even get staying in New York because I was on the Queen Elizabeth (that was the boat) and when I got to New York they wouldn’t let me off because I was too young – you had to be eighteen before you were allowed to go yourself. So I had to stay in the boat overnight, everybody else had left and then the next day my aunt had managed to get a bond for me, to allow me to stay. I thought I was on my way Ellis Island but she’d got this bond for me to stay but I had to be back in two months. I went over to Canada and there was my Oma and Opa whom I hadn’t seen all these years. Do you know, it was ridiculous, I was so homesick. I was just homesick for Scotland and I never slept at night and I didn’t know what to do.

INT: And were they thinking they were bringing you to keep you there?

D.S: No, no

INT: No? But you must have suspected they thought that?

D.S: No, they talked about that in 1939 and then there were these boats that were sunk and that was the end of it. I never did get over. But I was homesick and they didn’t know what to do and my Uncle Ernst took me to a Scottish night at the theatre and Robert Wilson was singing and I was fine after that. [View video of Robert Wilson on Youtube]

INT: So tell us a wee bit about the book that you’ve written.

D.S: It’s just my journey.

INT: But it’s not just a journey.

INT: It’s a lovely children’s book, a lovely book.

D.S: I’ll let you see it.

INT: And did you write that for your children or your grandchildren?

D.S: No I didn’t. I was a member of Ayr Writers’ Club and they were looking for people who would write stories for children who weren’t good at learning; there was a name for that.

INT: Learning difficulties?

D.S: With learning difficulties. So I wrote this story and I just would do little sentences. I wasn’t getting anywhere with it. I was treasurer of the Club and they asked Alison Prince who lives in Arran to come and talk to the club.

I had her staying with me and I told her about my story. She said, “Could I send that to my agent?” So it was Alison Prince that started it all. Before that I had been at a conference and I had got commended or highly commended by Anne Fine.

INT: Oh, she’s a great writer

D.S: We got on very well with her. Between her and then Alison Prince coming over, they got it all started. Alison sent the story to the agent in London and it went from there. It took a long time.

INT: It’s beautifully illustrated.

D.S: That’s Gerald Fitzgerald. He’s super.

INT: Did he just read the story and choose how to illustrate it?

D.S: No it was the publishers who got him. He lived in Arran too funnily enough. I had to cut the story right down and it came out well as a picture book.

INT: It’s very good. It’s a very moving story about a child. It’s called “In My Pocket” isn’t it?’

D.S: Yes that’s what it is.

D.S: It’s been quite a success you know; it’s been good. There was the English version and then I had to write the American version. Their ending was different from our ending.

INT: Bizarre.

INT: It’s been translated into a number of languages hasn’t it?

D.S: It’s also published in German. I try to keep it light because when speaking to children I think that’s the bits they’re going to remember.

[We then we talked about Dorrith’s relationship with the Jewish Community].

INT: Talking of the Synagogue…

D.S: I go once a year or so.

INT: Do you?

D.S: I do. I go to the, to Mendel’s [Jacobs]

INT: Do you?

INT: For the Shul in the Park?

INT: The Shul in the park?

D.S: The Shul in the Park

INT: So Judaism still is part of your life?

D.S: I was part of the Jewish Community! I’m proud of my background

INT: But how did you end up being Church of England and your husband Church of Scotland?

INT: You’re very ecumenical certainly.

D.S: I know, absolutely. When I came over the granny got a hold of me, that was Granny Gallimore and within a week, I was going to the Sunday school.

INT: Ah right. But would that not have been Scottish?

D.S: No she was an Episcopalian.

INT: I see.

D.S: It wasn’t the Church of England I went to I think it was just the local Sunday school. But I never really got mixing with Jewish people and actually the Jewish community, when they knew I was going to get baptised wrote to my grandfather – I didn’t even know the Jewish community knew about me. But they wrote to my grandfather and said, “Do you know that Dorrith is going to be baptised.” And he wrote back and said, ‘Well, you know, you never were there for Dorrith when she needed you.’ And that was that.

INT: Which is a fair comment.

D.S: It was, it was really. But I call myself a Jewish-Christian

INT: Fair enough

D.S: Yes

INT: I think that’s fair enough

D.S: Or something like that

INT: And from the time that you were with the Gallimores, did you have anything to do with the Jewish community?

D.S: Do you know, it’s funny. I remember once going to some party. There must have been a Jewish community in Edinburgh. I took a friend and she’s never forgotten it and neither have I. I don’t know, would it be Sukkot or something? Maybe that’s what it was. I think Rosa was at that party too.

INT: Really? Rosa Sacharin?

D.S: Yeah. I think so. She was in Edinburgh at that time. But, but now and again Mummy Gallimore would take me down to meet Doctor Turk and I’ve got pictures of Doctor Turk’s garden.

INT: And when did you meet other refugees? Not till you were quite grown up then?

D.S: Well, yes. I’ll tell you, the only one I knew was Rita McNeil; her husband worked in Ear Nose and Throat in Ayr. I don’t know how they heard about me. It’s funny because Rita McNeil was at school with Billy McCulloch who was Mummy Gallimore’s nephew. I think he must have told us about her.

We had to go to a big office in Edinburgh and see about something to do with compensation, something like that. And Rita McNeil was there along with her foster mum. But that’s the only one I knew and I didn’t know I was part of Kindertransport; I’d never heard the name.

INT: Dorrith when I first said that we were coming out, that we wanted to interview you, I thought you said something quite interesting. You said, “Why? Because I haven’t done anything” and I said, “Yes you have” and then you sort of said casually, “Well I did start it off.”

INT: Would you like to explain?

D.S: It was Joe Metzstein and myself. We actually, had our first meeting in London. I don’t know how but we managed to get quite a lot of people.

INT: Is this SAROK – which stands for what?

D.S: The Scottish Annual Reunion of Kinder. I think some people had got their names in the index of the brochure from the London meeting. I think we got some people from there. Also I talked on the wireless and I had an article in the Sunday Post. That’s how Gisela who lives in Kilmarnock had found out about it. She had got the Sunday Post and she had read the article. It was in other the papers as well.

INT: And so they all came to you.

D.S: And Joe. Joe had got Joe, Leo and Danny and Isi Metzstein – the two sisters, they live in America. That’s a wonderful story, you know the whole lot, the five of them all got over in the Kindertransport. All at different times.

INT: And their mother, and his mother as well.

D.S: And their mother got over too but that wouldn’t be a Kindertransport but she got over as well. But people wrote to me and when we had our meetings, you know, we brought all sorts of interesting books and then we had an exhibition with the pictures. And the library in Ayr helped me and we had about twelve display boards.

D.S: What happened was that I had a holiday home in Ballantrae and one day Margaret Sanderson who lived just two or three doors down came to see me and she said,

“Dorrith, there’s somebody been on Woman’s Hour and she’s looking for people like yourself and this is the phone number. I didn’t know anything about Kindertransport. Will you phone her?” So I phoned and within three weeks I was helping to publicise the reunion in London which a thousand people were at. It’s fantastic. And then Joe Metzstein and I got all these people from Scotland together and that’s where it all started. But I hadn’t known anybody before then. Leo Metzstein – he was the very first Kindertransport boy I’d ever met; he came up to the house.

Dorothea Brander – Integration

Dorothea travelled with her husband who worked for the British Council. She lived for a time in Otto Hahn’s house (he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944)

INT: And he was still working with the British Council?

DB: He was still with the British Council. He had a very good job, he was Director of what was called ‘International House’ and it was a place where students could come from all over the world and learn English and speak English. And there was like a lovely café and he made lots of friends in Edinburgh, got to know a lot of painters and poets and all kinds of people to do with the festival. He was very…I envied him a bit. Here I was stuck with the kids and he was sitting in Princes Street in this nice place. So he was there for two years and then they said “Well it’s time you moved on.” And that’s when we moved to Gottingen.

INT: Right.

DB: Right. So in Gottingen I said, well Alison, she was two by this time, “She better just go to a nursery school” and the only option really was a German one so she grew up speaking German really.

INT: And the other two?

DB: And the other two went to a British Army School; there was a British Army School.

INT: Right.

DB: And Keith, awkward as ever, he said “I don’t like that teacher. I am not going to school.” Haha! And he didn’t for about three months, I think, he just lay on the floor. “I’m not going to that one, I don’t like the teacher”. And he just didn’t go! Until luckily the teacher was moved and then he was alright.

INT: And how long were you in Gottingen?

DB: We were there for four years and of course we got friendly with the army people and there was the N.A.A.F.I to do the shopping and Alison, we had a little Dackel [dachshund dog] and one day Alison just walked out and then a workman came to our door, he said “You know, we’ve just seen this little girl with a Dackel walking across the road into the park.”

Well that was Alison, she was very independent. And then we had pretty awful…the… you know, the houses were all owned by Germans or Nazis and they took them away from them and put people like us and army people in them. And the people who owned our house were pretty awful so they, in the end we said we really want to move from there and across the road from us lived Otto Hahn, the man, you know, the German physicist, who became… he was really instrumental in working out the bomb for the Germans, a physicist, a very famous physicist. And Keith was very friendly with his wife, he used to go over there and she always would talk to him and give him cups of tea and things. So they said “Oh you could move to our house.” And that was just round the corner, another very nice house, so we did that. We lived in their house for a long time.

INT: In a separate flat?

DB: No we had the whole house.

INT: Right.

DB: They just had a flat because there was only the two of them, you know, they said “Well that’s fine.”

INT: Right.

DB: And…and we lived among other quite famous physicists and people you know, got to know them. And Donald worked in the university, didn’t like his boss very much, he wasn’t very nice but he had a very nice assistant, nice lady. Some nice people and some not so nice people and I got to know some people and…and there was a very, very good German theatre, well at that time it was the best theatre in Germany, in Gottingen.

INT: And was it more difficult for you because you had been a Jewish refugee?

DB: It’s hard to say really because we were so much among the British company now, you know. I had a…I mean this old lady, she was a German, there were German friends but they understood, you know, where I came from and who I was. So it was both good and bad, some of it was not so good, some of it was fine. But and then of course I did have German friends, I mean from before. So I went to see them in Munich, old relations, and…there’s so much you know, I can’t tell you it all.

INT: Of course not.

DB: An awful lot.

INT: And I believe you then ended up in Iceland, is that right?

DB: Ah but not much… quite a lot later than that. I mean from Germany we moved to Persia, to Tehran, and…

INT: Again with the British Council?

DB: Yes, yes, and that was not always good. But Donald didn’t like it because he thought it was like a factory. So many people wanting to learn English, he had these thousands on the street waiting to sign up for the classes, you know, and he was really getting terribly fed up with it, didn’t like it. We had a very nice villa which we rented from actually Jewish people. It was Persian Jewish people who had emigrated to Switzerland and we rented their house. So we had a very nice house with a swimming pool, a dog and a bit of a glaiket lady/servant who just sat at the door awaiting for orders, you know. And she was what they called Turki, she was Turkish really, and that’s why we had her because I could speak to her in Turkish. But then one time, we had Jewish friends, very good Jewish friends who worked for the Jewish Alliance and one summer we left them with the maid and he was a doctor and he said “You better get rid of her, she’s got TB”!

INT: Oh dear.

DB: I said “Oh I didn’t know that.”

So they fed her penicillin and, you know, all kinds of things like that. And then in between I said I must go and see my folks in America so I managed to go with Alison. You know I’d already gone with Kirsten and Keith before but this time…was it from Persia? No it wasn’t from Persia, it was from Italy…Anyway we stayed in Persia for two years and then had to leave really. It just was unbearable. There was so much antagonism you know.

INT: Towards the British?

DB: Towards the British. And we were moved. But the children in Persia went to a German school because it was the only one that really looked after the children properly.

All the others you couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t be abducted by some people or something. So they went to the German school and one time Adenauer came and, you know it was the photographs of Adenauer with Alison dancing for him. But they were good, you see, they looked after the kids properly. So, of course, when we went to Italy I said “Oh well that’s OK, there’s a German school here in Milan.” You know, the kids can just go there. And that’s what they did, they went to the German school and by this time I had already been to America with Kirsten and Keith, although I won’t tell you all that story, but this time I said “I better go with Alison.”

So we took the liner, ocean liner, and went to America, Alison and I and I said “Oh this is a good chance for Alison to get to, to go to an English speaking school. So when I took her there the teacher didn’t like her, she said “Oh she’s no good. She’s far behind in age.” And, you know, she was awful.

INT: Because you were going to stay a bit with your parents?

DB: Well about two months or something.

INT: Right.

DB: Just paying a visit. And…So poor Alison, she really had a bad time there in America, not very good. But I had lots of friends there, you know, both relatives and friends and we had quite a good time. And then on the way back again on the Italian liner I met two very nice ladies, English, and they were very good with Alison, really kind you know, and when I got back to Italy of course there was Donald and he had looked after the kids with the help of our cook, Italian cook. And she was a very good lady, she came from the country, she was a real country lady and the kids had had a wonderful time, Donald looked after them really well, took them skiing and all kinds of things.

They were asked to join a television programme which came up every week I think where they had to be an English speaking family so that was Donald and the wife of the British Council boss in Milan, and Keith; they made up the family and…haha! They were on the television and they got paid very well for this programme, just fun really. So that was fine and we had a wonderful flat right in the centre of Milan and then Keith went on the bus to school and the bus was on a circular road in Milan, you know, and so sometimes the, the conductor would look after Keith and sometimes he wouldn’t let him off at the school, he said “You haven’t done enough Italian yet, you have to stay on the bus.”! Keith didn’t mind, he stayed on the bus. But he went to the German school in Milan, which was a very good school and…but we were only there for two years? Two years I think. Not long anyway. And made friends outside Milan and even now Kirsten says to me “Oh you abandoned me there in the children’s home that I didn’t want to go to”, you know.

And Alison went to a children’s home, she was a bit better about it.

INT: Why were they in a children’s home?

DB: Well, you know, we had so much to do in Milan. There was so much going on that I thought, well they’re better out of the way in the countryside and it’s nice in the mountains and…

INT: Oh you mean a kind of boarding school?

DB: No they were just children’s homes really.

INT: Right.

DB: And the school that Kirsteen and Keith had to go to was part of their proper school and they just had camps you know.

INT: I see.

DB: So I thought, well, that’ll be alright – no, no… I had to fetch Keith back, he wasn’t happy and Kirsteen now says she wasn’t happy there either but she didn’t say anything.

INT: Was that in the summer holidays?

DB: Not really no. It was sort of school camps.

INT: I see.

DB: And so…well after that, then we came back. That’s when we went to Iceland and of course going to Iceland meant I couldn’t take the kids because, well I didn’t want to have to put them in an Icelandic school. We did take Alison with us for a year and tried to teach her ourselves, that is a special…

INT: Home teaching.

DB: Yes, I forget what it’s called. But it didn’t work really terribly well.

And the kids by this time now went to Dollar because I said “if they have to go a boarding school I’d like them to be together” and Dollar, of course, is a coeducational school and Donald happened to know the headmaster from times past, teachers all know each other. And that turned out to be quite a bad choice in a way because…what happened? He got chucked out this man. Did the school go on fire or something…? There were problems.

INT: Problems

DB: But anyway, they were at the school and they were allowed to come…every holiday the British Council paid for the kids to come to Iceland to visit us and they did that and they had a very nice time in Iceland, you know. All got friendly especially with the British and American Embassy and the woman, the, well, girl then, who was the same age as them at the American Embassy, they’re still friendly over here now because she is now married to a Scotsman and she won’t go back to America, she lives here.

So they still see her and they still, they still know the British Ambassadors kids and you know, its all been fine really in a way, difficult in some other ways but there are connections.

INT: And during all this time were you just a mum at home or did you do anything yourself ?

DB: I would be, well I was by this time back in Edinburgh and so I thought well what am I going to do? I’m not going to sit here fiddling so I looked up the paper, I looked at The Times and I thought what’s important? you know? What jobs are there for somebody my age?

INT: How old were you back then?

DB: Well I was forty-something.

INT: Right.

DB: And it was either chiropody or social work.

INT: Right.

DB: I thought chiropody, poking in people’s feet, I don’t fancy that. I’ll see what social work will be about. So I applied here to Moray House and they looked at me and they said “Well you’re OK but you haven’t got any experience.” I said “What are you looking for?! What more experience could I have?” I thought I had plenty. Maybe not exactly social work but, you know…

INT: Of life.

DB: Of life, that’s right. They said “Well that’s not right. We need social work experience.” So they put me together with a very nice man who took me on as a sort of…

INT: Apprentice I suppose?

DB: Supervised me really.

He took me and he put me together with a very nice Jewish lady who was just a year ahead of me and she took me on as a kind of, well, anyway helper and she worked in clinics and I worked with her for a year. And then I went back again and I said “Now I’ve done that, you know, am I alright to start on the course?” And I did, that’s then when I started a Social Work course here at Moray House and did two years and qualified and started working as a social worker.

INT: And what, what were you doing as a social worker? Who were you working with?

DB: Well I first worked for, out in the country, for a country practice and after two years I started working in Edinburgh. But again mostly out in the country.

INT: And Donald, was he retired by this time?

DB: No, no, no, he was in Iceland.

INT: Oh you left him behind in Iceland?

DB: Yes, oh yes.

INT: I didn’t realise that.

DB: But not that long …he wasn’t…he came back to…but not the same time as me, I think he stayed longer.

INT: Right.

DB: I’m not telling you…No he came back and he said “Well I’ll teach”, that’s right. So the job he got was in Dunfermline so he had to cross over on the bridge every day.

INT: Right.

DB: And after a year he thought “I can’t be bothered with that anymore.” And he got a job at the Blind School and of course he didn’t have a clue about teaching blind people but they said “Well you’ll have to do a course.”

In Wiltshire or somewhere there’s a college for teaching of the blind and Donald did that. He did a course, he went and qualified and they liked him a lot. The kids loved him in the Blind School, he was there for years and years and years until really late on when he shouldn’t have been teaching anymore but they said “Oh it doesn’t matter. Just come and take the kids.” You know, and he did that until he was in his eighties.

INT: Oh I see.

DB: Yes he was in the Blind School for many, many years. They still know him there.

INT: Of course.

DB: He’d go swimming there and they were very nice to him. That’s right, I nearly forgot. Yeah. He worked.