Gathering The Voices Scotland

Testimonies of Holocaust survivors who settled in Scotland

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Life Before The War

Moniek Garber – Life Before The War

INT: Good evening. Today is the 12th of September 2012 and I’m here to interview Moniek Garber. Good evening. Moniek, can I ask you about your very early days? Could you tell me please what your name was at birth, where you were born?

MG: Yes my name at birth was Moishe

INT: And when

MG: 1923 and I was born in the town of Wolozin. That’s how it’s spelt.

INT: W-O-L-O-Z-I-N. And that I see from your papers is in Belarus?

MG: It is now in Belarus.

INT: What was it then?

MG: Poland.

INT: Poland. And tell me a little, if you would, about what life was like then? You were born in, I think you told me, on the 12th of the…?

MG: The 10th

INT: The 10th of the 12th 1923.

MG: What was life like? Well a) it was still the Depression. I remember that my uncle in particular was affected because he had a sawmill/owned a sawmill and had problems selling the wood. Apart from that, I suppose we were thought of as the rich family in the town, but of course, the people assume that somebody is rich. It wasn’t all that easy.

INT: Is that because you were one of the few Jewish families there?

MG: Yes. I, my grandmother was the last of the Itzhaikins are the people that founded the Yeshiva (and the synagogue for that matter too). Some ancestor of mine, also called Haim Volozhin, in 1740 he built the synagogue. He was a linen merchant and linen is bleached in the sun so he had a huge piece of land, several acres, on which the sheets of linen were bleached and somewhere near the bottom of his land he erected the first synagogue in our town. Now his grandson was, is known as the Etz Haim he was a student with the Gaon of Vilna and the Gaon encouraged him to start the Yeshiva.

The money seems to still have been available then because he more or less did it largely on his own plus, believe it or not, the help of the local lord. He sort of supplied materials and things like this and the Rabbinical students were supported for a few years by Haim

INT: And so was this Yeshiva still going strong when you were a young boy?

MG: Oh yes. Strong I’m not so sure but I would say there were probably about 40 would-be Rabbis, yes. At the height of its success I think they had about nearly 500. It was a huge institution.

INT: It must have been.

MG: Yes

INT: But would your family yourself, would your father be a part of the Yeshiva or was he a businessman?

MG: The Yeshiva was built just opposite the synagogue so sort of just outside of what I think were the original grounds of our family. There were all kinds of problems. The tsarist government interfered and so on and of course there were the usual problems within the community. Different views on things and things like this.

INT: And was your father part of running the Yeshiva or?

MG: No.

INT: No.

MG: By the time we came along we merely attended the synagogue although we were usually seated on the right side.

INT: Is that the more honourable side?

MG: Yes it is. It is the honourable side, the right side.

INT: How big was the synagogue at that time?

MG: Very large. It’s a very big building in fact.

INT: And the Jewish population of your town?

MG: The Jewish population; about 4000.

INT: I see.

MG: It wasn’t the only synagogue. By then there was another synagogue at the bottom of the town and my cousin was telling me there was a third synagogue. I’m not quite sure whether he was right or wrong. My cousin died just 2 years ago in Israel.

INT: Right. And if there were 4000 Jewish people, what proportion of the town was that? Was that a significant proportion?

MG: Oh about 80% I would say.

INT: Gosh

INT: Oh, the majority of the town was Jewish?

MG: Oh yes.

INT: I didn’t realise that.

MG: That was quite common in Poland.

INT: Yes

MG: In what they called Shtetls.

INT: And if you had such an eminent Yeshiva that would attract other people to come and live there as well.

MG: Fair point.

INT: And did you have brothers and sisters?

MG: I had my older brother, 6 years older, his name was Daniel, Daniel Garber and he was a pianist.

INT: I see. So your life must have been fairly lacking in incident until the Nazis rose to power?

MG: Well more or less yes. Well, until the war started.

INT: Until the war started. And then what?

MG: And then I was arrested not entirely without cause in the eyes of the Soviet Union and that was in March of 1940 if I’m not mistaken. There were supposed to be held elections for the people to agree to become part of the Soviet Union and there were various …The school started very quickly after the Russians arrived.

There was a plaque out with a cut out head of Stalin and some slogans. Well whoever glued it onto the paper didn’t do too good a job so his nose wasn’t stuck on and I sort of …either my sense of tidiness or whatever it was but I sort of…

INT: Did you know it was Stalin? You knew what you were doing?

MG: Oh yes, yes.

INT: So what did you do with the poster?

MG: Well I sort of tore off his nose.

INT: And did somebody see you?

MG: Yeah well one of the things the Soviet Union needed were organisers, these people who report to the authorities. So somebody in the school saw me doing it. I didn’t hide it but I didn’t think it was very important. And I was arrested and I was given 5 years in a youth camp. After a long train journey and various things I came to the youth camp and the camp commandant there refused to have me because I was political.

INT: Really?

MG: So back from Moscow, from the Ukraine back to Moscow, I was sent to another concentration camp.

INT: And that was a concentration camp?

MG: Yeah

INT: Rather than a…

MG: Yeah a concentration camp rather than a youth camp.

INT: It was not for Jewish people in particular?

MG: No

INT: No

MG: Not specifically for Jewish people.

INT: What happened with your… did your parents try to get you back? Because they must have been…

MG: You don’t do anything of that kind, not in the Soviet Union.

INT: And did they know where you ended up?

MG: No I don’t think they had the slightest idea where I was but sometime in 1941, before I was released in fact, I received a parcel from my father and my brother and there was a letter, honey and things like this, and I would later hear that by that time my father was already shot, by the time it had arrived to me because he was… When I was very young my father was on one occasion Alderman of the town, he was elected Alderman.

INT: Which is really like a mayor of the town?

MG: Well sort of. Things have changed. The way local authorities had ministers altered in the meantime. But I remember a conversation with my mother in which she more or less was asking why he doesn’t want to be Alderman again and he said ‘Because I don’t want to be like…’ and he mentioned the previous Alderman who was an alcoholic, a compete alcoholic actually. Everybody wanted to meet the Alderman for a drink and so on so it was a way of…

INT: It was a way of avoiding getting too much to drink.

MG: Sort of. It was a way to avoid the alcohol; he decided not to be Alderman. When the Germans came in they made him head of the Judenrat and then of course he was supposed to choose the usual thing, 50 people to go and do some work, dig trenches basically intended for the graves of the people.

INT: Do you think your father knew that?

MG: Oh yes

INT: Yes

MG: My father was a rather impatient man. He apparently said to the officer “You want to do the dirty job do it yourself”. So the man took out a pistol and shot him. So my father was in fact the first man to be shot in our town by the Germans.

INT: And your brother?

MG: My brother, my brother was taken from our town to Minsk, which is the nearest large city, the nearest was Minsk. And he was teaching the piano in the Conservatory. He was actually a very proficient pianist.

INT: And what happened to him after that?

MG: After that he survived the war, he married a Soviet woman, they escaped from the Germans eastward and after the war he thought he could go back to Minsk to his position as a professor I suppose but they wouldn’t let him go back. Partly because by that time his brother was a traitor to the Soviet Union.

INT: So he must have survived because he wasn’t in Poland, he was in Russia?

MG: He survived because he was, he was in fact in Kazakhstan as far as I can make out.

INT: Right, and while that was happening what happened to you? You were taken to the camp?

MG: Well I was sent to the first camp which was not far from the Finnish border. There are two big lakes; the Onega and the Ladoga. The Ladoga is the northern one, has a long projection northwards and I was right at the tip there. Basically felling trees, not that I was skilled enough to fell the trees but I cut the branches and things like that.

INT: So it was a work camp?

MG: It was a work camp yes.

INT: And were the conditions like the ones you read about in the Gulags?

MG: No, no, the conditions were not the same as in Germany. The population was not intended to be eradicated. But the population was intended to work until they dropped. So basically people would survive, some people who sort of knew their way about and were lucky. Camps were administered internally; the prisoners also administered the camp. The guards were outside the actual perimeters, they merely guarded us. They were a poor lot; they had good food but apart from that they were frozen otherwise.

INT: They wouldn’t have wanted to be there either I suppose.

MG: Yeah.

INT: You were saying that some people survived longer than others under that sort of regime?

MG: Yes, scurvy was one of the worst problems, frostbite too, but scurvy… For weeks there was no medical assistance because as you know scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C and there was nothing to deal with vitamin C, although there was cod liver oil to deal with other illnesses.

INT: What age were you at that point?

MG: Well, by then I was 16/17.

INT: So your education would have stopped.

MG: The time I was in the camps. Now the reason I was released. I was released in September I think, about September 1941. Now, what happened, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union sought alliance with Britain, they couldn’t get an alliance with Britain because of all the Polish problems. Poland was already an ally. So I don’t know how many people know it but anyway, Stalin was out of action. He had, let’s say a kind of nervous breakdown after the invasion by Hitler. So Kaganovic and Molotov administered the country.

INT: And how do you know this?

MG: Kaganovic was the senior one. How do I know that?

INT: Yes

MG: Well amongst other things, at one point we were marshalled in the yard of the camp and a letter was read out to us about the treacherous Germans having invaded our country and so on and so on and then it was signed by Kaganovic and Molotov. And everybody at the camp was delighted because that meant that Stalin had kicked the bucket. We thought, but he didn’t. Kaganovic was the Commissar of heavy industry and he was sort of in charge, not Molotov. Kaganovic was the top man. What happened to him later, by the time I left the Soviet Union, I couldn’t tell you. He was an elderly man I think by then.

INT: And what was the consequence of the letter? Were you then released?

MG: We were yes. A large number of Poles were released. Stalin then came more or less back into power and stopped the Poles getting out of the Soviet Union but by that time I was out.

INT: So you were very fortunate then.

MG: Yes

INT: And so you said that your father was the first person to have been killed.

MG: Yes.

INT: What happened to your mother?

MG: Oh my mother died when I was a nine year old boy.

INT: Oh right, sorry.

Marianne Lazlo – Life Before The War

Marianne describes her family background.

INT: Marianne?

ML: Yes?

INT: Thank you for agreeing to talk to me this afternoon. Tell me about yourself; where you were born and what life was like before the war.

ML: Well I was born in Hungary; Debrecen was the name of the city I was born in. Hungary is Eastern Europe, next to Austria. I’m telling you this because some people don’t know where Hungary is. I was born in 1931 and before the war it was pretty normal. I was born in a middle class Jewish family and we didn’t really mix much with non-Jewish people and I think I lived in a Jewish area because I went to a Jewish school, a Jewish primary school.

Lore Lucas – Life Before The War

INT: The date is Sunday the 29th of August 2010 and this is an interview with Mrs. Lore Lucas in Glasgow. Mrs. Lucas can you tell us when and where were you were born?

LL: In Germany, in Krefeld; K-R-E-F-E-L-D

INT: And was, what was your name at birth?

LL: Lindenbaum

INT: Ah right, this was your surname. So Lore Lindenbaum

LL: Correct

INT: When you were in Germany before you came, your family – who were the members of your family? Who did you live with?

LL: My parents and my sister

INT: Was this an older sister or a younger?

LL: Younger

INT: Right and what happened to your sister? Did she come out with you?

LL: The whole family disappeared in different ways. It’s a long story I can tell you

Leo Metzstein – Life Before The War

INT: Today is the 26th of July 2013 and we’re here to interview Leo Metzstein. Leo, can I begin by asking you when you were born? Where were you born? And were you always called Leo Metzstein?

LM: Yes I was born on the 27th of July 1932 in Berlin and I was always named Leo Metzstein, no question about that. I can’t think of anything else to tell you other than the street I was born, but that’s not important. But we did live around the corner from a Nazi pub which was actually quite good. We lived in a basement what we people would call ‘garden flats’ but it was a basement no question about it. And that indirectly, I think, saved our lives, maybe not our lives so much, but it saved us being harassed by gangs because we went downstairs into our house. We were not a main door, off the road where you would stand and have to open with a key. We actually walked down steps into a basement. So that’s where we were born.

INT: And why was it good for you that there was a Nazi pub nearby?

LM: Well it’s kept the… as far as my mother used to say there was a Nazi pub round the corner where they congregated and I think the amount of drink that was going on and everything they would just disappear after their drinking and disappear to their own homes. It was a meeting place for them I would think. But remember I was only, at that time I was one, in ’32 I was born, by the time 1933 came along one, and ’39 I was 6. But I was just hearing stories and seeing things. It’s nothing much.

INT: And were you an only child?

LM: No, no I was one of five. There are two girls and three boys; and my sister Liebe, who changed her name to Lee, went to America. My brother Joseph, he just changed it to Joe, which was quite normal. There were the twins, Isi and Jenny were twins. And I was the last one, there was four years between Isi and Jenny and I and that was 1932 when I was born.

INT: You were of course very young when the Nazis gained power. Do you have any memories from that period before you came here to Scotland?

LM: I do have memories. I would think, I went to school, I suppose at the time you would be just walking the streets, I’m not, I don’t think people were as, as concerned about paedophiles as they seem to be today. But I remember walking the streets and going to school myself, and also running home from school because my mother said “don’t walk, just when you, when you go anywhere, just run. You don’t want to be observed by anybody”. But according to my mother I was blonde and blue eyed and I wasn’t going to be taken for a dark, Jewish styled person like my brothers were. They were dark and very obviously, I would think, Jewish. I don’t remember much, except; I have a vague memory somewhere in the back of my head about parades, flags but that would just be seen. I don’t think they were in our street so much, it would be in the main roads. We lived in Blumenstraße which was quite a main road at the time but I don’t think there would be many parades up and down I would say. Anyway if there was a parade I would probably sneak out to see it and then I’d be pulled back, I wouldn’t be allowed to wander the streets.

INT: Was it the local primary school you went to? Or was it…

LM: It was a Jewish school I believe and there was, they finally burned the school down I believe and then they opened, partially, a bit of it so I may have gone back to school for a little while.

INT: And it was the Nazis who burned it down then?

LM: Oh yes, it was all part of 1939 Kristallnacht, this and that. They decided that Jewish schools were not necessary, Jewish people were not necessary so why give them special schools? But I believe, hearing from my brothers, that they did open up one or two others, maybe they just felt difficult, I think they felt guilty, but I think they, they opened up a few schools.

INT: And you obviously managed to escape, what happened? How did you get here?

LM: Oh that’s a long story which neither of my sisters or my mother or anybody really talked about but it was a fairly organised arrangement which we didn’t realise. And my sister only heard about it either at work or when she was with other girls that one day, there’s a lot of things going on about Jewish people, Jewish children, ten thousand children are going to be allowed. This is a very strange thing, allowed, I didn’t think we were stopped from going anywhere, but suddenly ‘allowed’ to leave Germany.

INT: And this was as part of the Kindertransport?

LM: Yes. My sister came back apparently from the house, although she was very slow with any information and so was my mother, they just never spoke about anything. But apparently I heard later that she heard that you have to go somewhere and, and present yourself and say who is there that’s under 17 or under 16, who’s over six? And this all happened, I was still only 4, 5, 6 years old and I didn’t hear till later that that’s what happened. You were to go somewhere, get a form, someone will deal with the Jewish Refugee Committee, the Quakers the…I honestly don’t know and my sister was not very forthcoming with information. But, she was fifteen, she organised the whole thing to the point where if my mother hadn’t moved, which was the case, my mother was very slow in thinking that anything would ever happen; “No they’re friends of ours” she would say, “Look Mr thingummy across the road, he knows us well”. And my sister said “If you don’t move yourself, I’m killing myself”. And she would have, she would have, she was going to throw herself off a bridge she told me.

INT: So she understood how dangerous things were?

LM: At fourteen or fifteen she understood everything but she never spoke about it. The main thing was to get three of us ready. Joe was already past the age where he could go to Kindertransport, or verging on the age, and he had to get smuggled out. He was told one day “come to ‘so and so’ and ‘so and so'” with a wee bundle, bit of bread or something and he got on the train and he went through. But Isi, Jenny and I were different. We were registered below 17 and there was a lot of work to get us out of Berlin. All sorts of committees must have been involved, you had to make sure that my mother didn’t owe any taxes or, or rent or, and finally it was a horrendous departure, I just…

INT: And your father, was he deceased by this time?

LM: My father was, I reckon he was instrumental because there was a lot of Communist Jewish people around Berlin at the time. He may have been a Communist, he may have talked in places, I don’t know. All we know is that he was 35 when he was found in a field and obviously had tried to escape gangs or, or being harassed. He was a very Jewish looking and he…probably anti Nazi of course, being Jewish he would see what was going on. But this was already 1933 and he was killed, I say “killed” in inverted commas, he was, couldn’t go home. He wouldn’t go home because they were watching everything apparently, that was already 1933. People don’t believe that 1933 it started but apparently as soon as Hitler became Chancellor everything changed. People were being hit in the street and harassed and even imprisoned. I think they even started certain concentration camps just to get people out of the cities. And at 35 he was found in a field, went to the hospital, and my brother has got conflicting reports of what he told me or my sister told me; he had an allergy of some description. He was found in a field, taken to hospital, and died. Aged 35.

INT: So you think probably they pretended he’d had an allergic reaction? And that was an excuse?

LM: It’s a very strange thing in 1935 to talk about allergies and you know, you don’t, we didn’t know about these things a lot of the time but he certainly was… He may have had a cough, I don’t know, but it wouldn’t do him any good sitting in a field, not eating, you know. And he would come to the window, definitely my mother told me this. He would come to the window, knock at the window, she would give him some bread or something and he’d be away. So I don’t remember him because I was just one when he died.

INT: So, if your father was in hiding, what income was coming into the house? How did your mother cope?

LM: Well that’s a good question because the only way I think she could have coped would be to get social security and at that time the lorries would come round, I don’t know how it was arranged, but the lorries would come round and pick up all the Jewish women in the streets, wherever it was and they would go to hospitals and hostels and prisons and peeling potatoes, washing. And I think that is the way she got money because my mother, my father had no money. He was a handler like Steptoe and Son. We had a horse and cart and so I don’t know where she would get her money. Never explained, my mother never explained anything, never told. Maybe I didn’t ask the right questions.

INT: Maybe it was too difficult for her to remember?

LM: Yes and too painful to remember what happened. The people were just treated very badly but in the same time we must have had enough food to eat and she worked hard probably to earn a few pennies.

INT: So she sent three of you out as part of the Kindertransport. Did she manage to escape as well?

LM: Yes she managed to escape but it was a very similar arrangement as to the, to the children’s transport except you had to have a sponsor. And in this particular case it was a family in Dorset who decided that they, I think their reasons were much more honourable than just wanting a cook and a maid. I think they wanted to save a couple of people. So there must have been some sort of organisation in Berlin or certainly in Britain to say ‘look, there are other people out there, can you take…?’ and they did, they took my mother as a cook and my sister as a maid and they stayed, they got taken over. At that time I think we had to have a £50 guarantee as children but I don’t know what they gave for my mother and sister. All I know is that by the time they came, seven days or so before the war started, August the 20th I think it was, they were safe. So that was all our family were now in Britain and my father of course died in Germany.

Kathy Hagler – Life Before The WWII

Kathy was born in 1942, her father was taken away by the Nazis when she was just one year old. Initially, she was sent to the Munkacs Ghetto with her mother and baby sister. Kathy explains that even as a child she knew it was not a good idea to let people know she was Jewish

KH: Today is the 7th of October.

INT: With Kathy Hagler.

INT: OK, here we are in Inverness and you said you would talk about your life. So tell me about when and where you were born. I’m just going to let you talk and I’ll prompt you if it stops.

Your name was Hagler, that’s from your family name?

KH: That’s from my father, that’s all I know about him.

INT: Right.

KH: I know his name and I know his approximate age.

INT: Yeah.

KH: I think he was eight or nine years older than my mother. So I know that my mother was born in 1914.

INT: Yeah.

KH: That’s all. I don’t know when in 1914 or where in 1914; I don’t know anything.

INT: So her name was, her maiden name was your grandmother’s name wasn’t it?

KH: Yes.

INT: Right. And that was the name of the husband that had gone off, the gambler?

KH: Yes. I mean as far as I know he may have been still alive when I was living with my granny. I have no idea. He may have been dead.

INT: Yeah.

KH: I don’t know, I was never told.

INT: Do you know what your granny’s name was?

KH: S-T-E-R-N. But listen, as I’ve said, my granny’s younger sister survived. Her grandson, my second cousin in Hungary with whom I have a very good relationship with even today, he never found out that he was Jewish until he was twenty years old!

INT: Wow. From a religious grandmother as well.

KH: But a totally non-religious mother.

INT: Yeah.

KH: He was twenty years old before he found out that he came from a Jewish family.

INT: Wow

KH: I mean…so my granny and my aunt were not the only ones who kept everything a secret.

INT: Yeah. So presumably after the Holocaust it was just too dangerous to say anything to anybody …

KH: I was about fourteen years old when I sort of decided all by myself that maybe it’s not a good idea to let people know that I’m Jewish. I don’t know how I reached that conclusion because there was never any doubt about it; I always knew that I was Jewish.

INT: Yeah.

KH: But somehow I reached the conclusion that letting people know that I’m Jewish is not a very good idea.

Karola Regent – Life Before The War

INT:     Today is the 26 February 2015 and I’m here to interview Karola Regent, good afternoon Karola.  Could I begin by asking you when you born and where were you born?

KR:     I was born in Düsseldorf on the 5 December 1925.

INT:     And what was your name at birth?

KR:     Well, my surname was Zürndorfer.

INT:     You came from a Jewish family, can you tell us a bit about your family before you came to the UK, before everything changed?

KR:     Well, it wasn’t a strict Jewish family at all, my father was a publisher and had many friends, Christian friends and so on. We weren’t strict, we weren’t kosher, it was a very happy childhood we had.

INT:     And what sort of things did you do at the weekends? What were your interests at the time?

KR:     Well, when I was young, like that, my father used to take us for lovely walks up on the hills every Sunday, when mummy cooked a dinner and we played. In those days, we still played on the street a game called Völkerball, a whole crowd of us used to, there were very few cars.  And skipping and on the street we used to mark, what do you call it?

INT:     Hopscotch.

KR:     Hopscotch, yes, hopscotch and skipping and roller skating and later ice skating.

INT:     And were your friends Jewish and Christian?

KR:     Oh, well, I think they were all Christian around us.

INT:     Did you have any brothers or sisters?

KR:     Yes, a younger sister Lotte, who is about three and a half years younger.

INT:     And tell us a little bit about your schooling, you went to school in Düsseldorf?

KR:     No, the first four years I went to where we lived in Gerresheim, which is a suburb of Düsseldorf, I had a lovely time, an awfully nice teacher, I think there were 50 of us in the class you see.

INT:     50, my goodness.

KR:     I know, but somehow that’s how, you know, we were all divided up into sections inside and very, very nice teacher who was … even when the Nazis came and things were difficult she sort of stuck by us.  And  she sort of protected us in the mornings when everybody had to stand up in class and say ‘Heil Hitler’. She said you needn’t do it and was very protective of me.

INT:     Were you the only Jewish girl in the class?

KR:     I don’t remember, I think probably, yes.

INT:     And what at the end of your primary education, could you join the rest and go on to the secondary school?

KR:     Well, that’s the thing I couldn’t do, I had to go to the Jewish school.

INT:     And was that close to where you lived or did you have to travel?

KR:     No, it wasn’t, we lived in a suburb and I had to go by tram to that school.

INT:     Did you find that very disturbing at the time or were you quite happy to move onto the Jewish school?

KR:     Well, you see I finished my four years, so I had to have a change anyway, so, no, you know, it wasn’t a big deal.

PR:     You had to change trams in the middle of Düsseldorf.

KR:     Pardon?

PR:     You had to change trams in the middle of the city.

KR:     Yes, that was quite a thing because I was still fairly young and I had to go and change trams to get to the Jewish school.

INT:     So you would have been about eight when the Nazis came to power, were you aware as young as that of life changing for you?

KR:     When did they come to power, in 30 …

INT:     33.

KR:     Three, how old was I in 33, 25

PR:     [Laughter] Eight.

INT:     Eight?

KR:     Eight, yes.

INT:     Do you remember things changing at that point?

KR:     Oh, yes, indeed.

INT:     What do you remember?

KR:     Well, I remember that the SA [Sturmabteilung or Brownshirts, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi party]. It used to be on a Sunday morning march through the street and people always stood and watched and so on and [shouted] Heil Hitler and all that. And the young people of my own age, they joined in singing and it was all very jolly, but I mean, for them.  So I usually, we kept out of the way when they marched through.

I don’t remember a great deal of unpleasantness except, yes, at a certain time. They never did anything specific but I remember one occasion when I was coming back from a walk or something I wanted to go into our house and all the young boys and girls or something, the ones who fell under the spell of Nazism were sitting on the steps leading to our front door.  And I didn’t really know what to do, but I stood just opposite on the pavement and didn’t do anything for a while and then another person who lived in the house upstairs was going in so I quickly joined him and went in through the door.  I mean, they never did anything, but there was always this threat you know and a feeling of no longer being part of things.

INT:     And how did your parents react?

KR:     To what?

INT:     To the changing situation?

KR      Well, I mean, my father was very good, he used to travel to Düsseldorf and visit people and see how they were and so on and that was a fortunate thing.  My mother, my sister and me, we’d gone for a walk and we were coming back and we saw the cars outside, the Nazi car.  And so we didn’t go, we went back to some friends and waited until they had gone, which was a good thing.  My father was away visiting, helping people, so I don’t what they had come for, whether to arrest us or what, anyway, they didn’t come back.

PR:     Did the children play with you as they always had done?

KR:     What?

PR:     Did the children play with you as they always had done?

KR:     No, because they came under the influence of some young people who were very strong Nazis.  My special friend, she sometimes when the coast was clear, used to come, but my father said she shouldn’t because for her sake.

INT:     So did you find a lot of the time you were playing with your sister?

KR:     Yes, well yes, we had good games, yes, we had lots of games we played. Yes, I played with my sister and also when I went to the Jewish school, you see, I made friends and then had a bit of contact with other children.

INT:     Did your father, was he able to keep his job ? What happened to him and his business?

KR:     No, obviously he, I mean, they were very good and loyal, but he left because it would have endangered them if he had gone on.

INT:     Endangered his staff, the people who worked for him?

KR:     The firm he worked for, yes, but he did sort of still do work, but not with them you see.

PR:     There was a sympathiser, wasn’t there? Have you told me before that someone found him work of a different sort, much less interesting than he had done, so this is how he managed to survive.  But they had to give up and you told me that they had to give up jewellery and watches and all sorts of things like that.

KR:     Oh, G-d, yes.  Yes, there came an edict that the Jews had to give up all their jewellery and take it along, but we’d given some of the very nicest family jewels to some friends, Christian friends and the girls they travelled to England and France and so on, so some of the things were taken out.

INT:     That’s interesting.  And what happened at the time of Kristallnacht in 1938, was your family affected then?

KR:     Yes.

INT:     What happened?

KR:     Oh, it was terrible.  I’ll read you a few lines, I’ve written it down here.

INT:     This is from your book called The 9th of November?

KR:     Yes.  It must have been 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning when suddenly I was ripped out of my sleep by the sound of smashing crockery and glass, on and on it went.  At first I thought I must be dreaming still, but now it sounded as though the china cupboard had been hurled down with everything in it exploding. It was coming from the kitchen. I don’t what I thought, burglars, earthquake.  Lotte, she too was awake and both of us were out of our beds, out of our room flying into our parent’s room a few doors along the passage.  But it was no longer a haven, my father in his nightshirt stood speechless beside the bed, he was on his way to fetch us, my mother was sitting up, her black hair streaming over her shoulders, her eyes wide with fear.  She gathered us into the bed with calming sounds. Seconds later there burst into our room, a hoard of violent monsters, their faces contorted into raving mouths of hatred.  Some red, some pale, all screaming and shouting, eyes rolling, teeth bared, wild hands flaying, jackboots kicking.  They were wielding axes, sledgehammers, stones and knives, they rushed about the room, smashing, throwing, trampling, it seemed to me that they were hundreds of them bursting through the door, though I believe there only about a dozen.  A chair hurled into the wardrobe mirror, glass flying everywhere. Crouching in bed I saw a monster with a knife blade shining, screaming towards a painting on daddy’s side of the bed.  It was a valuable painting, a very beautiful landscape in which my father took great joy.  Around me there was terrible noise, confusion, but suddenly all my attention became fixed, my whole being became focused on my father’s pathetic figure in his nightshirt moving towards the painting as if to shield it.  Not that, not that, I heard him plead and then just as in a nightmare in which everything is happening in slow motion and which one is paralysed and helpless at the crucial moment.  I saw one Nazi pick up a large marble slab from the smashed dressing table top and he raised it high above his head. In that split second as he threw it across the room with all his might at my gesticulating father, I had a moment of vision of him being smashed to the ground.  But my father had ducked instinctively and retreated to the bedside watching now speechless as another Nazi dug his knife blade deep into the canvas slashing and hacking it as though he wanted to fill the staunchly painted sumac oak.  Well, now fear became a living thing, fear for the life and safety of my parents who represented my own safety. It was like drowning.  I sat numbed and in shock watching without sound as axes flew into screaming wood of chests and wardrobes.  The one who had hurled the marble slab hardly stayed to watch the result, but frothing at the mouth he found new sport in splintering doors, window frames and driving his axe into the wall and floor boards.

INT:     That must have been so traumatic an experience for you? And what happened after when it was all over?

KR:     Well there was another little bit, which was rather touching, you know we were paralysed, but then they came to side of our bed a small man, outwardly the same brown shirt, leather belt, jackboots, but he had a face, not a distorted mask and he had human eyes that saw our fear.  He bent low and whispered ‘children don’t look, don’t look children, hide your eyes, I’m sorry, I had to do it.’ And somehow he drew the fanatic hoard of raving animals from our room and drew them away smashing and slashing in other rooms.  Quite suddenly our room was empty and we were all still alive.  No one moved, the sounds continued a while and then there was silence, though my mind still it heard the noise, but there was silence complete and sudden with only the broken furniture groaning and settling into place.  We listened to the silence for a long time not daring to breathe, expecting them to return any minute to kill us, but they did not return.