Shapiro

Dr Angela Shapiro presents to the Queens Cross Housing Association

Food for Thought is a free engaging and informative talk series on research which is relevant to people’s lives followed by dinner and discussion in community venues in North Glasgow.

Community partnership between CPE and Queens Cross Housing Association (QCHA), Social Regeneration Team managed by Jamie Ballantyne. Researchers from across the University have been involved. Between 15 and 30 people usually attend each talk; a combination of tenants and other members of the public from the local community and sometimes from further afield depending on the topic.

Our regular attendees have helped shape the project and the feedback has been really positive.

QCHA’s own social research highlighted stark findingsaround the challenges caused by poverty and inequality. Food for Thought was designed to offer QCHA tenants and the wider community new learning and social experiences to reduce social isolation.

Attendees are offered a hot home cooked nutritious dinner from QCHA’s community café, Flourish House and although they are an evening event, the talks are always in an environment without alcohol to provide an alternative for people. Food for Thought take place from 6.30pm – 8.30pm on the last Thursday of the month over a few months in the academic year in a few QCHA community venues.

Our message is that everyone is welcome along and everyone’s contribution to the discussion is valued.

David Shapiro

I am a semi-retired clinical biochemist who has worked in in hospital laboratories all my career.

Gretl Shapiro, my mother, came to the UK as part of the Kindertransport. She was brought up by Quakers in England and came to Scotland after the war. She had a successful career as a ceramicist.

She was interviewed about her life at the time of the Glasgow Garden Festival and always said that she did not want to be remembered as a victim but as someone who made a successful life for herself in the country that had taken her in. This was a view that was expressed by many of the interviewees in the Gathering the Voices Project, so I hope that we have represented them truly and according to their wishes.

Gretl Shapiro – Reflection On Life

Gretl hopes and believes that there will be no repetition of experiences like the Holocaust of the 1940s

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INT: When you look ahead or you see something now, about any kind of prosecution ehm persecution do you get extremely upset about it? Are you moved to do something about it?

G.S: Well I get upset about it but I haven’t joined any groups or anything to do anything about it. I suppose I should.

INT: I just wondered if perhaps an experience like that would make you fear that it could happen anywhere – do you think it could?

G.S: Well I think the Germans are a particular lot of people. I don’t know. I hope that it couldn’t happen like that anymore, I don’t think it could. That you can kill six million people, you know? It’s systematically so well organised, so cold bloodedly. It’s not, I mean, I can understand a pilot dropping a few bombs, I can understand that. Because he doesn’t actually see what happens to each individual person that he kills. But to go and torture and, you know, skin people, that kind of thing is.it’s unbelievable that human beings can do this to one another. I, I just, I can’t really, I can’t really describe it.

INT: For your own children and your grandchildren now, some growing up in France, some growing up here – what do you want for them?

G.S: Well I just want them to be happy. I think that, it gives me great joy to find that I have in fact five grandsons and I sort of feel, every time something like that happens I say one in the eye for Hitler, you know. Because, you know. And I now even have a Jewish name – Shapiro, you know. And there are three new Shapiros! Which is wonderful!

INT: One last question. What do you think you missed in your childhood? Apart from having mum and dad, do you think that your aunt managed to make up for most things?

G.S: I think she did make up for most things. Perhaps the only thing – I think our household was more musical.

I mean, there was more music in it, but that’s about it. But that, you see, a lot of the childhood I spent in school really, so it wasn’t so much lacking. I think I had a very happy childhood as far as, you know, one can without one’s mother

INT: That’s lovely

Gretl Shapiro – Integration

Gretl says that she feels truly British and has many non-Jewish friends though she is, of course, proud to be Jewish herself

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INT: She, as a Quaker, did she ever try and suggest that you should join her in her worship?

G.S: Oh, no no no. I mean I used to go with her to meetings, into the meeting house but she would never have. No, no, she wouldn’t want to convert me or anything. No, no, that wasn’t in it. And at first I used to listen, because I don’t know whether you’ve ever been to a meeting house in the Quakers?

Well, most of the time you just think, and you can think any thoughts you like but every now and then someone is moved to get up and say something, you see. But after a bit, I asked if, on the Sundays, I could take a book with me and she said ‘Certainly’. So I would read a book and then if somebody spoke I would listen and that was it. No she wouldn’t, she wasn’t the type to be evangelical or anything. No, no Quakers don’t do that.

INT: How did you go about, then, following your own religion?

G.S: Well I’m not exactly a, you know, terribly observant, but I’m very proud to be Jewish and I even belong to a Synagogue now.

But I must confess that’s because my, my daughter-in-law likes to keep a Jewish house and I like my own grandchildren to participate and so I go as well on occasion, but it’s only for special days that I go to the Synagogue.

INT: Can I ask you what happened to your sister? And to your brother?

G.S: Well my brother, he went to Israel just before I went off to England and he’s in a kibbutz and very happy. He’s got three children. My sister came here and she came as, what was called ‘lady’s companion’ but turned out to be housemaid and I don’t know whether you want to record this but it was in ..eh.. what’s his name?… In the household of a man who became Minister for Agriculture

INT: Oh, I can’t remember back that far, it doesn’t matter

G.S: Anyway, and it was an upper class English household- can you imagine? She was maid, it was like ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’, you know. It’s fantastic. And she came from a house where, you know, she used to go to opera and that kind of thing and there she was emptying potties.

INT: Oh, gosh. How long did she last?

G.S: Not very long. She was really very unhappy there, as you can imagine. The only nice one was, really, was the man who finally became Minister for Agriculture. Soames you know Soames?

Because he was about eighteen at that time and he used to call her in for silly things, you know, and told her to put on records that she could hear because he knew she brought masses of music with her you see. So that was the only nice thing. But then two ladies came to the house of the Soames’ and they met her and they sort of said, ‘Oh she can’t stay here, she can’t stay here’ And they took her in and she was married from their house. Quite nice.

INT: So it was a happy ending after all?

G.S: Yes, yes.

INT: And quite soon after you left

G.S: Well about three years after I left.

INT: When you look back on your time as a teenager here, do you think back at yourself as being a German teenager?

G.S: No, no

INT: Or British?

G.S: I always thought myself more English than the English! Yes.

No, I hated everything to do with Germany. I really didn’t want to speak German, hear German, read German or anything.

INT: What about now though you’re here in Scotland?

G.S: Well, funnily enough, recently I’ve thought maybe I ought to start reading a bit of literature, German literature because I haven’t really, you know, I mean what you read before you’re thirteen, you know, before you’re fourteen, it’s rather minimal really.

INT: And you’ve been here ever since?

G.S: Yes

INT: Do you ever go back, do you ever want to go back to Vienna?

G.S: I have. I was back in 1948 to see who was still alive. An uncle of mine, a dentist, he’d been to Dachau concentration camp but he’d got out.

At that time you could still get out sometimes if you got a visa to England. And he came here during the war and then went back to his wife. She wasn’t Jewish you see, stayed in Vienna all during the war. So I went to see who there was but that was all there was.

INT: Just the two of them?

G.S: Left. Yes.

INT: Do you ever want to go back now?

G.S: No, not really no.

INT: You said you were homesick? So it was homesick for here?

G.S: Yes, homesick for England, never homesick for Austria! No.

INT: So you don’t even – you consider yourself British completely?

G.S: Oh yes, yeah.

INT: And with your brother in Israel have you ever been tempted to move?

G.S: Well yes. At that time when I went there for a year I thought I might stay but I didn’t really because I was too homesick for here. I couldn’t stay.

INT: Yes because your husband was Jewish too?

G.S: Yes, my husband was Jewish.

INT: Did you find that it was easier, did you find you gravitated more towards people who were Jewish when you came here to work?

G.S: No. Not at all in fact. No. You see I have a lot of non-Jewish friends. In fact, I have very few Jewish friends. I mean my relations are Jewish but I don’t really have Jewish friends.

INT: So it was just a happy coincidence?

G.S: I’ve never asked anybody, you know if I meet somebody I don’t say to them ‘What religion are you?’ If I like a person I talk to them and we become friends and the fact that one is a Catholic and one is a Protestant and one’s a Jew doesn’t really make any difference.

INT: As a mixture of all three

G.S: Well, you know, I have a very good Catholic friend and lots of Protestant ones and it doesn’t really make any difference

INT: Yeah

G.S: If you like a person that’s it.

INT: Yes, it doesn’t matter at all

G.S: No

INT: Can I ask, it may seem a silly question, but how did you get from entomology to pottery?

G.S: Ah, well yes. Hmm good question! Well, because I had children I had to stop work you see so then I had to do something. I, you know, to do. And I was always interested in pottery actually. I’d met Bernard Leach down in Cornwall once and anyhow I was always keen so my husband said he’d make me a wheel if I was any good at it. So I started taking classes and when my children, when my girls were born, I started really. Pottery. And he made me a wheel and I worked downstairs and I have a little workshop downstairs and so it grew and I’ve now been doing it for thirty-one years

INT: And you never went back to entomology?

G.S: No no. Because, you see, after a few years you find you’re out of date. You, you know, they’ve got new methods and so on.

Gretl Shapiro – Settling In

Gretl talks about life with her new guardian in Coventry and describes her education and the evacuation of her school during the war.

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INT: This is the lady that you eventually called your aunt?

G.S: Yes, yes.

INT: She actually brought you up?

G.S: Yes. She did yes. She brought me up, she paid for my education. She was wonderful, really, an extraordinary woman. Never made you feel you owed her anything, always approved of what you did. A fabulous woman, really.

INT: Did she welcome your sister into the home regularly?

G.S: Oh yes! Yes, yes she asked that my sister should come of course and, oh she was, I’ve never met anyone quite like her since.

INT: When you look back and you remember those days of your childhood, do you remember the first days that you went to school here in Britain?

G.S: Yes, in fact, I arrived on 22nd of June and I went to school on the next day, the following day because my Aunt Margaret (as I called her) she was a history teacher at Barrs Hill Grammar School in Coventry. And so I went to school the following day of my arrival- after my arrival.

INT: So it was straight into school then?

G.S: Yes, yes

INT: Just learn from the beginning. You weren’t cosseted at all?

G.S: No. Well, I wouldn’t say cosseted but they were in the middle of their exams I remember and I did the art exam only I didn’t know what the questions were about, they had to be explained. And then I followed my aunt for a bit. Wherever she taught, I was in the same class. I sort of followed her around the school for a bit and then I just joined the ordinary class and less than two years later I was sitting school certificates, so.

INT: And your English obviously came along

G.S: Yes

INT: Tremendously well.

G.S: I think so yes because I had to speak English all the time

INT: Was your aunt then, one of the ‘Society of Friends’? Was she a Quaker?

G.S: Yes. She was a member yes. She was a Quaker and she had heard about what was happening in Germany and Austria and eh, she let it be known that she wanted to adopt somebody, to get somebody out – a child out.

INT: Did your mother make contact with you after you left Austria?

G.S: Yes, I had about two/three letters after. But then you see, there was such a short time, you realise.

INT: Yes, it was very very short.

G.S: And we were scared to write through the Red Cross because, in case they were hiding, you see, and we didn’t want anybody searching for them if they were hiding. They are just sort of, they are really rather limiting in language because she’s trying to write in English and her English wasn’t all that good. But well I mean they are mother’s letters that she would try and not cry I suppose when she wrote them.

INT: So you didn’t know what had happened?

G.S: No. My brother-in-law, that’s my sister’s husband, he was in the army of occupation and he had special leave to try and search for them, to see what had happened to them. And, I’m not quite sure whether I was told the real story of this or a sort of expurgated version but what I was told by him was that they were sent on a transport from Vienna in 1942 to Poland and a doctor, a Jewish doctor who was also sent, he made a list of the names of the people on that train. But they never arrived – there was no record of their arrival so whether they died on that train I don’t know.

It could well be because they were sort of cattle trucks with people just pushed in, you know. Far too many in a truck, and so on, without food and water. So it could well be that they died on the journey – I don’t know.

INT: And you’ll never know

G.S: No. I won’t know. No. Because even, I was in Israel and there is a, a place there where they have collected the names because the Germans were frightfully efficient. When they killed people they kept records in the concentration camps of all the people they “processed”, it’s like what they call ‘processed’. And there are these thousands of names, thousands of names.

But they tried to look up the name but they couldn’t find it so I don’t think they ever got as far as the concentration camp.

INT: So they died on route you think?

G.S: I think so.

INT: And quite soon after you left

G.S: Well about three years after I left.

[Gretl now talks about the support she received from her guardians.]

INT: Did they encourage you to get on, when you came here to England and to go to school and usual things like that?

G.S: Oh yes, this is exactly yes. She sort of felt I must behave well and I must do whatever the lady said and so on and so forth. And I did try. I mean, you know my guardian was a history teacher and I was determined to do well in history and, you know, I did. And that was one of the things I must say I did work at.

INT: Did she become for you a substitute mum do you think?

G.S: Yes, yes, yes. And she had a very sweet sister called Olive who was a very motherly sort of lady and charming, you know, lovely and she would come and, eh, tuck me in and kiss me, that kind of thing, you know. That helped, helped greatly.

INT: Yes because it must have been difficult for women who had not had children around.

G.S: Yes, yes.

INT: I mean it’s one thing to welcome another child into your home if you already have some but if you haven’t got any yet, they were learning weren’t they? With an adolescent.

G.S: Yes. Although they had also, I was telling you about their real niece – they had had a lot to do with her as well so they were used to, sort of, teenager. They were. And of course, you see, I came to Coventry and then the war broke out and the school was evacuated and we, the whole school went to Leamington Spa. And then nothing happened in Coventry, no bombing for a bit and we all came back.

And then of course there was the blitz and we were right in the blitz. My school was bombed and we were evacuated again to Atherstone in Warwickshire. But because of that I lived with a lot of other children together and my aunt was there all the time which was more than some of the children. You see the other children didn’t have their mothers with them, so I think that made it easier because it was a boarding school then and the mothers and fathers came to visit at the weekend and that kind of thing and I had my guardian there all the time.

INT: Was she very pleased when you went on to study A-Levels?

G.S: Yes. Yes I think she took a delight.

In fact, this is what made her so lovable because she took a delight in all, any success, you see, she really took a great delight. She never disapproved of anything. I don’t know – she was just wonderful.

INT: She sounds very special.

G.S: I think so.

Gretl Shapiro – Immigration

This section describes Gretl’s arrival in England through the Kindertransport system and explains how she came to be placed with an English family.

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INT: When you arrived do you remember how you felt? Were you frightened or bewildered?

G.S: Well, yes. My sister was already here and we arrived at Liverpool Street Station and I remember there was a sort of barrier and my sister was standing there waving madly, but we were rushed away because I think that we had to catch a train to Coventry. And so I never even kissed my sister or greeted her or anything but the following, I think it must have been the following week, the following weekend, she came to visit me from London.

INT: And you were pleased to see her?

G.S: Of course!

INT: Did you feel lost and did you feel foreign at that time?

G.S: Yes, a bit yes, because my English was practically non-existent and my guardian couldn’t speak German. So it was difficult at first but it was such a wonderful household I went to – a fabulous woman.

INT: This is the lady that you eventually called your aunt?

G.S yes yes

INT: When you came to Britain and you arrived here, and you knew you were coming to a family did you know anything about the family at all?

G.S: I think I knew there were three sisters living together, all teachers – and that’s about it. Really the, the connection was made originally by a cousin of mine – Ilona, who used to go to Bielefeldt and, on holiday. I’m not quite sure whether, what she did there but maybe she took English people around, I don’t know. But she met there, the headmistress of that school I went to in Barrs Hill, Barrs Hill Grammar School, and this lady had said that she wanted to help somebody and she knew of somebody who wanted to help children out and my cousin Ilona had said ‘Well I’ve got a small cousin who needs to get out’. And this is how it all started. That’s how the names were exchanged.

INT: And this was the beginning?

G.S: Yeah

INT: But there was a, it was a large movement, there were a lot of children who came out at that time

G.S: Yes

INT: Through the Quakers weren’t there?

G.S: Yes, over nine thousand children the Quakers took out. They arranged for.

INT: Did you speak any English at all?

G.S: I’d had one year at school – that’s all.

INT: So it was very limited?

G.S: Yes, very limited yes.

INT: What was the full name of your adopted aunt?

G.S: Margaret Kershaw Scholes and she came from Oldham in Lancashire

INT: And you kept your own name? Your own family name which was?

G.S: Yes. Marlé

INT: And how do you spell that?

G.S: M-A-R-L-E accente aigue. It’s got an accent on it – it’s French

INT: And then, when you came here you just kept your name right through?

G.S: Yes, oh yes. Well no, when I married then I changed it.

INT: And you came first of all to Coventry

G.S: Yes

INT: And what date did you arrive in the UK?

G.S: On the 22nd of June 1939

INT: May I ask how old you were then?

G.S: Fourteen

INT: Fourteen. And.if there’s anything else I need. And you’ve been in Scotland since 1950? Is that right?

G.S: Yes, yes

Shapiro

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