Credit’. Extract from BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on 26.08.1988.
For people escaping the horrors of Nazism in Europe, those who fled their homes and settled here, will be reunited to pay tribute to the city which provided such a warm welcome. The site of the former centre is now occupied by the city’s Dental Hospital, and a plaque is to be erected inside the hospital to record the thanks of the Germans, Austrians and the Czechs who were sheltered by the people of Glasgow, whose actions so often illustrated the internationalism of the poor. As Eleanor Ironside discovered, memories of those days are still vivid.
GERDA
I arrived in Britain in beginning of January 1939. Before the war, I came over here with just one large suitcase and a little suitcase and a bag of bedding, and I came to London- I stayed 4 weeks in London, but we had to go to the Committee, the Jewish Committee who looked after us and decided where we were all going to end up.
INTERVIEWER
That’s a short account of the arrival in this country of Gerda Fulton, a Jewess from the north of Germany. She had been forced to leave her Fatherland, arriving at Britain’s shores along with tens of thousands of other European refugees fleeing from the forces of fascism. Gerda’s final destination was to be Scotland. The influx of refugees into Glasgow in the late 1930s led to the setting up of the Centre about to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its foundation. Throughout the six years of the war; it was a hub of activity on an international level. Dr. Reiner Kerma has researched the history of these events in Scotland and has traced many of the people who used the House in Sauchiehall Street in those days.
DR RAINER KÖLMEL
Originally, it was called The Glasgow Refugee Centre and then they renamed it into “The Scottish Refugee Centre”, because it was really a focus for all refugees and the majority of refugees in Scotland.
INTERVIEWER
What numbers are we talking about, what nationalities?
DR RAINER KÖLMEL
The exact numbers I can’t give you, but it was between 1,500 and 2, 000 who came. They came from Czechoslovakia, from Austria and from Germany.
INTERVIEWER
These people had no idea they were going to be sent to Scotland. They didn’t choose Scotland as a place to go. What did they think of Scotland when they arrived?
DR RAINER KÖLMEL
You are right they did not have an idea where they were going. I think they were received very friendly and the Scots were very welcoming to them, but of course it was a very foreign country. Not only because it was a different language but because of many reasons.
GERDA
The centre was a great place for people who didn’t know the language, and who needed friends and who needed to take make contact with people who they thought they would be familiar with, and it was very good for cultural activities. There were all types of people there from all walks of life, especially amongst the older generation. There were lawyers, there were doctors, there were journalists, artists, painters. There wasn’t only Jewish refugees from Nazi oppression- there were political refugees, there was one Member of Parliament, there were socialists, communists, all sorts of people.
INTERVIEWER
I imagine there must have been some terrible problems for your day-to-day living, problems from people who didn’t know the language and who were in a strange country.
GERDA
I won’t go into all that, but I can tell you one story that happened to a friend of mine who came from Germany but had a lot of Czech friends, very good friends, and they were involved in the war effort and all these things. This girl had very strong feelings at that time, she felt very captured by some things, and she stood in the queue.
I remember it was Cooper’s, in Sauchiehall Street. I was told this story, and there was a long queue. You buy your goods, and you get a check then you used to go to the desk, hand in the check and pay. The girl behind the counter was getting a bit flustered because it was a very long queue, and she dropped one of these checks and then was looking for it, and she turned around and she said, excuse the language, ‘where is that bloody check’, and this girl just kept saying ‘the bloody check’, and this girl blew her top and said, what have you got against the Czechs, they are fighting in this war the same as everybody else. There are good people as you know and she went on and on, and the poor girl behind the desk did not know what had hit her.
INTERVIEWER
A sense of humour was obviously essential for survival and provided a link between the two communities. One Scot, who had a close personal connection with the Scottish refugee centre, is a Labour Party Member of the European Parliament, Janey Buchan. Her father, a train driver and leading member of the TGWU (Transport and General Workers’ Union) had been instrumental in the setting up and financing of the House. As a young teenager, Janie herself spent a great deal of time there.
JANEY BUCHAN
I just seemed to be always drinking coffee and eating and talking, talking, talking. I think a lot of the International Trade Union songs I know I learnt there. There was where you went. That was where the young left-wing people went.
INTERVIEWER
Do you feel in a way the Centre was the beginning of an international consciousness in Glasgow?
JANEY BUCHAN
Glasgow has had a fantastic history of the poor helping the poor. It was one of the things that maybe prevented you ever been any kind of racialist because you were always aware that this was people who were being hounded, and also aware that it was your job to help raise money to help look after them and work with them. I’m glad that I was made an internationalist by these people, but I wouldn’t want anybody else’s internationalism to be made by such terrible circumstances.
INTERVIEWER
Today, the Centre is no longer in existence. After the war years, the foreign nationals had their own homes, jobs and family life, and the gap which had been bridged by the Centre had now been filled. Some people of course, left Scotland again, either going on to Israel or back to their homelands or to opportunities elsewhere in the world. As for Gerda, she decided to throw in her lot with the Scottish people.
GERDA
When the war was over, I wouldn’t go back. My parents were transported and died in a concentration camp. I never heard from them again.
INTERVIEWER
Is that the reason why you severed all your bonds with Germany?
GERDA
The reason why I severed all my bonds with Germany was the persecution and the fact that I had been thrown out. I mean, I had to leave when I left my home and went to the authorities to get my papers, I was told that if I came back, “you know what’s going to happen to you. So, you had better not come back”. But Scotland has been very good to me, and I must say always, every time I go out into the countryside, I tell my friends I’m grateful that I made the decision. I mean, the decision was partly made by me and partly not, but I’m always grateful that I landed up in Scotland.
