Gathering The Voices Scotland

Testimonies of Holocaust survivors who settled in Scotland

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Lore Lucas – Reflection On Life

INT: Can you tell me something just as it occurs to me about your, all the years that you’ve lived in Scotland, did you, have you experienced any anti-Semitism?

LL: No. Really and truly not. I mean there is underlying anti-Semitism everywhere, this I know

INT: And what about being involved in the community. Were you involved in Jewish activities throughout all of the years?

LL: Mainly refugees. It is almost impossible, I tell you, to integrate in the community. That is not possible. You will always be a stranger.

INT: So you feel that even within the Jewish community?

LL: Oh yes, definitely

INT: You still felt there was a sort of sub-community?

LL: Oh yes, certainly. There’s no question about that

INT: Interesting

LL: There is no question about that. I mean I have got very good friends in the, the bigger community

INT: Yeah

LL: But few and far between

INT: And do you think that’s because of cultural differences?

LL: Possibly

INT: Or is it a language barrier or?

LL: A language barrier should be overcome by now

INT: Yes

LL: You see

INT: I mean you speak fluent excellent English

LL: I mean that. An accent you all have, we all have. When you have not gone to school here you cannot lose your accent. I mean maybe elocution would have helped but who thought of that in those days when you were short of money?

INT: And also I suppose you bond with people in your earlier years as well

LL: Yes, you know. I mean that is… I know. But very difficult.

INT: So tell me about the good times of living here in Scotland – what’s been good? What’s memorable for you, that makes you think ‘I’m glad I’ve been living here’?

LL: I mean I’ve just had a very happy, comfortable life. My husband was ill for 20 years. He went to the doctor after my 40th birthday and he died after my 59th birthday. Very heavy going but marvelous, absolutely wonderful.

INT: So you were very happy? You were happy with him?

LL: Oh, absolutely!

INT: Yes. But it was obviously, 20 years of him being ill

LL: It was heavy going. We had a very big age difference, which I knew from the beginning, and for that reason he actually did not want to get married to me – because of the big age difference and it took me quite a long time. Because my parents had the same age difference as it happened. 17 years is a long time, 17 years. So, so, you could expect illness but not at such an early stage. But he was ill, then he was well again. But he was a fantastic optimist. The minute he was better he said ‘When can we go on holiday?’ I said ‘Look, let’s wait a bit’ ‘Not at all’ Very positive.

INT: Have you been back over?

LL: Yes, yes. I’ve been back over. Yes we did and I have been over a couple of times since he died with my son because he was interested. Some children are simply not interested, they don’t want to know. They were born here, it finished. But he is interested and so is his wife. She was also born in London but she comes originally from Vienna, her parents, and she was also interested. So we have been over with my granddaughter. So we have been over.

INT: Right

LL: And I have got very good non-Jewish friends in Germany. I went to school with a girl and we kept friends all the time so… and I’ve met other families, they are fantastic. Over the years so that…we have been.

INT: How do you feel when you go over?

LL: You feel nothing because the people you knew are not there, you know. It makes you, I mean the people make you at home. It’s not the house and the bricks, which in my case didn’t stay there. But no, it’s not the people. The strange people living in there, they let us in and they were very nice and they showed us round, you know, but it’s nothing. I mean, I’ve got no feeling for them. I cannot forgive them. Nobody can I think.

INT: So can you tell us, like, during your marriage did you work?

LL: I worked in our own office. First I had an agency myself for blouses because we had a mortgage on the house and neither of us liked debts in any way so I worked until the mortgage was paid off. I did not like that particular job, that’s different but after my husband died I had more time than I needed. I did voluntary work all the time for the WRVS.

INT: Oh right, how long did you do that for?

LL: 33 years. I’m still doing it.

INT: You’re doing it just now? Fantastic. Very good.

LL: I do it every Wednesday

INT2: Where do you do that?

LL: Southern General. Yes, Southern General

INT2: Very good

INT: Excellent

LL: We run the tea bars there. I think there we are the only Jewish people; there’s nobody Jewish. Not in our department there. In all the shift there is not a Jewish person but we are well accepted there and we like the work.

INT: Very good

INT2: You make good tea!

Lore Lucas – Integration

INT: I’m asking about your social life when you were in London?

LL: Yes, it was very pleasant.

INT: Mainly Jewish? Or non-Jewish?

LL: Mostly Jewish, there was the odd non-Jewish one. I wasn’t selective but it happened to be.

INT: So what kind of things did you do?

LL: We mainly went to each others’ houses. We went to the pictures. I mean, money was short with everybody and heating was expensive and everything. We lived a normal life, not like teenagers live now. We didn’t buy clothes or anything, which we didn’t need because you could bring a lot out of Germany. That was one thing you had, that was clothes. So shopping didn’t come into it.

INT: So your, your parents were in Germany?

LL: My parents by that time were already in a camp. They emigrated from Germany to Holland and they were taken to camps from Holland.

INT: Ok we’ll maybe go back over that later. I want to continue with life in London. So, you worked

LL: Yes

INT: In this one job

LL: Yes

INT: Really for a good 5 or 6 years

LL: Yes, yes until ‘46

INT: And you were living..?

LL: And I lived together with my aunt in a flat which we had rented. We had no real… the landlord didn’t live in the house so we had the top floor

Lore Lucas – Settling In

INT: Alright and when you arrived in Scotland, when did you come to Scotland?

LL: I came

INT: What age were you?

LL: 26

INT: 26 years old?

LL: Yes

INT: Yes. How did you get to Scotland and why did you come here?

LL: I was in London and I got married in Scotland

INT: To a Scottish…?

LL: No, a Jewish refugee

INT: A Jewish refugee. And where did you meet?

LL: In London the day war broke out

LL: In Woburn house on another occasion a gentleman was sitting beside me and we got talking and we had dinner together and he said he was there to try and get permits for his parents from Vienna – he was Viennese, from Vienna. He was there because he had connections. By this time I was 18 (it was 1938) He can help, he can do this and that…He was, he pretended to be very friendly with Stafford Cripps who was very famous in those days. Anyhow, I thought, he can do something for my parents etc, I better not lose this contact (because you needed it) and we got married.

My father sent over from Holland his brother to come to London to see who this man is! See whether or not, you know! This brother, apart from lots of other people – ‘Wonderful, wonderful!’ It turned out he was not so wonderful. He did not say an honest word and he did not only take me in he took this brother of my father (who was in his 60’s) and various other prominent business people – he stole from them all.

LL: We got married in December ’38 when I was 18 coming on for 19, when I was 18. And it lasted until I was 26 because I had the greatest difficulties in getting a divorce. The divorce laws were completely different in these days, very difficult to get a divorce It took six years. The case had to be taken to the House of Lords for the divorce laws to be changed before I could get a divorce.

INT: So, I was asking about your social life when you were in London?

LL: Yes, it was very pleasant.

INT: Mainly Jewish? Or non-Jewish?

LL: Mostly Jewish, there was the odd non-Jewish one. I wasn’t selective but it happened to be.

INT: So what kind of things did you do?

LL: We mainly went to each others’ houses. We went to the pictures. I mean, money was short with everybody and heating was expensive and everything. We lived a normal life, not like teenagers live now. We didn’t buy clothes or anything, which we didn’t need because you could bring a lot out of Germany. That was one thing you had, that was clothes. So shopping didn’t come into it.

INT: So your, your parents were in Germany?

LL: My parents by that time were already in a camp. They emigrated from Germany to Holland and they were taken to camps from Holland.

INT: Ok we’ll maybe go back over that later. I want to continue with life in London. So, you worked

LL: Yes

INT: In this one job

LL: Yes

INT: Really for a good 5 or 6 years

LL: Yes, yes until ‘46

INT: And you were living..?

LL: And I lived together with my aunt in a flat which we had rented. We had no real…the landlord didn’t live in the house so we had the top floor.

INT: So yes, so after the war finished you got married ( to your second husband)

LL:Yes

LL: So that was a little struggle

INT: Yes my goodness! So how did, I take it you weren’t working at that time then?

LL: Yes I was

INT: What were you doing?

LL: I was a secretary in various companies, big companies. First in a textile firm. They were Jewish and were very good, very nice people. The owner of the firm, Romanov, called me in one day and said ‘Look here, you can stay with us, there’s absolutely no question. But if you want to become naturalized after the war it’s not good enough for you, you must have done some war work’

INT: OK

LL: So he did it in his best to advise me. I said ‘Thank you very much, I will do something’ and I went to the Labour Exchange looking for a job and I said ‘I’m prepared to do almost anything. I don’t want to join the army (which was suggested –the Pioneer Core, I said no thank you) but I’ll do anything. I’ll go under buses, it doesn’t matter’.

Anyhow they got me a job in a firm in Baker Street which was quite convenient. So I turn up and there were several girls sitting there in a fairly darkish room and I’m looking for somebody and they said ‘Oh don’t worry, don’t worry, take your time’ and do this first, and make-up… And I said ‘No, I want to do some work’. I got a piece of cardboard this size and a pair of scissors and I had to cut out round certain circles. Now I thought to myself ‘I can’t do this, it’s driving me nuts!’ No boss arrived, nothing. I went again the next day, it was the same thing so I said ‘This I cannot do’. I asked to see the boss and the boss: ‘Oh no, this is only temporary. We are expecting the proper work to come’ I said ‘When is this going to be?’ ‘

Oh, anytime, anytime’ I said ‘Excuse me in the meantime. I’m really not very keen’ He said ‘That doesn’t matter if you are keen or not. I have your papers through the war office and you are here’ Again I thought this can’t go on. I knew very well a refugee gentleman. He was an expert in pensions and he was working for the British government so I spoke to him. His sister actually lived in Glasgow. I spoke to him and he said ‘Not at all’ He said ‘You go to him, you ask for your papers, if he refuses them it’s just too bad’ Then I’ve to take the matter up with someone else. The next day

INT: So he told you you were entitled to ask for your papers back?

LL: Yes, I’m entitled to ask for them. He’s entitled to hold them, he can send them back to the war office. You needed permits. Go back the next day and tell him and he was very downtrodden, very kind by that time and said ‘Now look here, if you stay with me for another…I don’t know, 3 days, because I have very important people coming and after that I give you your papers’ I said ‘I’m very sorry, I want the papers now and if I don’t get the papers I’m just going’ That was me. So that was it. I went back, this gentleman told me you first now go back to the labour office who gave you the job and tell them. Now they were appalled. It was a set up firm – they were doing tax evasions – that was all they did. There was never any work!

INT: So you discovered it pretty early on?

LL: After…I was there for less than a week. So they were very sorry but they had been diddled as well. But this meant then they were very careful what job to give me! Because I needed to work. I then got a job in a very… they made arms but also it was the one and only firm in Britain who made perforating machines for passports. A passport had all perforations in it these days, we don’t have that now. They were, our passport number was in perforation, nobody could change it or anything and they made parts for aircrafts. Wonderful job, absolutely terrific! Completely non-Jewish. I started my work there and my immediate boss was…he really ran the place. A Quaker. Fabulous man!

And he said to me right away ‘I am so glad you are not working as his secretary. You wouldn’t have much work to do but it’s not the thing to do’ I stayed with that firm until I got married (for 5 or 6 years), wonderful job!

INT: So you were happy there?

LL: Fantastic!

INT: So how, what was the reason for you and your husband to come to Scotland?

LL: Because my husband had a position waiting for him in Scotland

INT: How did that happen?

LL: I met my husband and a close friend of his at the same sandbag-filling party. They had been partners in a business in Germany.

So had their fathers already (been partners). Now these two fellows, both unmarried in London and the other one that never joined the army (he wasn’t fond of these kind of things, these sort of things), he saw a job advertised by the Scottish Co-Operative Wholesale Society, SCWS. He applied for this position in Glasgow, he went here, he got this position in a textile factory (they had lots of factories, the SCWS) and he made it a condition that when his former partner who is in the army gets de-mobbed he can join him in this position. So we came to Glasgow.

INT: Excellent, excellent

LL: Oh wonderful. I was now getting married you see. So my husband went in January, January ’46 to Glasgow and we got married in March. I thought everything was wonderful. It was the coldest winter we’ve had, since this year.

INT: So you got married in Glasgow?

INT: So looking back over the years that you’ve lived in Scotland what would you say were the highs? The best of times?

LL: We had a very bad spell in Glasgow. We had a very, very serious court case in Glasgow / being dealt with in Glasgow. We were certainly… It started in 1952 and finished in 1958. We were under pressure for 6 years, plus a newborn child and a mother in law in the house! Yes, it was a business matter, nothing private, a business matter. The SCWS wanted to do us in so we made a court case which lasted for 6 years.

INT: So it must have been a very harrowing time then with a young child?

LL: It was terrible and my husband was in the witness box for 3 full days, 8 hours at a time. It’s not easy because although you do nothing you have to watch the full thing all the time and some of the others kept on saying to their solicitor ‘You cannot listen to him, he doesn’t speak proper English’ and our solicitor said ‘Don’t be ridiculous, he can speak better English than you can’ You know, in court. I was never there. So we won the case. Our solicitor, a very famous Glasgow solicitor said right away ‘You have to reckon on it, that they will go against the result because the Co-op is so rich, they can do anything. They know that you can’t do it’ They went to take the case further. It went to the House of Lords and we won again.

It is something now which is taught to every law student, it is in every book; yes, it’s the Law of Minorities. Every lawyer knows about it immediately. We worked as I told you with the SCWS. Eventually, with their permission and everything, we started our own business together with them and they had 51% of the shares and we had 49 which meant, according to them, we had no say in the matter. But that was changed. The Law of Minorities was changed. Never must ever anybody do that.

INT: So that was a very, very bad time in your life?

LL: That was until ’58. We were under constant pressure. My husband worked all the time certainly, came home at night, you looked through papers, you re-read things, you know, this kind of thing. And after that we, once this was sorted out we started our own business without anybody. There was no partners, not, nobody!

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

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