Life During The War

Saskia Tepe – Life During The War

INT: I was just going to ask which town was she living in when she came back? Was it the same town?

ST: Yes. It was a little town outside of Jagerndorf.

INT: Right.

ST: And I’ve forgotten it…it’s Lobenstein, Lobenstein. So I’m not sure. I’m assuming that the Gestapo made some kind of base, probably in Jagerndorf which is a bigger city and looking at the dates of the papers that I found she probably did this research over several years and possibly because the fact that her father was Sudeten German they wouldn’t want to make too much…what’s the phrase? Make things uncomfortable for Germans because they wanted their loyalty. So the Jewish question never really arose that much but,she was obviously having to find out and prove what her background was. And they divided it up by how many grandparents you had that were of Jewish origin. So if you had four grandparents you were obviously a full Jew and if you had two Jewish grandparents you were a half Jew. And I think I might be getting my facts possibly mixed up here but anyway it turned out that as far as the Nazis were concerned my mother was a mischling of the first degree. And they seemingly had certificates that they gave to you with what degree of a Jew you were that you had to carry round with you, with your papers, so that if they stopped you on the street they could tell. The Star of David didn’t appear as an identifying badge, if you like, until about 1941 in Germany? I’m not sure.

INT: Yes I think it was quite late in Germany.

ST: Yes. So, I think she was reasonably safe until her father died in 1943 and then from what she told me it sounds as though there was a period of slave labour where she went to different factories and worked. She told me she had worked in a factory that made gas masks for instance but she told me she was also a book-keeper and she had worked for a time in an office in a place called Katscher, which is not… maybe about 15 miles from Auschwitz. I should also have said that Lobenstein is probably only about 50 miles. It’s on the Polish border, just on the Czech side, and obviously the fact that her father was a customs official tells you that it was right on the Polish border. And she moved into various locations. I found a CV when she was emigrating to the UK that tells me of all these places that she worked and I suspect that it was in the sort of greater area of the Auschwitz camp, which I think they are now discovering was a much larger place than just a death camp.

INT: It was a hub for many work camps.

ST: Yes. So she knew the area reasonably well. Part of her job was to take pay, I don’t know who she paid, but anyway she’d take pay on the trains so she knew the rail tracks pretty well. Another story that she told me when she was in one of these places was that they obviously lived in the facility, and I think I hadn’t really imagined what it could be like until I saw the film Schindler’s List and thought ‘ah, this is probably what it was like for her’, they would have probably had bunks to share. And she shared with this girl, I don’t remember the name, but her job was to clean the latrines.

INT: Oh dear

ST: My mother had it cushy, she was in an office job, and this girl hung herself.

INT: Sometime after the First World War I think they started calling themselves the Sudeten Germans. Tell us more about your mothers experience then as a slave labourer? Do you know more?

ST: Only that…you have to remember that…I don’t think I’ve actually told you this. My mum told me this story when I was 13 so asking the right questions was not something that was going to happen, it was just a case of listening and she was in quite a state so I just let her talk. It was not a subject that was raised very much afterwards as I knew it was painful for her. So she worked in the slave labour capacity and then she said that she was put on the train to Auschwitz. Now I always thought that this story was a bit fantastical but she said that because she knew the track that the train was going to take, and it was in the middle of winter, she knew where the biggest snow drifts where going to be, and she jumped off the train into a snow drift. And I always imagined… well, how can that possibly be? All the pictures I’d seen of the carriages were that they were fully enclosed but I have found on the web that in that area and towards the end of the war they used any kind of trucks that they could possibly get to shift people. So her story was true. And then she said that she had to look out for herself. No papers- what to do? So she said the safest thing that she could think of was to nurse the wounded solders because nobody was going to ask a nurse for her papers and she stole a nurse’s uniform. I have no idea how she could have managed to do that but she did say that people were very kind. My mother never ever said anything untoward about the German people. She just said it was war, people took a stand, there was good and there was bad but there was no way that she was going to castigate the whole of a nation. So she stole a nurse’s uniform and she jumped on a train and nursed wounded soldiers coming back from the eastern front and ended up in Dresden, jumped off the train, and got in tow with a girl who was carrying food in a suitcase heading in the same kind of direction as a distant cousin that she had, who lived in Marienburg. So they followed the river, set off in the afternoon and they went fairly far out of town and decided to spend the night in a barn and were woken with the dropping of bombs. I’m assuming she thinks that that was the night of the bombing of Dresden, now.

INT: My goodness, when so many people died.

ST: Yes when so many people died. And she said that, her attitude to religion was kind of strange, but she said if there was ever a god he spoke to her that afternoon because she had a very strange feeling that she had to get out of that train station, which is why she decided to walk rather than wait for a train. After surviving that particular episode she was recaptured and went to another factory but this was very close to the end of the war, the soldiers weren’t watching, lets put it that way, they were probably watching after their own backs on how they were going to escape; the Russians were coming, the Americans were coming. So they managed to steal a truck, she and some other labourers, managed to steal a truck, and headed south because nobody wanted to be in the road of the Russians, they all wanted to get to the American sector. And then she told me that she was repatriated once things had settled down a little bit and she went back to her home, although by this time her home would have been just her step mother, and her step mother, she said, didn’t want her.

INT: That must have been terrible for her.

Ruth Frazer – Life During The War

INT: So when did you leave Germany? Tell us about that.

R.F: I left Germany end of 1938 together with a very good friend.

INT: And he had connections in Switzerland, that’s why you went there. Is that right?

R.F: Yes, connections.

INT: Family?

INT: What age were you then?

R.F: Twenty-three.

INT: And how did you leave? Did you walk? Or did you get a train?

R.F: No we left by train…Took the plane such a story

INT: Alright. But you flew first of all to Stuttgart and then?

R.F: The rest of the journey to Zurich by train. In Switzerland we were also by the Jewish community Supported how do you say?

INT: They helped you there, the Jewish community.

R.F: They helped yes.

INT: In Zurich.

R.F: In Zurich. But in Switzerland How do you say it, the … To try to leave the country.

INT: The Swiss government didn’t want. [the] Jews to stay.

R.F: Yes because they had too many immigrants in a small country. They also wanted to leave you, you should leave the country again. This was only for a short stay in Switzerland and they wanted you to leave the country. So I had a brother in London and there

R.F: The permission or a, a … visa to Great Britain or London.

INT: So you stayed with your brother all the time?

R.F: No I had a job with a family to work as a domestic help. ….?…. De Misses Debousire?

INT: What happened to the rest of the family?

R.F: The rest of the family. Well the parents went to Poland, my elder brother to London and the other brother to, at the time called, Palestine.

INT: And you never saw your parents again?

R.F: No. Not when the war stopped no.

INT: Right. So they presumably perished in Auschwitz?

R.F: Yes that is what we think. This was 1944. Shortly before the war ended.

R.F: I stayed with my brother and family.

Moniek Garber – Life During The War

INT: And the rest of your town, what happened to them? The 80%?

MG: I would say 95% were probably executed.INT: Right.

MG: In two actions. I don’t remember the details actually. My cousin was particularly interested in this

MG: Yes. It’s not just himself; several people took part in it. So, some people did survive from our town you know. Various papers tell the story of two girls from the village and a peasant sort of said ‘Right you are my two daughters, you are staying with us’. So there are various people; there were people who abused the Jews and there were people who helped them. An interesting instance was a man in our town, a Pole. Ah here I must explain. There were basically three major groups in the town; Jews, Poles and today you would call them Belarussians. But the term Belarus actually was almost invented by Stalin; he created Belarus, there was no such entity ever before historically and still isn’t in some opinions. The Pole married a Jewish woman. The Jews ignored him, the Poles ignored him and they brought up a family. Now I’m told (again by my cousin, probably he got the information) that when the Jewish people were gathered in the ghetto in the town, several houses, they were the only ones who dared to try and supply food, tried to get some back. The German guard didn’t see them and they tried to bring in food and so on.

INT: So they were outside the ghetto?

MG: Yes

INT: Oh I see because

MG: They didn’t think of her as being Jewish.

INT: Right.

MG: Nobody mentioned it so she

INT: She kept quiet.

MG: She survived with her husband.

INT: But she still tried to help the Jews that were in the ghetto.

MG: Yes, yes. Which I thought indicates the fact that there some human beings

INT: Who are very decent? Absolutely. So taking us back to the speech of Kaganovic and your chance to get away, how did you get out of the area?

MG: Well when I got away I was told to go either direct…In the Soviet Union people didn’t choose where they went; they were told where to go. I was told that I’m to go into the Ural Mountains, a town called Magnitogorsk copper mines. Well I didn’t fancy the idea so on the way I heard from various other people released that a Polish army was forming so I just went down and I became… I was too young to be a soldier so I was a cadet.

INT: And they were pleased to have you. Did they know you were Jewish?

MG: What?

INT: They were pleased to have you.

MG: Yes

INT: And they knew you were Jewish but that wasn’t a problem?

MG: How does one describe it in Poland? Formally Poland was a democracy with equal rights for everybody, formally, with anti-Semitism naturally. But on a formal basis, basically, I had a right to be there, it wasn’t a question of whether they accepted me, you know. I was entitled to be there because I was a Pole; I was Polish by nationality.

INT: This is the Polish army after they had been conquered by Germany?

MG: And Russia

INT: And Russia

MG: Because don’t forget that two weeks after the Germans invaded the Russian army moved into eastern Poland in huge numbers. And this is what basically collapsed Poland. There might have been longer resistance to the Germans. People get the impression that Poland was completely squashed – it was partly squashed. There were various pockets of resistance. In Gdansk the Polish garrison resisted for two months until they were actually killed to a man.

INT: I didn’t realise that

MG: Yeah.

INT: So you were in the Polish army in 1941 in a conquered country.

MG: Yeah

INT: That’s right, and you were still fighting at that point then?

MG: No, there was nobody to fight.

INT: Exactly, so that’s what I’m trying to find out. I’m wondering what you’re doing there.

MG: We become allies of the Soviet Union theoretically.

INT: Right

MG: But you were allowed to be evacuated. So after several months in the Soviet Union, by a largely roundabout route because we got to the bottom of the Ural Mountains, where the first camp was, then moved to Tashkent which is virtually in the centre of central Asia, then we were taken to a port on the Caspian Sea called Krasnovodsk, from there we sailed to a port in Persia, which at that time the port was named after the Shah of Persia who was called Pahlavi, it was his family name. And I looked recently at the map and it’s no longer called Pahlavi But it was a port sat on the Caspian. From there we were taken to a suburb of Tehran because I was in the city on a few occasions.

And then we were taken by convoy, this time by Sikh drivers in the British army to what is today Iraq, and from there by some other drivers into Palestine. Then we were taken by Jewish lorry drivers to an area there where I was sort of enlisted into the army properly. And I was, certain things apply in the army, the Polish army, if you become a cavalry man you have to be a certain height. I was tall enough to be a cavalry man so…

INT: Had you ever been on a horse?

MG: Only about a couple of times in my life before.

INT: But no problem!

MG: Yeah, I’ve never been on a horse in the army. But we were sort of then taken to Suez, we accompanied on a French boat called the Mauretania, a huge French liner. We took Italian prisoners from Egypt to Durban in South Africa, then South Africa for a couple of months, basically to just feed us up because most of us were skeletons and then we took German prisoners who were unsafe to be kept in South Africa because they used to get out and disappear among the broad population. So we took them from there, we sailed from Durban, past Africa, on to the Atlantic, hugged the South American coast and then eventually delivered them in Nova Scotia in Halifax.

INT: Why were you sent to Nova Scotia?

MG: They thought that Canada was probably a good place for German prisoners of war.

INT: They are certainly out of the way there I suppose! And they were left there in Halifax, Nova Scotia?

MG: Yeah the Germans were left in Halifax and we joined a convoy. By that time of course the United States were already a huge convoy. By convoy we got into Gourock of all places.

INT: It’s a small world certainly. You must have been somewhat confused during all of this, no?

MG: You take it all in your stride.

INT: You were very young. Were you learning English as you went along?

MG: I was sort of. There was a doctor, oh there was a unit of the British army called the Cameroons, (they are the people who pushed the Italians out of Abyssinia) and a sergeant amongst their lot for some reason took a fancy to me and talked to me in English, taught me some English.

INT: Right

MG: But I had to learn English once I arrived here. I had a few phrases but, you know. I could speak to people but I didn’t really have much English.

INT: So when your Polish brigade or whatever it was arrived in Gourock what happened to them then?

MG: Well we were all properly in the army and we joined with those in the Reconnaissance regiment and then

INT: But you were still a Polish regiment?

MG: Yes in Dalkeith near Edinburgh, that’s where we were stationed. There is a big parkland and somebody’s mansion in the parkland, that was sort of where the camp was. And then it was decided that armoured cars were not really very useful. Reconnaissance started to be done by aeroplanes so they didn’t need Reconnaissance regiments. So we were simply transferred to tanks and we landed in Normandy.

INT: So you landed in Normandy as part of the D- Day landings?

MG: Well, no I would say about 5 days later.

INT: Right

MG: They were heavy tanks. We couldn’t be landed right away.

INT: Right. But that was still part of a Polish regiment?

MG: That was still part of the Polish army yes.

INT: Right

MG: It was, it was one of the three regiments of the 21st Army group which was Canadian, the other two regiments were Canadian and the Polish regiment was in the 21st Army group and that was the, that was the group that went right along the coast and all the way along the French coast, eventually into Belgium and Holland.

INT: And you were still fighting then?

MG: Yes there was a bit of fighting yes.

INT: Right and were you still in Holland when the war ended?

MG: No I was in Germany when the war ended. We, in 1944 we were held up on the estuary of the Rhine which for some reason incidentally in Holland is called the Ems The Rhine changes its name when it gets into Holland. So we were on the Ems in Holland and then in ’45 we sort of crossed. In the meantime there was of course the defeat of the paratroopers who tried to cross the estuary.

INT: At Arnhem?

MG: And there was an attack by the Germans in eastern Belgium. But in ’45 we crossed and eventually we were stationed near the south of Bremen. You know where the port of Bremen Harbour is? Just south of that.

INT: That’s when the war ended?

MG: The war ended yes.

INT: How did you feel as a Jewish person going into Germany at that point?

MG: I didn’t feel anything to tell you the truth. a) We didn’t have a clear picture of what was happening. Would I have acted differently? I don’t know, probably not. When you are in the army you do things which more or less have to be done. You are told to do.

Marianne Lazlo – Life During The War

Marianne describes what happened to her and her family when the Germans invaded Hungary. She speaks about the ghettos set up in her town and her time in the local brickworks before being put into cattle wagons. She goes on to explain that she and her family were selected to work in Austria, though many others – the young, the old and the sick were sent on to Auschwitz. We hear about her experiences as a child slave labourer and the behaviour of the guards. She also tells the interviewer about the events just before liberation by the Russians

ML: And then I planned to go to the Jewish secondary school as well but meantime in 1943 the Germans came into Hungary and the political system changed completely and became national socialists. And they started to bring all sorts of unpleasant rules and regulations against the Jews and people lost their, Jewish people lost their jobs, professionals lost their jobs, they sacked them. Professors, teachers, universities…they were not allowed to go to teach and then most of the university teachers’ only chance to teach was in the Jewish secondary school. And it was lucky for the Jewish people because of that generation who left, who survived the Holocaust, have all became famous, famous professional people all over the world. But myself, it was a normal life, just a child, happy children…

But then 1944 and the regulation came that they rounded up the Jews in Hungary and then we had to, they rounded us up and put us into ghettos. They sectioned off part of the city were most, most Jewish people were living. And there was a small ghetto and a big ghetto; the small ghetto was in the smaller part of the city and the big ghetto was where the big Synagogue was.

And a few days, days not weeks, a few days after all the people from the provinces, from the villages, moved, Jewish people were moved into the ghettos, either the big ghetto or the small ghetto in the city. And after they rounded us up again from the ghettos and we had to march to the brickworks, which was outside the city, and that’s where all the Jews were staying for a few days until they put us into the cattle wagons.

And the railway was beside the, the brick factory so that was very convenient for them and they pushed us into the, into this cattle wagon and started to transport us to the extermination camp. And for about two weeks we were travelling. You couldn’t see out anywhere because, you know, the cattle wagons, you can’t really see… just a little, little hole. But as I was a child I couldn’t even reach up to the hole, to the air hole so…. While we were marching from the city to the brickwork people were, the Hungarians, people were standing at the, at the pavement just watching us as if it was a circus or something. And it was a hot, very hot May, April/May, a very hot day and we didn’t have any water or anything with us and I remember my father was asking one of the women who was standing at the pavement for some water and as she went and brought a bucket of water for us and before she managed to give it to my father her husband kicked her on her side and kicked the bucket out of her, with the water, out her hand.

So she couldn’t help us. Because that’s how the Hungarians were behaving because they were all, most of them, were fascists, you know…no, they weren’t very friendly with the Jews. And then they transported us to the extermination camp. But before the extermination camp we were selected in another town in Austria and they ordered…able-bodied people were selected to one group. The other, the other people: old people, sick people and young children, they were put back on to the cattle wagon and they went on and I suppose they were transported to Auschwitz.

And we were selected to go to work and we went to another group. And then they took us into work camp, they called them Lager, and they transported us to Vienna. And then again there was a selection and they put grown up people in, to send them to work in factories or different places and they made a children’s group as well to go to work.

And I was selected to go with the children’s group in Vienna, to go… and our job was to go out at night time, only night time when the people didn’t see us, we had to go out to sweep up the snow from the pavement or if there was an air raid the previous day we had to clear up the debris from the pavement. And…well that’s the, most of the vivid memories I have, and then I was in the…in the labour camp or slave labour/children’s group, and then we had to go to work.

INT: Marianne, can you tell me who was in the camp with you? What happened to your father and mother? And to the rest of your family?

ML: We were, we were all together, we were all selected to go out together. We went together, we never separated; the family was all together. At the camp where we were; it was… I think it was a disused school, maybe it was an old Jewish school, I don’t know because we were put in the classrooms but there was no furniture, nothing in it. Just straw on the ground, on the floor and they supplied us some grey blankets, two blankets. They put the blankets on the straw…and we were sleeping on that and all together, everybody: men, woman, children in a classroom on the floor. And then always at…we were rounded up during the night, after nightfall and went, marched out onto the street to work. And then we were working there all night and then daybreak we were marching back to the camp.

And then our leader, our leader of the group (it was my ex-German teacher), she could speak German to the guard, and she was asking the guard to be a bit more lenient for the children and then (she) he made her bring back a bucket of water and they made us to stand in a row and he picked up the bucket of water and poured it over her and then it was just…. the whole thing was to humiliate her because she was only asking to be lenient with the children. That was their system I suppose.

And then…Now what happened? You see the grown up people were sent to factories to work. I had four…three sisters, the four of us, and my older sister was old enough. And then we were sent to a, one of the German Officer’s, SS Officer’s, household to be a maid, as a maid.

And his wife was very kind and one day when we were bombed out and there was nowhere to go she asked us to go and stay with them. So we stayed with this, with this family, with the woman, the wife of this SS officer, for a few days and then one day they told us, she told us, it’d be better to go back to the camp because (his) her husband and her son is coming home on leave from the army so then she didn’t want us to be around the house. But she was very helpful, very kind. It was an Austrian lady and she didn’t want (his) didn’t want her husband to know that she was helping the Jews.

And there was an air raid I remember…

INT: Carry on, it’s fine.

ML: And then there was an air raid during the day – it was in Vienna, and it was 1944…’44/’45… beginning of ’45. And we were working together with political prisoners, grown people, and I think the…as I remember, they were Italian political prisoners and then the air raid…these people were shaking and they were very afraid but I didn’t have any fear; it was very interesting for me. I didn’t know what was going on.

I looked up at the sky, a beautiful blue sky, and lots of airplanes. It looked like hundreds and thousands of stars, silver stars, on the sky and then I was happy; I was looking up and saying ‘Have you seen this before?’ And then suddenly I had, I had a hard push. I felt a push on my back and I fell down then when I got up again I saw a big dust cloud behind me and I turned back and there was a house got a direct hit.

And that was the house where there was an air raid shelter and all the people from Vienna and even the guards as well, or they called it Kapo, who was guarding us, the German…they went in to the air raid shelter as well. And we were not allowed to go into the air raid shelter, neither were the political prisoners, these Italian grown men, and they were all shaking and very afraid. And then, since it was a direct hit, everybody (including all guards) was…was disappeared…nobody was there anymore.

And then we went back to the camp and we had, we’d been bombed out three times during/while we were in Vienna and the people were listening; they were lying down and were putting their ear on the ground and were listening to the resonance of the, the airplane, when it was an air raid.

And when… you would know when the American planes were coming or when the British, or the Russian or Soviet Army. When the Americans, they usually come during the day and the British heavy bombers came during the night and the Soviet airplane came day and night, all the time with the phosphorous bombs and when they bombed the houses – just went up on flames. And then one day all the guards disappeared and left the camp. They left the camp without any guards and that was very near the time of the liberation and we were liberated by the Red Army, by the Soviet Army in Vienna. And so….so that was my war experience during the Holocaust.

Lore Lucas – Life During The War

INT2: Can I just ask, when did you actually come? What year did you come?

LL: ‘38

INT2: So did you come under the Kindertransport?

LL: No, it’s ’36!

INT2: ’36 you came?

LL: ’36. I came later on again

INT2: Right

INT: So, in Leamington Spa where did you stay and who with?

LL: [It] was very comfortable. It was, these people, it was their business to take students in to learn English

INT: Right OK, but when you say ‘these people’ – was this a family or was it an organization?

LL: Yes, a family

INT: Right

LL: A family

INT: Right

LL: In a good big house, very cold

INT: Where they Jewish people?

LL: No, no, no

INT: Or non-Jewish?

LL: Not Jewish

INT: Right

LL: Not Jewish

INT: And how did you feel when you were there?

LL: I adjusted very well. I tell you, a year later my sister came to the same people – she hated it!

INT: Right so she had a totally different experience?

LL: Yes. She was so constricted. I didn’t mind

INT: Ok so you were there you said for about 30 weeks?

LL: Yes I was there, I tell you, 3 x 10 weeks which is quite important. After 10 weeks you had to return to Germany. If you were away longer your passport was confiscated

INT: OK

LL: So I was there for 10 weeks, went there and came back. That was the reason why I didn’t stay on

INT: So you say you were there for 10 weeks and then after 10 weeks you went through to Birmingham?

LL: Germany!

INT: So you went back?

LL: Yes I had to otherwise the passport was taken

INT: OK, OK, so every time you went back to Germany and came back over again to England did your aunt bring you over?

LL: No, no, no

INT: Just the first time?

LL: Only the first time

INT: Right OK. So you were very young and you were travelling to another country

LL: Yes, yes

INT: With a foreign language

LL: But we all were

INT: Yes, OK. So you said that you were 16 at this time and then what happened between the age of 16 and 26 when you met your husband?

LL: I can tell you exactly. When I went back to Germany in 1937 (after a year) I stayed with my parents but then I went to Geneva to do a course in maternity nursing which lasted a year. Now I was coming on for 18 and I’m back in Germany and my sister was also in Germany (she was still going to school) and our Rabbi, with whom we were on very good terms (a very modern man), he came one Saturday afternoon to our house and said ‘Is your sister in?’ ‘Yes?’ ‘She has to leave this address immediately because the police are after her’ ‘Why? What is the matter?’ And this Rabbi told me. A Jewish boy was travelling from Germany to Holland and this all was very strict and he was investigated. And they found a diary And they found in this diary that he had a close affair with my sister. But she was underage.

INT: How old was your sister at that time?

LL: 16

INT: Right

LL: 16, a beautiful, beautiful girl. So this was not supposed to be done, obviously not. So immediately after the Rabbi’s advice, got her out of the house as far as to friends in Cologne, then in case the police came we could say ‘She’s not in!’ End of story. She never came back from Cologne; she went straight to England – to London. And then my parents decided that I better also go to London because they did not want her to roam about alone in London. So then we were both together in London.

INT: OK so you joined her in London

INT: And what happened with your sister?

LL: My mother came to London early in September ’39, just before the war – in August. The war broke out on the 3rd of September. She came to London in August with a view to buying a big house to be able to rent out as bed and breakfast. Again that was something you could do without a permit and my father would have some kind of occupation doing the books or whatever. Now in the late days of August there war was hanging over us and you couldn’t possibly buy a house- you didn’t do that. So my mother and my sister, we were in London. My father was in Holland and my father kept on writing and phoning- my mother ‘should come back because of the threat of war’.

The next thing my father said, would she bring my sister back as well? And they left London the day war broke out; on the 3rd of September at 10 O’clock. War was declared at 11 o‘clock and the first air raid alarm was at 12 o‘clock.

The day war broke out; on the 3rd of September at 10 O’clock. War was declared at 11 o‘clock and the first air raid alarm was at 12 o‘clock. So, on that very day I met my husband at a friend’s house. Very strange, this friend who I had known for donkeys’ years phoned me up and said ‘Look, I’m giving a sand filling, sand-bag filling party’. The government came round with big vans and deposited sand every 30 yards in bags because we now needed to protect England. He said ‘Come along’

And I went to him. He was also in a bed and breakfast, like we all were. But we were all doing our bit and we filled sand bags and my future husband happened to be there, so we met. Now the sand bags were really very funny.

LL: The first, after the first heavy rain the sand bags all burst and London was a sea of sand. You can’t imagine! You have no idea. That day I met my husband there. I met two gentlemen – him and a close friend of his and we kind of kept seeing each other and he immediately joined the army, my husband. His brother was a doctor and he was already a British subject so for him it was obvious for him to join up immediately

INT: Where had your husband come from originally?

LL: Germany

INT: Germany

LL: And so, my husband joined the army and that was that. Whenever he came on leave he saw me and I became friendly with his brother, it was, they were all refugees. So that is how I met him and we got married immediately after the war. He was de-mobbed from Belgium in October/ November but my divorce was not fully through yet, you had to wait 6 months. Anyhow we got married in March then and that is when I came to Scotland

Leo Metzstein – Life During The War

INT: And how did you come? Was it a train and boat or…?

LM: Well yes it was a very strange arrangement. I’d never been out of the street you might say and suddenly we’re told, I remember this my mother said “C’mon, we’re going” and I had a wee parcel or something and my sister Leie and my mother and Jenny. And Jenny and I were the two who were going and I had a wee parcel and it was about 5/6 o’clock in the morning and I remember it because she said; “keep to the… don’t go out onto the pavements, keep to the side of the buildings.” I remember quite distinctly walking through the quiet streets. We get to this massive station, which of course seems huge to me, massive station and the hundreds of people milling around but never getting on to the platform, just standing at the barrier. And then the next thing I remember was, quite vividly, whoever was on the platform taking us I don’t remember that. All I remember, taking Jenny’s hand and we’re walking down the platform and… See it was a big adventure, I mean, you know, my mother would have been, would have been terrorised so she thought to send her child away like that, two children.

INT: And your brother Isi wasn’t with you at that time?

LM: Isi, Isi went earlier on a different Kindertransport.

INT: I see

LM: It was Jenny and I who actually just shook hands, took hands and then went on to the train. And, and after that it’s just a huge adventure. The train went through, out of Germany. I remember stopping at some stations maybe, I remember vaguely guards coming on, searching, looking for bits and pieces of anything that you may have tried to sneak out. And then, the next thing, we must have been overnight to Holland. And Holland, all the way through Holland to Hook of Holland and again it must have been an adventure but I’m sure I cried most of the time, and so did Jenny. And then, once again we’re in Holland and suddenly we’re on a boat, again a memory. And then we get to Harwich, and at Harwich again we’re taken off the boat and we go to London. Well, that was another adventure. It was a train, a train, a boat, a train; I mean it was huge.

INT: And of course neither of you spoke any English?

LM: Not a word, not a word. And, the…but an amazing thing happened. My brother Joe who had been secreted out in 1938, or early ’39, was already working in a factory in London. And when, obviously, most people, a lot of people started to get to know about what’s happening in Germany, people were coming in. The foreman knew Joe and spoke to Joe and said; “Joe, go to the station, your brother and sister are coming off the boat or the train”. And lo and behold Joe was standing at the platform waiting for us which was an incredible… I mean for me it was marvellous. And we went for a cup of tea, the most normal thing you do in London, Lyons Corner House. And then the next thing we’re in a hostel somewhere and why were we in the hostel? Because the fare for the rail fare to Glasgow hadn’t arrived. Two weeks we sat in the hostel waiting for £2 each or something. So we’re in the hostel and I don’t remember the hostel except the disinfectant smell, which was just horrible. We must have been looked after quite well. Oh by the way, the Quakers took us onto the platform, that’s got to be mentioned because they were the only people allowed on the platform apparently. No one else.

INT: In Germany?

LM: The Quakers, yes. And then we went by train to Glasgow.

INT: And why Glasgow?

LM: I don’t know except that the two, the families that had taken Isi in earlier lived in Clydebank, and the family that was going to take Jenny lived in Hardgate, which was 20 miles from Glasgow or maybe less. And I was sent to Kilmarnock on my own. So there I was again on a train, with somebody I don’t know. They may have met me in Glasgow, I don’t know. I would think someone must have met me in Glasgow, took me to Kilmarnock. So the point I’m trying to make is that I was separated from five different people at the same, you know one after another each for a few days, a few hours. And then I found myself suddenly in Kilmarnock with a big family; four girls and a boy, mother and father, nice house, nice people. Incidentally, they were conscientious objectors but were also Quakers and they were wonderful to me. And how they took in another child when they already had a full house I don’t know, but obviously they had big hearts.

INT: And were you there for a long time?

LM: I was calculating the other day how long I was there. I arrived in July or August the 4th or 5th or maybe even the 10th. And I remember a Christmas so I must have gone at least 9 months there, 6-9 months. And then 1-2-3, my mother comes to visit once, because she had come up from Dorset. She was very smart my mother, they took her away from Dorset because she, the British thought that she would be signalling submarines on the Channel. So they took aliens away from the Channel and moved them into London and then my mother through the Refugee Committee got a job in Largs.

INT: To follow her children?

LM: Correct, she was very smart about that. And Lee stayed in London, my mother cooked in Largs. And, so I was in Kilmarnock for about 8-9 months, learned to speak English, everything, every word. And then my mother came to visit me round about 6…It was after Christmas. And I was frightened of her because she couldn’t speak English and I could no longer speak German. I’d lost everything just like that.

INT: That’s remarkable. Have you still lost German?

LM: No I’ve…

INT: Did it come back?

LM: German is coming back, bits and pieces of things. When I need to know I can do it. When I can listen to the news I can do it. But I was hiding behind the women’s skirts because my mother was a stranger. I mean I hardly knew her in Berlin, I mean I was only… She was out working all the time so I was just growing up. And I hardly knew her when I saw her. It was quite a sad visit. I think it was then my mother decided that I’m taking my child away from here, he’s not going to be Jewish for long because I was already sitting in a big house with a swing and a big garden and we came out of a basement flat, it was, “I’m not going to let my son get used to this”. So she took me away and put me in a hostel for 4 years.

INT: Oh, and you must have been upset by that?

LM: Well, it wasn’t too bad really because Isi and Jenny were also there. The Refugee Committee had decided that there were too many children dispersed round Scotland. So they either bought or rented a big house in Skelmorlie near Largs and they managed to bring a lot of children including my sister, Isi, and Jenny and myself to Skelmorlie, where we lived more or less the duration of the war.

INT: And who looked after you there? Did they have special staff looking after you? Or…?

LM: Well I wouldn’t call them staff, I would call them… They were terrible to us, they didn’t treat us terribly well. The food that they gave us was virtually non-existent although there was money, plenty money but we didn’t see much of it. And my sister Jenny, who has just gone back to New York, although she won’t talk about it either, she said the food was terrible, terrible. But I don’t know, we were, we were alive. It didn’t, it didn’t really matter the food wasn’t special, it was food and they looked after us for about 3 and a half/4 years. And then we were sent away from there, the WAFS…

INT: I was just going to ask, when you were all living together, so would they send you all en masse to the local school?

LM: No

INT: Or did someone come and teach you?

LM: I was still only, I was still only…when we arrived in Skelmorlie I was still only 7. So there were a couple of other young boys there and we went to the local school. As far as I remember we went to the local school. Went to Kilmarnock, and then, Kilmarnock I was at the local school learning English and then from Kilmarnock to Skermorlie we went to the local Skermorlie school. But Isi and Jenny, you must… I was already 7/8, they were 12 and 13, they went to Greenock High School.

INT: So it just depended on your age where you went?

LM: Correct. And they were bussed to Greenock every morning and back at night as far as I remember. We went to the local school.

INT: How many children would you say were living in the hostel?

LM: About, I believe it was about 30. And they had come from all over Europe apparently, they weren’t all from Berlin. And girls were kept separate from the boys, I’m not so sure how long for in the evenings but they certainly were sleeping separately. But it was packed, the house was busy, busy. And I had no recollections of the house but a friend of mine recently sent me some photographs of Birkenward which was quite unusual, suddenly to see the house, a beautiful sandstone building. And we’ve been there but the wall, I don’t know if there was a wall in the garden, but when I saw it I remember me swinging in the garden. And they had nasturtiums in the garden, which I hate.

INT: And did your mother come and visit you there?

LM: My mother had this job in Largs, she was very, very clever. And she used to walk or get a bus from Largs which was 5 miles and she used to hide round the bushes. You weren’t allowed to visit all the time. You couldn’t just suddenly bring up your parents at different times. My mother sneaked in and she would come, go to the gate, maybe hide behind a bush and someone, she would say to somebody walking ‘I’m here’ …..and we would go and she would give us a piece of bread, sweet and sour bread or something which she had and then she was away. But there was no formal visits like, How are my children doing here? Like you would, like teachers, going to see a teacher’s night.

INT: And they probably were worried if they let parents come too often that you’d get…

LM: You’d get homesick.

INT: A willing, desirous of leaving.

LM: Well their idea I think was to keep us safe and together. That must have been what the, what the Refugee Committee said. “This is what your job is, keep them here”, but the strange thing is we were right on the flight path of all the bombers going to Clydebank so it really wasn’t that safe. But on the other hand it was safe, we were safe.

Life During The War

Footer

Follow us