war

Esperance David – During the War in the early 40’s

ED: Well there was a very bad persecution when I was there, when I was about ten, eleven years old, in the early 40’s, when we had a terrible uprising. That was awful. It started one afternoon and my cousin came, they usually came at any time, and he said, shouting, “Batten [down] your windows and your doors, there is terrible things brewing and I’d better go home.” And that night, we started hearing shots and it got more and more, and, in the night, it was more than shots, maybe like hand grenades or whatever it was, it was big explosions. And, you know, in Baghdad, we sleep on the roof, so we could hear all that and we could see flares and you could hear screams and screams. That was not far from us but it wasn’t exactly in our road, so they were really going into houses, killing and looting and shooting, and stones, knives, whatever it is they had. And you could hear shouting and screaming, and we were absolutely frozen to death, you know, just, what do we do, we were going to be next? And, after the screams, you hear a, this is horrendous, I don’t know what they suffered in the Nazi Germany, you hear the voice kind of fades away and that is someone obviously killed.

So there were a lot of them. I don’t know, as I say, I mean I was too young to, but it was terrible. One of my cousins was killed. They got some babies. I hadn’t seen that, but my dad went out the next morning and he said, “The gutters are full of blood”, you know, it was terrible. “Why did you go there?”, oh dad was one of these people, he just wanted to know what’s going on, but, “Shhh, stay there and be quiet”, and the stories that went, they see a baby, you know, and I don’t if it’s tradition here, they have little, kind of, bangles round their ankles, a little gold one. If they couldn’t take it off, they ripped the child and they took it off, it’s horrendous, I don’t want to hear that, that’s really awful. And a lot of that happened and young, you know, young girls, just married and they killed their husband and their relatives, right in front of them.

There was a time the Arabs were not like that. If you stood there and said, “Please, I’m at your mercy”, they understood that and they let it go, but there was no mercy left. They were all there to loot and haul things and jangle, and felt so wonderful at killing so many Jews and that was the uprising. That was an uprising.

I think it must have been in the early forties, I don’t really remember. Maybe, I think the war was on at that time. I don’t remember because I wasn’t really, I was just a child at that time, ‘41, when the war was on. They were very, I mean, the government was very pro-Nazi so, the looting, they came in riding on horses, supposed to be, kind of, looking after you and protecting you, but they went with the looters and they joined in, you know. So it was, it wasn’t just a mob, it was the government and who do you call? There was no-one to protect you. They used to say, you know, the looters were themselves, you know. They allowed it, they gave them a free hand to do what they liked and they did what they liked, what they wanted, in a very atrocious way. That was awful.

Esperance David – Before the War

Int: Today is the 18th May 2015, and we are here to interview Esperance David. Hello Esperance.

ED: Hello.

Int: Could you begin and tell us when you were born?

ED: The 7th of May, 1929. (laughter).

Int: Where were you born? And what was your name at birth?

ED: I was born in Baghdad, and my name was Esperance Ovadia.

Int: And what language did you speak?

ED: Arabic, Jewish Arabic.

Int: Is that different?

ED: Yeah, well not very different. It’s kind of, well, botched up Jewish Arabic. A pidgin Arabic if you like.

Int: Can you tell us a little bit about your family life in Baghdad? Did you have brothers and sisters?

ED: I have three brothers and one sister.

Int: What did your father do?

ED: My Dad was an auditing accountant. He worked in the financial office in the Ministry of Finance, in Baghdad. That’s in Iraq of course.

Int: When he was at work did he speak the Jewish Arabic, or could he?

ED: No, no, because they were not Jewish. The state was Muslim, Arab Muslim. It’s not a different language, but the Jewish Arabic has got a bit of a quirk in it, you know. They understand it, and we understand their language, but there are sometimes terms and expressions, and even the accents, sometimes are a bit different.

Int: Tell us about your family life. Was it fun to grow up in Baghdad?

ED: It was fun, it was good. We made our own fun. We lived in a community. They were mostly Jewish in our area, but there were some Arab Muslims there, but we lived together. There was no hiding, but we did not really mix with them. My Dad happened to be working with them, but the schools we went to were Jewish schools. The Alliance Israelite Universaire, that’s a universal[international] Jewish school. They have them in France and in other places as well. But ours was established in Baghdad by someone who was well off in the family, and very well known. Yes, it was a very nice, excellent school.

Int: Was that the common way that things were done? That Jewish children went into Jewish schools?

ED: They were private schools, and there were some who really were very, kind of not really affluent, not poor, but they were not in the bracket where they can afford private Jewish schools. There were some other schools. This wasn’t the only one. The one we went to, and my family, was one of the best. It was a public school in terms of the English schools. Public, not in state school, it was a private school.

Int: Did you have Jewish studies in the school? Did you learn Hebrew?

ED: We learnt the alphabet,we were kind of allowed, but very reluctantly to really learn at school. And at my school we learnt a little bit, nothing to speak. Just we learnt the alphabet, and we learnt to read one or two paragraphs from the Seder books, and things like that. We went to shul, the service was conducted in Hebrew, and we were allowed that. But very kind of reluctantly we were allowed to do these things, and we always had to kind of look behind our shoulders, [that] kind of thing.

We did have a lot of incidents. I suppose like here, when it is high festivals, we were known ‘these are the Jewish people’, going to the synagogue and we were looked down upon [by the Arabs]. But sometimes they were a bit nasty, but not physically, you know.

Int: You mean like name calling and such stuff?

ED: Name calling, yes, and they didn’t do name calling but they were kind of hostile a bit to the idea, but they didn’t do anything. But occasionally they did create problems in the synagogue,people coming [in]. You know, being aggressive, creating a fight if you like, and making life a bit uncomfortable.

Int: Was this organised by the government or was this just individuals?

ED: For sure it was very much the [Muslim] community. It was not organised, just the Muslim public you know.

Int: So that must have been something that marred your childhood a little. Did it? Were you very conscious of that as a young person?

ED: Yes, yes. But not, I mean, we didn’t live with it consciously, we lived our own life, but that was there. I mean we knew it was there. For example; if I walked to school, which is about a twenty minutes’ walk, and it’s very early in the morning, I would go along the river. There were little vendors, they were only teenagers. I must have been something like nine years old at that time, and I would just have to look away, pretending that I’m not seeing them. But they would pass snide remarks and would give very kind of rude, obscene gestures, and that’s terrifying for a nine year old. But I would hoof it and just get out of that place.

Int: So that would be 1938 time?

ED: Yeah.

Int: So while things were happening in Europe. Did you know what was happening in Europe?

ED: Oh yes. Oh yes. We did. I mean not as a child, I was not bothered by that. My Dad is a very good reader and he knew what it was, and we always listened to the radio. And then they [The Arabs] became very anti Jewish at that time, and very pro fascist Hitler.

Int: So you felt the difference because of what was happening in Europe?

ED: Oh yes, oh yes. Absolutely, absolutely. We were more cautious really. We didn’t, we lived very carefully and tried not to create anything. But otherwise we lived our life just as normal as we could. We didn’t allow it to kind of stop us doing things. We had clubs,The community was more maybe like here for us, a lot of family you know, aunties and uncles, and cousins, so we didn’t need anyone from outside if you like.

Int: I remember you told me your Father was limited in his work because of his background, because he was Jewish.

ED: No he wasn’t limited in his work, not at all. He was quite exploited really. He worked in an office, a quite responsible job. His boss was a Muslim Arab from the government, and he did all the work, and his salary was very kind of low compared, when he was doing the work, but he wasn’t paid. And a colleague of m his, used to say while smoking a cigarette, “Well you do all the work and we enjoy it” kind of thing. And he didn’t mind doing all the work because he was good at it. He just got on with it, and that’s it. But it was very difficult when the pay was very low. The same people in the same office I should imagine had much more pay really.

Int: So you come from a Sephardic background.

ED: Yes.

Int: So we have a traditional Friday night. So what do you have on a Friday night?

ED: We are Jews you know! Well back home we did. I live here it’s different for me.

Int: Yeah, so what sort of things…you’d have on a Friday night?

ED: Yes, you’d get the family around, and my Dad used to have the glass of wine. And he said the Kiddush, you know, eating chicken and all this kind of thing, and candles, My Mum used the candles. And you don’t buy the candles like you do here. We had kind of a little bowl with water and oil, the real old fashioned thing. And things that my Mum used to make, like a kind of a little stick, with cotton wool, and dip it in the oil and light it until the oil finished, and there is water underneath and that’s it, very old things, yeah.

Int: Traditions. Had your parents lived there many many years? Your grandparents and before that. Had they lived in Baghdad for long?

ED: Yes, I knew my grandparents. They were all from Baghdad. Yes, I go as far as my granddad. Beyond that I don’t really know. I just heard about them you know. Like my Dad’s father, he used to write. So for him in the shul, handwriting, he was very good.

Int: What about the size of the community? It must have been a very large community. Do you have any idea how big it was?

ED: I wouldn’t say we lived in ghettos, but you can tell in Newton Mearns [Glasgow] there’s a lot of Jews here. And where we were in Batawiin there were a lot of Jewish people there. But not exclusively. It’s not like a ghetto; there were a lot of nice homes for Arabs to live there as well. But they kept to themselves, and we kept to ourseves.

Int: And what types of youth club did you go to?

ED: Well at that time I was too busy studying. I was an eight / nine year old if I remember. And the clubs arrived much later. Social clubs, they would meet and they would blether, and they would gossip and discuss things. Mostly it was the men, but then the women started joining too.

Int: Were they Zionistic?

ED: No. Oh don’t mention that word in Baghdad. It’s enough to be Jewish. If they call you a Zionist, you know.

We had soldiers from the Haganah, [they were ]Polish soldiers, and we did have underground classes, and my Dad used to cringe and get upset because if they [the Muslims]knew, [ that would be difficult as the Polish soldiers] were Zionists. This what they did and they taught us the Hebrew and that wasn’t really in the open.

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 Budapest Post WWII

KH: I grew up in Budapest with my granny and my aunt. At the age of sixteen my granny, my aunt and I were allowed to leave the country and go to Israel where I lived until I came to Scotland when I was…I think thirty-five when I arrived in Scotland.

INT: So tell me a bit about growing up in Budapest then?

KH: I don’t think there is an awful lot to tell. My granny was a very religious lady so I always knew I was Jewish, never had any doubts about that. However, I didn’t know that I didn’t have parents; I didn’t realise that I was supposed to have a father… until when I was six or seven years old in school the teacher was asking the children about their parents professions and when it was my turn she asked me what did my father do so I said I didn’t have a father. So she, she was very considerate about it… and she asked me whether my father was ill, I said no, so she asked me if my parents were divorced, which was not a run of the mill thing in those days, and I said no, so she said where is your father and I said I never had a father, not knowing that every child is supposed to have a father. So she called in, she gave me a note to take home and apparently in that note she called my mother in…who I thought was my mother (who wasn’t) into the school and she…I don’t know what they discussed but obviously she told my…who turned out to be my aunt… to tell me my background. So my aunt told me that she was my aunt, not my mother, that my granny was my granny, that my parents were dead and that was the end of the story. It was not made a big deal out of. I took her clue I suppose; I didn’t make a big deal out of it either. I always called her mum; until she died I called her mum.

INT: Yeah.

KH: I didn’t know any men. Obviously I saw them in the street but at home I didn’t see any men, in our immediate family and friends there was one man with whom I never really had any contact. But I was quite happy as a child: I loved school, I always liked going to school, I was a curious child, wanted to learn things so I was just happy going to school and happy to sit at home and read books. Never had my nose out of a book.

INT: What languages did you do at school? Was there Russian as well as Hungarian?

KH: Yes. At the age of ten we started to do Russian then… my granny’s mother tongue was German, you remember the Austro-Hungarian Empire?

INT: Yeah

KH: All those areas that…

INT: So she hadn’t moved?

KH: Well she did move. Budapest was always the centre of Hungary but she didn’t always live there, so her mother tongue was German.

INT: Yeah.

KH: And my aunt’s semi-mother tongue was also German.

INT: Yeah.

KH: So any time they wanted to keep a secret from me, which was very often…you don’t tell the child anything.

INT: Yeah.

KH: They spoke German. So I got fed up with that so when I was about twelve I had two little jobs and I didn’t spend the money on sweets or the cinema; I spent the money on learning German in secret.

INT: Wow.

KH: It didn’t take me more than six months to be able to understand them. I suppose I was very motivated to learn German. So yeah, Russian when I was ten, then German when I was twelve, then I started to learn English when I was fourteen and then of course Hebrew when I went to Israel and my mother tongue is Hungarian. I no longer…I still speak German, not very well, but I still do, if I have to I can. Obviously I speak Hebrew well and Hungarian, which is my mother tongue, but not so well. I was sixteen when I left so if I have to ask what’s for breakfast my Hungarian is excellent; if I have to discuss the political situation my Hungarian is useless.

INT: Yes.

KH: But Russian I know I don’t speak anymore. I remember little bits and pieces but I can’t say I speak Russian. You don’t use it you lose it. So I left Hungary when I was sixteen and I never had to speak Russian after that. It was a long, long time ago.

What I was taught…I was taught to read Hebrew.
INT: By your granny?

KH: By my granny yes. Not the language, she did not know the language, but she prayed every single day, three times a day, all the holidays. All the prayers were in Hebrew, written in Hebrew, so I was taught to read Hebrew. Not the meaning of the word, not the meaning of a single word, but I was taught to read.

INT: So was there any visible Jewish life in Budapest in the war or after it? Could you go out and have a community?

KH: Not that I knew. There were Synagogues, quite a few, quite a few that I was aware of. My granny went on every Saturday morning. I think sometimes she went a Friday evening as well. She took me with her on all high holidays so I was aware of the Synagogues. She knew a lot of people in those Synagogues, they said hello to her, she said hello to them. I was not introduced and they were not introduced to me so I didn’t know the people.

But the education system in Hungary is different; there is elementary school you started at the age of six and you go there for eight years so you are fourteen when you finish and then you are streamed. But I was not allowed to be streamed, I was sent to the only Jewish High School in existence in all of Hungary so there obviously I became aware that there was a Jewish community.

The other children in my class were Jewish, the teachers were Jewish but the teachings were not. It was just a totally normal high school – very, very high level, the highest possible stream as it happens. The only difference was…is that we only went to school five days a week, not six like all the other kids, and on Saturday morning we went to the school’s own little Synagogue, and you had to go.

But the only great advantage I remember of that is that it was where we met the boys, because in the school itself we were totally segregated, there was a boys’ school and a girls’ school in the same building – totally segregated. The boys were on the first floor and the girls were on the second floor and never the twain shall meet. In the breaks…one break the boys were allowed out into the yard, the other break the girls were allowed out into the yard. So the only place where we met each other was the Synagogue, where we were also segregated. The boys were sitting on the left and the girls were sitting on the right, but we saw each other.

INT: Wow.

Dorrith M. Sim – Life During The War

Dorrith describes leaving school and her early working life. She explains what happened to other members of her family.

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INT: During the war, you would still be at school and after the war ended what happened?

D.S: Well, what happened was I actually left school when I was fifteen for which I was very sorry. I could never pass an English exam. And at that time, you know if you were doing your Highers you had to pass English or else you could just forget it. So I didn’t sit my Highers. I did two years of O levels and the second time they gave me my English but I don’t think I had passed it. And then my foster sister was born – the youngest, Elizabeth, and I stayed at home for a wee while, helping Mummy Gallimore and then I went to work for the Bakery Engineers; they produced mixing machines etc.

My Oma and Opa, my Gran and Grandpa, they had got out and so had my Uncle Ernst and my Auntie Alice had come out from Frankfurt to Edinburgh. She lived in New York and my uncle lived in Canada and he had managed to get my Oma and Opa out.

After the war I think they had wanted me to come over, or at least I think my aunt did, and see all the family again. Uncle Ernst wrote to Auntie Alice and said, “For God’s sake don’t let Dorrith come over just now. Everyone is mental over here”; that was, when they had heard what happened in the camps and all. My Opa was trying to find out what happened to my mother and father.

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