Gathering The Voices Scotland

Testimonies of Holocaust survivors who settled in Scotland

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Refugees Testimonies on show

An exhibition of testimonies from men and women who fled to Scotland from Nazi-occupied Europe has gone on display at the University of Dundee.

The Gathering The Voices exhibition features more than 40 moving stories of refugees from Second World War Europe, and was on display at the university’s Chaplaincy Centre

Rev Michael Allardice (pictured), honorary university chaplain, said: “We warmly welcome everyone interested to go and experience the first-hand accounts of people who fled their homes and re-established their lives in Scotland.”

Story from the newspaper:Click Here

Copy of newspaper is below.

 

Bob Mackenzie – Reflection on Life

Bob talks about the reasons he sees himself as Scottish and reflects on his good fortune in life.

INT: You sound so much like just an average Scots person, you really do. Do you think of yourself at all as German anymore?

BM: No

INT: Not at all?

BM: Not a bit.

INT: When did the changeover really happen?

BM: I think when I was up in Forres because I was accepted as part of the community there. Mr Mackenzie treated me as a son and…Hello my dear?

Mrs M: Can you stop for a cup of tea?

BM: Aye

INT: Five minutes?

Mrs M: Five minutes.

BM: They are going to ask me some questions. I thought I was stopped. No, No, No, ask your questions.

INT: Just a couple of questions.

Mrs M: Right

INT: You can come in if you want to sit down, no?

MRS M: Right, I’ll just get the tea ready.

MRS M: I’ll get the tea ready. I’ll be downstairs.

INT: That’s great. Thank you.

BM: No it was…I mean as far as I was concerned Mr Mackenzie treated me as a son, my sister as a daughter. And I, I don’t know, I was involved in the community there, you know. I went to school, I played with the kids, they came up and played with us, we would go down to the grand park and play. We played football, we played cricket and rounders and all the rest of it. And once I, pardon me, once I got a wee bit older I joined the Air Training Core so I met the local lads, we were all together there. And to me, I was just…I was one of the community.

INT: Yes, yes.

BM: You know. And that’s…

INT: Yes, you obviously still really wanted to keep the connection with your mother and father going.

BM: Oh yes.

INT: So it’s not as if you were forgetting.

BM: No

INT: All about your origins.

BM: No.

INT: But you still had moved over to being British.

BM: Yes.

INT: Definitely British.

BM: I took on the British citizenship and, as I say, my way of thanking Mr Mackenzie for taking us in was to take his name because he had no sons of his own.

INT: Yeah.

INT: Yes, yes.

BM: So I took his name and looking back on it now there is a possibility I could have upset my father, upset him a bit, by giving up his name.

INT: He would just be glad that you were alive, I should imagine.

BM: I think they understood because they… I mean they came through to visit us here, you know, and I just…I don’t know… I left Forres to come down to Glasgow, to work in the shipyards down there so I was one of the crowd, you know.

INT: Yes.

BM: One of the crowd. And in the RAF, you know, you’re all bunched together, you all worked together as a team. It’s…I’m one of the community.

INT: Supposing your parents had been based in West Germany? Do you think you’d have gone back if that had been the case?

BM: That is something I don’t know; I’ve never given it a thought. It was just the fact that there were the Russians and I’m afraid my idea of the Russian strictness and control was just not my idea of life. I don’t think I could have put up with that, you know.

INT: We’ve asked other people what they would say were the high points of life here in Scotland for you and any low points, what would you say that would be?

BM: Well the high point I think is meeting the Mrs and getting married!

INT: That is a high point.

INT: That is indeed a high point.

BM: Low points….I can’t think of any low points. We’ve been fortunate. We’ve had a good life. I’ve been…I’ve had a decent job all my working days, Betty had a decent job. We’ve had a comfortable life, brought up two boys who are doing well for themselves and…

INT: Six grandchildren.

BM: Six grandchildren yes.

INT: Do the grandchildren…are they fascinated by this extra dimension in your life? Having a German connection?

BM: Some are and some couldn’t care less. Robert, the youngest boy, and his wife and three of the kids were through on Christmas and I got Ruth to put on (she’s a wizard with the computer) and I said “Ruth,” I said…Well Robert, actually, he’s an IT specialist. “Robert” I said “Can you put the powerpoint on my computer?” he said “No” and said “Ruth or Ben will do it for you.”

Ruth put it on for me and it’s just as well I asked her because she struggled and I wouldn’t have had a clue, you know. But she put it on and it worked and that was fine and I played her the PowerPoint pictures, you know. She was the same as you – “Oh, what’s that? And the Shul too?” Fascinated her, you know. She’s quite interested, you know, and the one down in Campbeltown, the eldest grandson down in Campbeltown, he’s quite interested. But the rest of them…it’s just run of the mill, you know.

INT: Were you glad to get to meet the Kinder? I mean you were obviously very quick to reply to Dorrith. Did you enjoy meeting others who had come over?

BM: Oh aye, I was in there the first chance I got, you know, because as I say I was…I was working in Stornoway at the time and I used to fly down at the weekend and fly back up on the Monday. And when she sent me the picture…where did I put that?

INT: Pictures.

BM: Oh it’s here, it’s here; lying at my feet and I can’t see it. Do you want to switch this off and save your tape here?

INT: No it’s alright because…it’s alright now I think.

BM: The picture at the bottom of the page, that’s the one that was taken at Waverley Station.

INT: Oh, so is that you there?

BM: I need my glasses.

INT: Is that you there?

BM: No that’s me there.

INT: There.

BM: I’m holding Edith’s hand.

INT: Ah right.

BM: So that’s Edith Forrester and that’s my sister there.

INT: Right, right. So that’s…Is it Isolda?

BM: Isolda.

INT: Isolda. So that, that is him.[Bob] You had a bit more hair then. Over than that, pretty identical.

BM: Don’t rub it in please!

INT: And that’s the Forrester girl.

BM: That’s Edith Forrester.

INT: That’s so amazing.

INT: And all of these people then are arriving at Waverly Station?

BM: To go to Selkirk.

INT: And what was in Selkirk?

BM: It was a…The Priory in Selkirk was a holding station.

INT: For Kinder or for just any…

BM: No just for Kinder.

INT: Just for Kinder.

INT: See most of the people we’ve come across, they arrived in Liverpool Street in London and came to Scotland various ways after that so this is not, not the common experience.

INT: Did you not go to Liverpool Street as well?

BM: I haven’t a clue.

INT: You don’t know that.

BM: They only thing is I know, I know I arrived at Harwich, right.

INT: Right.

BM: Because…

INT: I think from Harwich you may well have been taken to Liverpool Street.

INT: So there must have been a Scottish group who had already selected some children to be there.

BM: There is the Kinderausweis, that’s what it looks like. The wee bit ‘Staatenlos’ at the bottom. There is a bigger view of the picture at Waverley Station.

INT: Oh that’s a very good picture.

INT: Did you ever find out if…

BM: Are you coming through dear? Hold on a minute, We need to shift the…. (Mrs M arrives with the tea)

Bob Mackenzie – Settling In

Bob describes his new family, the Mackenzies, and their efforts to get his parents out of Germany.

BM: Mr Mackenzie’s house consisted of the main house and a small attached cottage. The Mackenzie family were made up of Granny Mackenzie, Mr Mackenzie (a widower) and three daughters; Agnes, Janet and Jessie. The family lived in the big house and my sister and I were accommodated in the cottage with either Janet or Jessie living in it to look after us. We settled in very quickly and were treated as part of the family. Agnes was a nurse in the hospital in Elgin and Janet and Jessie looked after the house. Though my sister and I did not speak English we managed, with the help of a dictionary, to understand the basics. On the other hand if we were told to do something which we did not want to do we were very adept at saying, “Me no speak English”.

As we settled in and began to learn more and more of the language we discovered this ploy did not work so well. We wrote letters to our parents and got letters back. My mother was using a dictionary to write to the Mackenzie family and we kept in touch until the war broke out. It was only years later, when we were older, that we discovered that correspondence had been passing between Mr Mackenzie, The Refugee Movement and The Home Office to try and get our parents out of Germany to join us. Unfortunately the formalities had not been completed by the time war broke out in September 1939. Many years later, when the correspondence between Mr Mackenzie, The Refugee Movement and The Home Office was passed to me for safekeeping, I discovered some nameless civil servant in The Home Office had kept the documentation on his desk for seven weeks before applying.

I often wonder if that seven weeks could have made the difference between my parents joining us over here and remaining in Germany all through the war.

Dorrith M. Sim – Integration

Dorrit describes starting work and meeting her future husband. She goes on to tell about us about living in Dundee and having her family. She shares how other members of her family settled in America and Canada. Finally we learn about how she came to write her book “In My Pocket” and about her involvement with the setting up of the Scottish Annual Reunion of Kinder.

Read the Transcript

D.S: So when I was seventeen, that would be 1949, I went out to New York and then to Canada and met them all again. My uncle was quite concerned about my career. The Gallimores had paid for my education; it was really good of them. The school wasn’t the kind of school that you left when you were fifteen but I did. My uncle paid for me to go to Skerry’s which was a secretarial college. They had advertisements for jobs and there was an advertisement came in for a job in a lawyers’ office. Mylne & Campbell it was called. It was in Castle Street and I went there. My boss was the Secretary of the Scottish Lawn Tennis Association so that’s what I was involved in, not legal work. That’s where I met Andrew because when I rang the bell it was Andrew who came to the door.

INT: And he was training to be a lawyer at the time?

D.S: That’s right. That was my first job and I was there until I went to Brazil.

INT: And by that time were you engaged?

D.S: I was engaged just about three or four weeks before I went to Brazil. I was a very naive girl. I really was. I don’t think I could have stayed myself and people didn’t live together at that time.

INT: Oh no

INT: Absolutely not, that would be terrible.

INT: Your reputation would have been tarnished.

D.S: Absolutely. So, I got engaged and then about a month later I was on the road to Brazil. They [the Gallimores]Gallimores emigrated to Brazil when I was nineteen and I went with them and stayed there for a year and a half until Andrew graduated and then I came home and got married.

We went to Dundee where I had the twins in Maryfield Hospital. We had managed to get a couple of rooms. I used to spend all my lunchtimes going around the house agents because we couldn’t afford to buy a house. Andrew was earning £7.50 a week, you know. The house was up two flights of stairs and next door was a rag and bone merchants in the Seagate. It was like something out of the Sunday Post. Andrew had to climb up the pole and hang the rope out and hang my washing out the window.

And then from the Seagate, we went to Kirkton and I was expecting again. And Susan was born seventeen months after my twins.

INT: You had your work cut out

INT: That’s quite a lot!

D.S: She was born in the house. I had to get my family allowance at the post office. At that time people just left their prams outside; they never took the prams into shops. A woman came rushing into the post office and said, “Come out at once! – your twins are throwing your baby out the pram!” It was a big Marmet pram; at one time there were four children in the pram.

INT: So you said you’ve got a son as well?

D.S: He was born ten years after Ruth was born. Ruthie was born I think it was twenty-two months after Suse. I think she must have been one of the last children to be born at home in Prestwick you know, because the doctors always had women going to the hospital. I think nowadays it’s changed. Ruthie was born in ’58 and David was born in ’68 and they were both born in April.

[We returned to discussing what happened to Dorrith, just after the war, when she visited New York and Toronto]

INT: But you never considered before that, going to live with your remaining relatives in Canada?

D.S: Do you know something, I was homesick when I was there..

INT: For Scotland?

D.S: I was homesick for Scotland. My aunt was lucky because when she got to New York the people she had worked for in the leather industry were also living there. They had got out and they were living in New York. Her boss’s sister, Mina Balin used to take me out with her son and girlfriend, Claude and Inge. Claude and Inge have just had their sixtieth wedding anniversary. When, Auntie Alice was working, she went to the boss’s house and introduced me there and there were two things that really, really impressed me. One was chocolate ice cream and the other one was the toilet paper.

INT: Was it soft?

D.S: Oh it was quite different from ours.

INT: Yes ours is rather hard.

D.S: Yes.

INT: Bronco, we had Bronco here I remember.

D.S: Well all those years ago, you were too young to know, but all these years ago it was Izal toilet roll.

And Izal toilet roll had poems on every second or third leaf and that was one of the reasons I learnt English was off these poems.

They were about Izal but it was like nursery rhymes by Izal incorporated. So anyway, I was lucky to even get staying in New York because I was on the Queen Elizabeth (that was the boat) and when I got to New York they wouldn’t let me off because I was too young – you had to be eighteen before you were allowed to go yourself. So I had to stay in the boat overnight, everybody else had left and then the next day my aunt had managed to get a bond for me, to allow me to stay. I thought I was on my way Ellis Island but she’d got this bond for me to stay but I had to be back in two months. I went over to Canada and there was my Oma and Opa whom I hadn’t seen all these years. Do you know, it was ridiculous, I was so homesick. I was just homesick for Scotland and I never slept at night and I didn’t know what to do.

INT: And were they thinking they were bringing you to keep you there?

D.S: No, no

INT: No? But you must have suspected they thought that?

D.S: No, they talked about that in 1939 and then there were these boats that were sunk and that was the end of it. I never did get over. But I was homesick and they didn’t know what to do and my Uncle Ernst took me to a Scottish night at the theatre and Robert Wilson was singing and I was fine after that. [View video of Robert Wilson on Youtube]

INT: So tell us a wee bit about the book that you’ve written.

D.S: It’s just my journey.

INT: But it’s not just a journey.

INT: It’s a lovely children’s book, a lovely book.

D.S: I’ll let you see it.

INT: And did you write that for your children or your grandchildren?

D.S: No I didn’t. I was a member of Ayr Writers’ Club and they were looking for people who would write stories for children who weren’t good at learning; there was a name for that.

INT: Learning difficulties?

D.S: With learning difficulties. So I wrote this story and I just would do little sentences. I wasn’t getting anywhere with it. I was treasurer of the Club and they asked Alison Prince who lives in Arran to come and talk to the club.

I had her staying with me and I told her about my story. She said, “Could I send that to my agent?” So it was Alison Prince that started it all. Before that I had been at a conference and I had got commended or highly commended by Anne Fine.

INT: Oh, she’s a great writer

D.S: We got on very well with her. Between her and then Alison Prince coming over, they got it all started. Alison sent the story to the agent in London and it went from there. It took a long time.

INT: It’s beautifully illustrated.

D.S: That’s Gerald Fitzgerald. He’s super.

INT: Did he just read the story and choose how to illustrate it?

D.S: No it was the publishers who got him. He lived in Arran too funnily enough. I had to cut the story right down and it came out well as a picture book.

INT: It’s very good. It’s a very moving story about a child. It’s called “In My Pocket” isn’t it?’

D.S: Yes that’s what it is.

D.S: It’s been quite a success you know; it’s been good. There was the English version and then I had to write the American version. Their ending was different from our ending.

INT: Bizarre.

INT: It’s been translated into a number of languages hasn’t it?

D.S: It’s also published in German. I try to keep it light because when speaking to children I think that’s the bits they’re going to remember.

[We then we talked about Dorrith’s relationship with the Jewish Community].

INT: Talking of the Synagogue…

D.S: I go once a year or so.

INT: Do you?

D.S: I do. I go to the, to Mendel’s [Jacobs]

INT: Do you?

INT: For the Shul in the Park?

INT: The Shul in the park?

D.S: The Shul in the Park

INT: So Judaism still is part of your life?

D.S: I was part of the Jewish Community! I’m proud of my background

INT: But how did you end up being Church of England and your husband Church of Scotland?

INT: You’re very ecumenical certainly.

D.S: I know, absolutely. When I came over the granny got a hold of me, that was Granny Gallimore and within a week, I was going to the Sunday school.

INT: Ah right. But would that not have been Scottish?

D.S: No she was an Episcopalian.

INT: I see.

D.S: It wasn’t the Church of England I went to I think it was just the local Sunday school. But I never really got mixing with Jewish people and actually the Jewish community, when they knew I was going to get baptised wrote to my grandfather – I didn’t even know the Jewish community knew about me. But they wrote to my grandfather and said, “Do you know that Dorrith is going to be baptised.” And he wrote back and said, ‘Well, you know, you never were there for Dorrith when she needed you.’ And that was that.

INT: Which is a fair comment.

D.S: It was, it was really. But I call myself a Jewish-Christian

INT: Fair enough

D.S: Yes

INT: I think that’s fair enough

D.S: Or something like that

INT: And from the time that you were with the Gallimores, did you have anything to do with the Jewish community?

D.S: Do you know, it’s funny. I remember once going to some party. There must have been a Jewish community in Edinburgh. I took a friend and she’s never forgotten it and neither have I. I don’t know, would it be Sukkot or something? Maybe that’s what it was. I think Rosa was at that party too.

INT: Really? Rosa Sacharin?

D.S: Yeah. I think so. She was in Edinburgh at that time. But, but now and again Mummy Gallimore would take me down to meet Doctor Turk and I’ve got pictures of Doctor Turk’s garden.

INT: And when did you meet other refugees? Not till you were quite grown up then?

D.S: Well, yes. I’ll tell you, the only one I knew was Rita McNeil; her husband worked in Ear Nose and Throat in Ayr. I don’t know how they heard about me. It’s funny because Rita McNeil was at school with Billy McCulloch who was Mummy Gallimore’s nephew. I think he must have told us about her.

We had to go to a big office in Edinburgh and see about something to do with compensation, something like that. And Rita McNeil was there along with her foster mum. But that’s the only one I knew and I didn’t know I was part of Kindertransport; I’d never heard the name.

INT: Dorrith when I first said that we were coming out, that we wanted to interview you, I thought you said something quite interesting. You said, “Why? Because I haven’t done anything” and I said, “Yes you have” and then you sort of said casually, “Well I did start it off.”

INT: Would you like to explain?

D.S: It was Joe Metzstein and myself. We actually, had our first meeting in London. I don’t know how but we managed to get quite a lot of people.

INT: Is this SAROK – which stands for what?

D.S: The Scottish Annual Reunion of Kinder. I think some people had got their names in the index of the brochure from the London meeting. I think we got some people from there. Also I talked on the wireless and I had an article in the Sunday Post. That’s how Gisela who lives in Kilmarnock had found out about it. She had got the Sunday Post and she had read the article. It was in other the papers as well.

INT: And so they all came to you.

D.S: And Joe. Joe had got Joe, Leo and Danny and Isi Metzstein – the two sisters, they live in America. That’s a wonderful story, you know the whole lot, the five of them all got over in the Kindertransport. All at different times.

INT: And their mother, and his mother as well.

D.S: And their mother got over too but that wouldn’t be a Kindertransport but she got over as well. But people wrote to me and when we had our meetings, you know, we brought all sorts of interesting books and then we had an exhibition with the pictures. And the library in Ayr helped me and we had about twelve display boards.

D.S: What happened was that I had a holiday home in Ballantrae and one day Margaret Sanderson who lived just two or three doors down came to see me and she said,

“Dorrith, there’s somebody been on Woman’s Hour and she’s looking for people like yourself and this is the phone number. I didn’t know anything about Kindertransport. Will you phone her?” So I phoned and within three weeks I was helping to publicise the reunion in London which a thousand people were at. It’s fantastic. And then Joe Metzstein and I got all these people from Scotland together and that’s where it all started. But I hadn’t known anybody before then. Leo Metzstein – he was the very first Kindertransport boy I’d ever met; he came up to the house.

Dorrith M. Sim – Immigration

Dorrith describes coming to Scotland in 1939, settling in with a family in Edinburgh and being an evacuee in Innerleithen near Peebles.

Read the Transcript.

INT: And you came to Scotland when?

D.S: I arrived in England on the 26th of July 1939. My parents had managed to get guardians for me and they met me at Liverpool Street Station. And there, you know, my guardian’s brother came too, because he spoke German and we went in the car. I think we must have stopped in Birmingham and then, we would get to Scotland about the 27th I should think.

INT: So they were Scots people?

D.S: They were Scottish yes.

D.S: Not Jewish, but they were Scottish.

INT: And, how did your parents find them?

D.S: Well, this is another thing that my foster sister told me, Rosalind, told me. I call her Auntie Rosi because it’s easier. She said that they had been invited to a cocktail party run by a Doctor Turk and she spoke to them about taking a child from Germany. I didn’t know about that, but, that’s what Rosalind told me.

INT: So it’s just sheer chance?

D.S: It was chance. But my grandfather, Opa, was a Doctor and maybe he knew of Doctor Turk. Trudy Black went there every Friday night to Doctor Turk’s but I didn’t know anybody else knew her. But seemingly, Doctor Turk had, some of the refugees on a Friday night

INT: And was she a Jewish lady then?

D.S: Oh yes.

INT: Doctor Turk?

D.S: Yes

INT: I see and where did you stay?

D.S: Well, to begin with I stayed in Stevenson Terrace Edinburgh. The district was Balgreen. I stayed there to begin with. But it was a small flat, an upstairs flat and not much room. Then just after the war had begun, my Aunt Alice suddenly turned up on their doorstep together with all her cases and they took her in.

INT: And she’d also come from Germany had she?

D.S: Yes she’d come from Frankfurt and do you know they kept her until she went to America about January or February 1940. They kept her all that time which was wonderful of them.

INT: They seem to be very nice people. Were they religious?

D.S: No.

INT: No?

D.S: Not at all

INT: They just did it out of the goodness of their heart?

D.S: Yes, yes

D.S: I stayed with them until I was getting married. I stayed with them until I was almost twenty-one.

INT: So, had you always been very conscious then, even though you didn’t mix with refugees, of where you came from?

D.S Oh yes, and I mean it wasn’t that I didn’t want to mix with them I just never met any. Well Daddy Gallimore had a friend called Harry Ahrem and he had come from Poland. He had TB; I think he must have been Jewish. And I think he’d been badly beaten up as well. He used to come and visit sometimes. But if people spoke with a funny accent I would follow them down the street.

INT: Really?

D.S: Yes. I would.

INT: Do you still remember your German, Dorrith?

D.S: No. I go to German classes and I’m terrible at it. The only thing I’m really good at is my pronunciation – it’s perfect!

INT: It must lie deeply, deep in your head then, your pronunciation.

D.S: Yes my pronunciation. It’s better than my Scottish pronunciation.

INT: That’s interesting

Dorrith M. Sim – Life Before The War

Dorrit describes the events surrounding Kristallnacht and the Kindertransport.

Read the Transcript.

INT: Good afternoon Dorrith. It’s the 26th of September 2010 and I’m here to talk to Dorrith Sim. Dorrith, could you begin by telling us when and where you were born and what was your name at birth?

D.S: I was born in Kassel in Germany in 1931, December ’31 and my name was Oppenheim. Dorrith Marianne Oppenheim – it’s a mouthful.

INT: Dorrith I haven’t asked you about your family life before you came to the UK.

D.S: It was very happy.

INT: You found out why your parents never made it – do you want to tell us a wee bit about that?

D.S: That’s all I know. Mummy Gallimore (Dorrith’s foster mother, Sophie Gallimore) had told (her own daughter) Rosalind that the reason that they never got over here, was because the Nazis said that my father had bronchitis and they wouldn’t let him travel over. And my mother wouldn’t have gone on her own, you know.

INT: And you were an only child?

D.S: I was an only child but I had a happy childhood there. I mean when I hear about other people, you know, and when it was Kristallnacht.

INT: What job had your father had before?

D.S: He was in the same firm for twenty-six years and it was in a foundry. He was a ‘Kaufmann’ and that’s sort of the German for businessman.

I don’t know what he would do. I don’t think he was working with his hands, I think he was in the office.

At Kristallnacht, I had gone to school on my own that day and it was awful. They were vandalising the school and this man had said to me “You’d better go home because it’ll be a long time until you’re back at school again.” And I ran to my grandparents’ house which was quite a distance. My grandmother, she must have had a phone I think, phoned and my father and mother came. My father said, “I think we’re in for a lot of trouble.” I think that would be the day before Kristallnacht. And then he said, “We’ve got to go to the Waisenhaus.” That was the Jewish orphanage.

The kids there had had a bad time but I hadn’t, I was lucky.

INT: And why were you sent to the Jewish orphanage?

D.S: I wasn’t sent, I just visited with my father. It was my father who said, “We’ll need to go to the Jewish orphanage” and he took the children home with him. He took about four children home with him when he found out what had happened at the Jewish school. Then Nazis came. They wrecked our house and the children’s orphanage where many of the children had parents who were in camps by that time. They threw Molotov cocktails through the windows, and the children there had to put the fires out themselves. They didn’t take my mother away but they took my father away but he got back.

INT: It was brave of your parents to send you off as well. As an only child it must have taken a lot of courage.

D.S: I know. There’s a story about this man and he didn’t want his daughter to go in the Kindertransport. He wanted to keep her and he actually pulled that child out of the train window. I think the doors were shut. And that kid went through all these concentration camps – it was terrible.

D.S: Korolla Regent and her sister went away on the Kindertransport and their father jumped onto the footplate on the back of the train and hung on until he saw his children safely into Holland. And then he went back to Germany.