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You are here: Home / Archives for Life

Life

Video of refugee’s life story made available to schools

Gathering the Voices has made a video telling the story of German refugee Martin Anson journey to finding a new home in Scotland, with Education Scotland agreeing to promote the video to Scottish schools.

The film , which lasts for 365 minutes, tells of the anti-Jewish Racal persecutions suffered in Martin’s home town in Germany; the family arrest on Kristallnacht, Mr. Anson’s incarceration in Dachau ; his emigration to Glasgow in 1939; and his life in Scotland.

Read more in the newspaper article below.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Life, refugee, Story, Video

Henry Wuga – June 1940 The Fun And Normal Life Come To An Abrupt End

The refugee committee informed me that I need to go to the high court in Edinburgh. A lawyer from the committee accompanied me to the high court but he was not allowed into the hearing. At the High court in Edinburgh I was convicted of “Corresponding with the Enemy” a very serious offence during wartime. My letters to my parents were sent to my uncle Salo Würzburger in Brussels which in 1940 was a neutral country. Uncle Salo then forwarded the letters on to Germany. The answer came back by the same route and the letters were intercepted by the censor.

The Judge, Sir John Strachan made me A Dangerous Enemy Alien Category A. I was arrested, I was just 16y (a juvenile). I was shocked but not frightened.

Two Detectives escorted me to Waverly Station, put me in a locked compartment on the Glasgow train, all alone. Collected at Queen’s Street Glasgow by 2 policemen and taken home to Hurwichs. Allowed 1 phone call and packed the minimum of clothing in a holdall.  Next stop Police Headquarters. The Sargent said: “Cannie tak the Laddie. He’s under 17, not allowed in a cell”. A civilised country!  A stressful day but I was well treated by the policemen. They panicked, what to do with this Dangerous ‘Cat. A’ boy?

A Remand Home for Juvenile offenders, was the answer. Boys of 13/15y waiting to go to court the next day for stealing and other offences. I was greeted by these boys: “What did ye dae?” As I “didnae dae onythin” I lost their esteem. My cigarettes were deposited in the Governor’s office. He was kind and meant well, giving me permission to smoke in his office. I knew better. I would have been ridiculed. A most stressful day. Did I sleep well for the two nights I was there? I can’t remember!

I was transferred to Maryhill Barrack’s, a large military base in Glasgow now a prisoner of war camp. Rudolf Hess was held there after his “peace” flight.

Shared a Cement Air raid Shelter with 21 captured German Merchant Sailors. Here I was once again in a hostile environment. Jewish, German and Category A. There were anti-Semitic remarks, however some senior ranking officers protected me. A stressful time, as prisoners we were confined with nothing to relieve the feeling of imprisonment.

Two weeks later the journey continued by bus to Donaldson school in Edinburgh, a large former Deaf School at Corstorphine, now an internment camp. I was once again with the same German sailors, fortunately I did not have to share their dormitory.

The war was going badly after the Dunkirk evacuation. Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Banged the Cabinet Table “Collar the Lot” was the phrase he used. The internment of enemy aliens, German and Italian, even the “friendly Continental Jewish refugees” began. Churchill was driven to that by the relentless virulent anti foreigner’s campaign by the tabloid press, The Mail, Express & Sun. “Expel the foreigners, lock them up etc.”

An unnecessary decision, we came here to flee from the Nazis and to help defeat them.

At Donaldson’s the commandant asked “Is there anyone here who can cook?”  I put my hand up, “yes, I can cook!”. My apprenticeship in Baden Baden in 1938 made me confident.

Thinking back, the temerity of youth made me volunteer. “Within 72 hours 170 internees will arrive, you need to prepare meals” The army provided the rations and I found myself

in charge of the kitchen with a staff of 12 German sailors in this large institutional kitchen,

and we cooked. One sailor called me “ein dreckiger Jude” a dirty Jew. Another knocked him out. British Corporal was assigned to keep things normal. We worked hard for 10 days.

General Internment had been ordered and amongst the arrivals of the men was my cousin Gustav Würzburger and my future father in law Ascher Wolff.

It is now July and while at Donaldson’s we fortunately missed being sent to Canada on the SS Arandora Star, which was tragically torpedoed off Ireland with the loss of hundreds of lives of Internees.

Time to move on again by train to York Racecourse. Corporal produced a list of rations for the train: Oatmeal potatoes, beans etc. I pointed out that we will not have any cooking facilities,

“We need bread and corned beef.” I was not afraid to speak up again, I spoke the truth.

We were quartered below the stands of the race course. Very basic cold and damp.  Now separated from the German sailors, just mostly German Jewish Refugees.  Only a few days there. I remember lectures on hygiene, no doubt they had concerns about homosexuality.  A boring time, constant roll calls to check the number of prisoners.

The minute you became familiar with the new camp and fellow internees, it was time to move on.

Now August and on to camp No 5. Warth Mills near Bury Lancashire, on old cotton mill. It turned out to be the most horrendous experience of all the camps.  2000 men crammed into the filthy oily floors of this disused mill. On arrival we were strip searched, I remember joining the long queue to be searched. I lost most of my personal belongings, fountain pen, pocket knife, wrist watch, never to be seen again. A fairly rough going over by the soldiers.

It was intimidating and frightening we were just the German Enemy!

Given a hessian sack to fill with straw. That was your bed, now find a place on the floor to sleep. Overcrowding sparked a tense situation that led to sickness. Injuries from falling overhead transmissions, a dangerous time. Basic toilet facilities consisted of 60 buckets in a yard and 18 water taps for 2000 men. At night crossing the yard the guards would       shout:

“Halt or I Shoot”. I recall one man so upset that he pulled open his shirt and said “SHOOT”

Someone described it as “Hell on Earth” You can imagine the in adequacy of the food.

The eating area was called Starvation Hall. There were many Doctors amongst the Internees, they were afraid of an epidemic occurring in these dangerous conditions.

On a lighter note, unbelievably the only item that was plentiful was Carnation Milk in tins for your porridge, so sweet and sickly, that I have not touched it since.

It was a very hard 2 weeks at Warth Mills, tense and dangerous, Soldiers with guns and bayonets.  The officers and men were eventually court martialled for the unnecessarily brutal treatment of the Internees. It is a sad reflection on the Government’s panicky handling of the Internment of Aliens. They knew who we were and why we sought asylum in the UK. to escape the Nazi persecution of Jews.

Time to move again to Hyton Liverpool on our way to the Isle of Man. How do you create a camp quickly? Hyton was an unfinished housing scheme, simply enclose with barbed wire  and hey Presto you have a camp. We only stayed 2 days.  At Liverpool we embarked for the IoM where many camps were ready. Simply whole sections of Hotels and Boarding houses surrounded by barbed wire, in Douglas ,Ramsay, Peel and Port Erin (women).

A smooth 3hour crossing of the Irish Sea. Our destination was Peveril Camp Peel on the West Coast of the island.

Walked from the harbour to the railway station, a narrow gage small train took us to Peel, about 80 internees. Peveril Camp consisted of the last 8 hotels at the end of the promenade, overlooking PEEL BAY and Castle. This looked very promising,

Reasonable accommodation, double rooms. House No 6, 12 rooms on 3 storeys.

24 Internees age groups 25 to 60 plus. Mostly German Jewish refugees and some political German detainees. I was the only CHILD aged 16 detained by MI5 !!

Knowing we were here for the long term, you settled down and made friends. Food was reasonable, no shortages.

Business people, teachers’ doctors galore, University professors and also “ordinary” Jewish refugees, all missing their dear ones let in the UK. It did not take long to establish discussion groups, theatre and music debating groups. We all had time on our hands. Interrupted careers, no income, one letter a week, everybody had family torn apart.

For me it was a great learning experience like a look into adult life and a whole new education. No Newspapers allowed, we followed the course of the war by radio when permitted. The authorities began to understand we were not “Enemy Aliens” but a well educated

Refugees from the Nazis and are anxious to help the war effort towards victory. We organised the postal system, we hated the disruption of the constant ROLL Calls and found a better system which the camp commander accepted. We refused to go for walks or swimming accompanied by soldiers with guns and bayonets, they began to understand, we were not going to escape, Things settled down to mutual cooperation.

Professor Hans Gal, who had lived Edinburgh, published his daily diaries in German and English, from a camp in Douglas, a really special insight, worth reading.

To combat illness, we were divided into groups by our doctors, to test different foods or medicines. It WORKED.

Many men played Chess, but with their backs to the chess board, given 10 seconds to call out the next move. Quite a challenge !! Many musical instruments arrived from their homes in UK and Music and Theatre flourished . Cabarets, Shows also for the Officers. We were taken to Douglas to see the Charlie Chaplin Film : The Great Dictator, making fun of Hitler. Life went on. Several people were released for hardship or medical reasons. We all hoped to get home soon.

We were allowed a weekly letter. My letter was used to complain to the authorities. It was sent to the liberal Manchester Guardian and Eleanor Rathbone MP(known as MP for the refugees). We  argued that we should be released to help with the war effort and defeat the Nazis. This exposure got our comments mentioned at Prime Ministers Question Time.  In spite of being behind barbed wire it gave us a feeling of living in democratic country.

I was called to several Tribunals to be reassessed. Did I really correspond with the enemy?

I got a new roommate, a German officer a Metallurgist working at the British Aluminium Co.

in Fort William. He turned out to be an MI5 Agent. He spoke Perfect German and Oxford English. He gave lectures in metallurgy, to fool us of his identity.

He tried to get me drunk and searched for information, which I did not have or know.

An unpleasant episode. But his report must have convinced them that I was CLEAN.

Which eventually led to my release. In 2008 I received a document through Freedom of Information from MOD that they did think I was a spy.

Many more boring months went by. Met many interesting people and made good friends. A Yorkshire man who had no German connections wondered why he was interned. It turned out his grandfather was German and had never become British. Poor man found it difficult to take. However, he taught me about Tabaco. Gather certain leaves, cure them with Salpeter, put them in a sardine tin place under 1 leg of your bed and the pressure will make solid Tabaco. You learned a lot about making do.

I was transferred to Ramsay Camp for just 2 days to be released. The commandant told me: “I cannot keep you a day longer as you are under the age for internment” which was 18.

Such is the bureaucracy of wartime. The journey home was frightening. All ALONE after being in a friendly community for 10 long months. Had vouchers for Boat and Train, But which Boat? Where to find train to Glasgow in Liverpool station? Remember it is wartime, who do I ask?

A warm welcome from Mrs. Hurwich. I have come HOME.

What Now?  I found a job as apprentice Chef at the Corn Exchange restaurant.

Found the Refugee Club with lots of young people, “The House on the Hill in Sauchiehall Street “Where I met Ingrid. As they say “The Rest Is History”.

Esperance David – Life for Esperance in England

INT:    So you must, you were in Britain…

INT:    They were in Israel, building the, when did you see them again?

ED:      1953.

INT:    So, you studied?

ED:      I finished my study, then I was teaching.

INT:    Oh you were a teacher?

ED:      I was teaching.

INT:    In London?

ED:      In London, I was teaching in London?  No, well I was living in London at the time, but I, it’s a long story.  I met some friends, when I was in Eastbourne.  And I had no money and my family were all disbanded and just scraping a living, they had to…my dad is very, he’s got such a lot of go in him, he doesn’t stand still. They had this house and a little garden, so he started, you know, to put in potatoes or courgettes, or something, to live, you know, literally off the land

INT:    You were teaching.

ED: I was teaching and I went to this Jewish school in Brighton.  The man who owned it, it was a private school, he was Jewish, Irish-Jewish, but all the teachers were Roman Catholic. I was the only Jewish girl there, and he was a bastard, he was a real swine.  He treated me so, so badly.  One of the teachers who was running the school, he was so sympathetic and I used to go and cry and he said, “I’ll go and have a, how dare he treat you like that, when your people are suffering for it, and you are here, you are working very hard”, and spoke to him. No, well that’s the way it is, he’s running a school and that’s it.

Oh that’s another really, quite a sad story, he was nasty, he was really nasty to me, very much, to the extent I’ll just tell you this.  It was Yom Kippur and I’m raised not very frum, but I am Jewish, so I wanted to fast for Yom Kippur.  My college were dishing out, there wasn’t even bacon at that time, God knows what it was, rabbits and all kinds of things, and I didn’t want it, I wanted to have a kosher meal.  So I went to a café, would you believe it?  How your mind works at that time. Went to a café and asked for two fried eggs and that was, as kosher as that was to me, to fast on. I used to work every other weekend, so that was Yom Kippur there and it was a Saturday, and I was working on Saturday, Yom Kippur, and the headmaster, and he wasn’t Catholic, he was just Church of England or something, he came up at lunchtime and he said, “Are you all right?” and he brought me a cup of tea.  I said, “No”, “Not a cup of tea, glass of…?”, “No, no, that’s our Day of Atonement”, “And you are working with young children and it’s three o’clock now?”, “Yeah, yeah, that’s all right, that’s all right, that’s fine”, and he went and had a barney with the head teacher. He said, “Well, she’s Jewish, so I’m Jewish, it’s a mitzvah that she’s working with children, with Jewish children.” What kind of a mitzvah is that?  I’m Jewish too, and there were other people to take over.

INT:    But the children, the children were Jewish as well?

ED:      The children, it’s a Jewish school.  The children were Jewish, the owner, that’s the principal, Mr. Eliasuf, I’ll never forget his name, he owned the school, but he appointed, he employed Catholic, most of them were Catholic. But this headmaster who ran the school, he wasn’t Catholic but he was also not Jewish, and he was very sympathetic.  He was such a nice man.  So, I said, “Well I really need to leave, Mr. Kemp”. He was, kind of, nice to talk to, he said, “You don’t leave now because that’s your first year”, that’s how I remember it was my first year. “It’ll be a bad spell on you to leave after, the fault will be on you.  Anyone will ask why did you leave, not finishing a year?”

So I stomached it and finished a year, and I said to him in due course, “I’m leaving”. So I’d been writing applications and I’d been asked for an interview, for Sunday.  For Sunday, to go for an interview, I was to be on duty. He wouldn’t let me go to the interview.  I was heartbroken, so I went, crying, to Mr. Kemp. “He can’t do that.” Well he’s doing that, what could I do, I live there, and I’ve nowhere to go?  He knows I’m leaving and he knows I’m looking for a job, he doesn’t allow me to go for an interview, and Sunday was my day.  Sunday was a Sunday, everybody was…So anyway, he said, “Well let’s face it”, that’s Mr. Kemp, the headmaster. He said, “Go and phone”. ( It was a head teacher owning a school, a private school), “and tell her that something happened. Make up a story,” he said, “I don’t care.  Tell any story and tell her you just can’t make it, if she will see you the next Sunday, when you are off duty”.  So I went to the phone, there was a phone in the school, he wouldn’t let me use the phone, “You can go outside and phone”.  This telephone is a pay box telephone, To tell him that I’m cancelling my interview. It’s not so easy to get an interview and cancel it.  So, Mr. Kemp said, “Well just go outside and make that phone call, for God’s sake.”  So I phoned and I don’t know what I said. I said, I think, there was a teacher, I don’t know, I made up a story, who fell ill all of a sudden and I had to take over, so it sounded very good and very kosher, very sympathetic.  And this is it, I went the following Sunday and I got the job eventually. It was in Surrey, near Epsom, near Dorking in Surrey.  Mickleham, it’s a nice, lovely little village in Surrey, it was very nice.

INT:    Do you think he was so harsh to you, especially, because you were foreign, you’d come from somewhere else, or was he like that with everybody?

ED:      No, I was the only one in that position.  He was strict, to be honest, I mean they all took him for what he is, and they knew how to tackle him, but he was absolutely nasty to me, he really was.  And, as I say, it shows you, from what he did for Yom Kippur, I never forgave him for that, he was really nasty.  For someone else, who is not even Jewish, to be more sympathetic, and after that, to not let me use a phone, to not let me. So what?  Am I a prisoner there?  I get notice, due notice, and he knows I have nowhere to go, I have to look for a job, and that’s an interview for a job.

INT:    You were very brave.

ED:      I wasn’t brave.  When you are in, I was cornered, what do you do?  You’re just under this kind of thing. That Mr. Kemp, he was the angel, because I didn’t, to tell you the truth, I didn’t even know how to write an application for a job.  I was in Brighton, a very well-known friend asked me for a Friday night, for Sabbath evening, and she said, “Well, what are you doing?”.  I said, “Well, I’ve just come from holiday, from the other place”, what was it?

INT2:  Eastbourne.

ED:      Eastbourne.  And, “Nothing really”, so, “What, you’re doing nothing ? I said, “Yes.”  “Oh”, she said, “let’s finish dinner and there is this Eliasuf, that school, he’s always looking for new teachers”.

INT:    Probably he loses them so rapidly.

ED:      Absolutely, they don’t last there like I did.  So she picked up the phone and she phoned him up, “I’ve got a blah, blah, blah, newly-qualified, excellent, very nice young lady”, and all that, “Yes, send her to see me on Sunday.”  That was Friday night, he picked up the phone and he would not allow me to pick up the phone for Saturday.  But he picked up the phone.

Bob Mackenzie – Life During the War

Bob loses his German but becomes proficient in English.

BM:Once the war started we were only allowed to write twenty-five words per month through the Red Cross. When war broke out Janet joined the Land Army and Jessie looked after the house. So over the years one can say that Jessie virtually brought us up. Granny Mackenzie died and my sister and I moved into the big house and we were accepted as part of the family. Mr Mackenzie arranged for us to attend the local school. He asked the Headmaster if it would be possible to have two or three hours a week with the German class, so we could keep up our German language, but the Headmaster refused. So the German language faded away through lack of use.

When I moved to secondary school I decided to take German as a language and I’m sorry to say I ended up bottom of the class; mockery all round from the other members of the class. But the following year I got my own back by coming first in my class in English.

Bob Mackenzie – Life Before the War

I was born in the town of Chemnitz in South East Germany. I do not recollect my very early years but in 1933 my father lost his job in Chemnitz and we moved to a small town called Neukirchen, about five miles from Chemnitz. My parents bought a semi-detached house with a large piece of ground attached, probably about one and a half acres. As I remember my father took on any type of work available: driving, painting, road building etc and life for my sister and I was quite normal. Our household consisted of my paternal grandfather, my father, my mother, my sister and myself. On our piece of ground we kept a goat which supplied milk, we kept hens which supplied the eggs and while my father was working my mother and grandfather worked on our land. We grew our own vegetables and had an orchard with various fruit trees.

Below our house was a deep cellar and I can remember my mother storing the apples and pears in the cellar for winter use. Although my grandfather was Jewish I cannot remember him attending any Jewish religious service. My father was also Jewish but my mother was of the Lutheran faith and my sister and I were brought up also in the Lutheran faith. We were regular attendees at the church every Sunday but unfortunately because of my father’s Jewish background the whole family was classified as Jewish by the Nazi regime, even though my mother had never embraced the Jewish religion. At five years old I went to the local school. I never experienced any feeling of being an outsider. I played with the lads of my own age; they came to my house to play and I went to theirs. I may be wrong but I think we were the only Jewish family in the town and no one appeared to bother.

One day we came home from school to find my father gone. My mother didn’t say where he had gone to and about two or three months later he appeared again, only then did my sister and I find out that he had been away to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Why, we did not know… On reflection and on information gathered during research for this talk it seems possible that my father was one of the many Jews who had been rounded up during Kristallnacht. Not long after my father returned, my sister and I were told we would be going on a journey. My mother packed a suitcase for each of us and we were taken to the railway station to be put on a train.

Kathy Hagler – Life In Israel

Kathy and her granny were allowed to leave Hungary and decided to emigrate to Israel.  Kathy wanted to remain in Hungary to finish her education but that was not possible. In the beginning, aged 16 she worked in a factory, which she hated. She moved to live on a Kibbutz, which she loved from the age of 24 and lived there for ten years.

INT: So you and your grandma and your aunt all went to Israel together just before she died?

KH: Yes, we went in January ’59 and she died in April.

INT: Happy to have done the journey to the Promised Land and all that.

KH: Very, very happy.

INT: Did she feel it was, I’m just putting words into her mouth, the culmination of what she’d been living for and all that, that religiousness, did that drive her to go there? Or was it partly escaping? Was it a pull thing or a push thing? Was it getting out of Hungary or getting in to Israel?

KH: For my aunt it was getting out of Hungary, for my granny it was getting to the Promised Land. For me, I didn’t want to go but I didn’t have a word…I didn’t have a say in the matter.

INT: Yeah.

KH: I did try to have a say in the matter. I wanted to finish school which would have been another year and a half. I loved school, I always loved school.

And she [her teacher] had a word with my aunt and my granny, but they said no, so I had to go [ Israel]. So that was my education interrupted and I hated it, I absolutely hated it. And of course I got to Israel and if I wanted to eat I had to work so that was the end of my education until as an adult I tried to do something about it.

INT: So going back to Israel, what work did you do when you had to work straight away and couldn’t go back to school? Were you living in kibbutz?

KH: Not then.

INT: Right.

KH: I lived not far from Tel Aviv, in a suburb, it had a different name to it but it’s really like a suburb of Tel Aviv and I got a job in cosmetic laboratory at sixteen years old and I worked there for quite a while and then I learned about philately and numismatics and I worked with stamps and coins for donkey’s years and became quite an expert, a recognised expert in the field actually. But I hated living in the city and in my twenties I went to live in a kibbutz.

INT: You were already an expert in your twenties? A recognised expert?

KH: In a particular field, just philately and numismatics: stamps and coins, that’s all.

INT: Yeah.

KH: I always like to learn things, even today I still do.

INT: So did they do Ulpans and programmes for new immigrants in that/at that time?

KH: Yes and for a little while I was in one and learned Hebrew very quickly because it was important.

INT: You already could read it.

KH: I already could read it, yes, slowly but it was an advantage yes.

INT: Yes.

KH: My aunt could read it as well but she never actually learned to speak the language. She tried hard, she did really try her very best. Not everybody is good at learning languages, my aunt wasn’t. I was very lucky, I happened to be quite good at learning languages, so I did, and I was also young; she was in her forties and I was a sixteen-year-old, that is a big difference.

INT: Yeah.

KH: My granny of course never did but then she only lived there for about three/four months.

INT: So that was…what year was it when you moved there? ’58?

KH:’59.

INT:’59 when you went to Israel. So were there a lot of other Hungarians leaving at that point?

KH: No, no, very few indeed, maybe three other families in the year, that’s all.

NT: So when you, you worked in the jobs that you said and after a bit you wanted to leave the city and move to the kibbutz, that was with your aunt?

KH: No.

INT: Oh right.

KH: [I was] on my own.

KH: No, not that easily. It was not acceptable that an unmarried girl…I was twenty-four by the time I went to the kibbutz so I was not a teenager but it was not acceptable that an unmarried young woman should leave her family and live on her own. It was not easy but I’ve done it.

INT: Yeah.

KH: And I loved living in the kibbutz and I lived there for about ten years. In the kibbutz you do everything and anything. I like that and I loved the kibbutz and I still do to this day but I was kind of getting towards my mid-thirties and I kind of realised that I never, I never stood on my own two feet. I went from my aunt’s home to the kibbutz, and the kibbutz is also a cocoon, it takes good care of you, it’s quite wonderful. But I kind of got to the point where I had to prove to myself that I could stand on my own two feet and it was now or never. I felt it was now or never. I was getting towards my mid-thirties, I was thirty-four years old and I felt that if I didn’t do it then and there I would never do it.

INT: Yeah.

KH: And then I had to decide where to go and what to do and for all kinds of reason, climate being one of them, a major one actually, political situation at that time being another one. The Levantine life being another one.

INT: The what?

KH: Levantine, Mediterranean.

INT: Right.

KH: Nerves and shouting and…everything being on high do all the time was something I found very difficult to cope with. I still do today. I don’t go to nowadays but I still did many, many years later when I went to visit while my aunt was alive and I was living here in Scotland, I still went to visit her every year and I still found that life very difficult to cope with. Nothing wrong with it, I just don’t suit it. You know how life is and what behaviour is like.

INT: All outside and screaming?

KH: It suits lots of people; it doesn’t suit me.

INT: Yes.

KH: Yeah. Nothing can be done quietly, everything is done by shouting and screaming and what bothered me more than people were shouting and screaming all the time was that when I went there I shouted and screamed.

INT: And you… what work did you do in the kibbutz and then what work did you do when you first came here?

KH: In the kibbutz I used to work with children.

INT: Yeah.

KH: But I also worked in the kitchen, in the pardes which is the…there is a special name for it and I forget it…it is the orchard only for citrus fruit.

INT: Right.

KH: The climate was very difficult for me. When I first got to Israel it was January and the sky was blue and the palm trees were waving in the wind and I thought ‘Wow, it’s beautiful.’ And they said to me ‘Just wait until it gets to the summer! And then the summer came and I got the shock of my life and people said ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it!’. Well I never did; some people can cope with hot climates and some people can’t…well I can’t.

KH: In the kibbutz itself was a factory and the factory sent me, a factory for plastic things, and at one point they sent me to do, to learn about export and I did.

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Links to Other Testimonies by Kathy Hagler

Life Before The WWII
Life During The War
Life In Budapest Post WWII
Life In Israel
Reflection On Life

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