[I compiled three oral histories, each one like so many books I’ve attempted, in the hope of finding out something of myself. One, Days in the Life (1988), was on the London counter-culture; one, It (1992, slang’s multi-tasking monsyllable covering both sets of genitals and what they do à deux) offered a look at ‘sex since the Sixties’; and one, Them (‘Them Pakis, them Jewboys, them darkies…’ (1990) was on first-generation immigrants to the UK. The first was much excoriated on its appearance in the heyday of Thatcherism, but seems to have become something of a standard. The last, while fun, was invariably offered to reviewers who were affronted by my deliberate refusal to judge or moralize. For me, the middle one was perhaps the most interesting. Looking back it shows a country that is similar, but likewise quite other. Of course the cast would be different now, it held relatively few middle Europeans while not many Jews turn up any longer, and those who make their way in small boats to receive the dubious mercies of the far right-wingers who now flourish on this side of the Channel, had yet to don life-jackets. And racism, there but so much quieter, could only dream of its 21st century resurgence as yet another ‘Brexit benefit’..
Of my interviewees I have chosen Gretel Salinger. A hyper-assimilated and prosperous young German-Jewish woman upon whose family there descended the horrors of the Third Reich. She was fortunate, no doubt partially thanks to that prosperity, to escape (though many of her family did not). It is, dare I suggest, a glimpse of what sets a refugee on their journey, and, that journey accomplished, another look at how one reacts when an habituee of Buckingham palace asks, ‘Where have you come from?’
When the Nazis started to take over, by about 1934, my husband tried to find a buyer for the factory. In the first year, 33, we didn’t want to think about it, we didn’t want to know about it, but in 1934 we did know it. It had to be. As he was absolutely decided that he wouldn’t sell the factory to any Nazi, we had very great trouble finding another buyer. The Nazis came nearer and nearer and pressed him and pressed him and pressed him and when he wouldn’t sell finally that day they put him into a concentration camp, inside Germany, in the prison on Alexanderplatz in Berlin. But luckily we found somebody. We had already started negotiating with a very high aristocrat, Count Henkel-Donnersmarck. He was not a Nazi. He bought the factory. He was half-Polish and he paid us some money in zlotys which he sent to England, and the rest in German marks. The same night he paid us, the Nazis came and confiscated it all. Then they freed my husband from the camp. He was there for four weeks. Fortunately we still had very good connections because of his work. We didn’t have a penny. We came to England with ten marks. But once we had paid the so-called duties which we had to pay for the pleasure of leaving Germany, we could escape. We left on 14 August 1938. That was very late.
We had to get out passports. This gave us very great trouble. We had to pay terrific amounts of money. Although the factories had been confiscated we still had enough money to pay to get out. This duty that you had to pay to get out of Germany. They called it reichsfluchtsdole (tax on leaving the Reich). Then we had to ask to be allowed to take things out of Germany. But we were not allowed to pack unless there was a Nazi supervising our luggage as we packed it.
It was known that if the man came at seven o’clock in the morning to supervise your packing and you offered him breakfast and he takes it, then you are safe, then he’s not a bad Nazi. But if he doesn’t accept even a glass of water, then be careful. We talked to other people who had experience and this is what they told us. So there we were. He arrived at 7 o’clock and my husband said, ‘Nice to meet you, would you like some breakfast?’ ‘I’d love some breakfast.’ I sighed with relief. We knew that he wasn’t a bad Nazi. Then at about 10 o’clock he said to us, ‘Where do you go?’ So my husband told him that we were going to Holland where I had some family and he had to have a kidney operation. He said, ‘That’s very strange. I have got a brother-in-law in Holland because my sister married a Jew and he emigrated to Holland. Would you be kind enough to take some shirts for him?’ You don’t know what that meant to us! We knew then that he meant pack anything you want. He said, ‘I have to go out for an hour and then I come and then we pack.’ We had already learnt from other people’s experience that it was still a risk, it could have been just a farce, he might just have been pretending, but we took the risk. We had 3000 marks in cash and we put them in our suitcases, not knowing what’s going to happen. If we are caught we would be sent to a concentration camp. He came back and said, ‘Which of the cases do you want packed especially well?’ We knew what he meant, and we said, cleverly, ‘Oh they are all the same.’ And he packed them, and tied cords around them and whatever we didn’t take, he took home with him. Next morning he rang to say, ‘I only want you to know that your luggage has arrived safely in Holland.’ We were very lucky.
There was one loophole when one left Germany. You were allowed at that time to book trips through Thomas Cook to wherever you wanted to go. At the time when we still had money, and we still had plenty of money, we bought air tickets, dozens of tickets, everywhere. We thought if they’re lost, they’re lost, but if they’re not, then we can cash them when we get to England. Then we booked a trip to Dutch East India and we looked for many friends of ours and we invited them to join us. There was a condition whereby you could take with you 50 marks per day for boarding expenses. But we told them all that nobody was going to spend any board money. They’d get enough to eat on the ship. But they would still take board money with them which we would give them, which they were allowed, and then they would give the money back to us. So we made 500 marks in board money. That was our fortune, with which we arrived in England. Then we got my parents out but we left them in Holland before we went on to England. That was in January 1939. And from Holland they, along with the rest of my family, were all deported to Auschwitz.
My family were in Amsterdam and I was here, but we had friends in Switzerland and they sent their letters to Switzerland and the friends then sent them on to me. When they were deported I went to the Red Cross, but it took a very very long time to find out what had happened. They were deported on Rosh Hashanah 1942. I didn’t find out until 1945. I turned white between one day and the next. I resented my husband, for having survived. I had to have ECT. I had a complete breakdown and our doctor, who was a very good friend, told my husband either I should go into a home or we can try electric shocks. My husband decided on the electric shocks and that did help. But I resented him, that he was alive and my family was dead. I felt the same about myself. Anne Frank’s family were very good friends of ours, we had known them in Frankfurt very well. After the war Carl Frank, who survived, came to see me and told me what he was able to tell me.
Once we arrived in England we had to report to the police station. In the meantime we had been deprived of our nationality by the Nazis. We were ‘dis-naturalized’. The authorities found out that we had taken money out of the country and they announced our names in a book that appeared every week in Germany. It had our names down as personally dis-naturalized. In their mind it was shaming, but for us it did a lot of good. That was the end of our German citizenship. The passport we had paid so much for was no use any more. So when we arrived in England we were stateless. No longer Germans, but now neutrals. Eric, my husband, was interned. We got him out very quickly, but he took it very badly. There was a collection of old medals to help the war effort and he sent his Iron Cross as his contribution. It was all over England, on the radio, in the papers. We didn’t get our English naturalization until after the war, 1947.
England was paradise, although being statelesss we were not free to everything, but after Germany, England was absolutely incredible. We were free! We were free. Here you didn’t have to tremble when you saw a policeman. The policeman was nice to you; we didn’t know policemen could be kind to you. In Germany they came to intern you, to arrest you. Here you could leave the doors open, you didn’t have to lock them all the time. Everything was wonderful and we were like in heaven, although we had very very little money. Sometimes we were really quite hungry. Then Eric started working as a waiter at Lyons. And it was not that much different from the England I had seen in 1914. Of course things were different for me: I was very poor and sometimes hungry, but I still thought that England was still a wonderful country.
The English were terribly kind. After the war they made my husband a freeman of the city. Through the association of foundrymen my husband had good connections. Mr Faulkner, who was the head of the association took my husband under his wing. Also my husband had invented a special method to be used in iron foundries while he was in Germany. This he had published. Then when we left, at a risk of a death sentence, he smuggled it out and gave it to the English government. It was translated and used throughout the industry. Of course this helped him, and he became quite famous here through that. When people in the industry heard that he was in England and had no money they gave him some consulting work. He was interned for about six months and that was all. But the England workmen were not so nice. They thought he was a German and they wouldn’t allow him to come into the factories. So he had to work during the night when the workers were not there. The owners didn’t mind, they knew the truth. Luckily we both spoke English quite well.
I didn’t get a job but immediately I started working for charity. We had a furnished flat in Bayswater, next to Hilda Schlesinger who was a very famous Jewish lady. In Queens Court, Queensway. We were lucky to know her. So she lived next door to me and immediately she hauled me into doing voluntary service for war work. The WRVS. I enrolled there and I worked like mad, day and night. I was collecting for the national war savings movement and Miss Schlesinger put me in charge of our block, collecting for war savings. Every Monday evening I went from flat to flat, and there were hundreds of flats, to collect war savings stamps or loans. I was very lucky because in this block were hundreds were hundreds of Greek ship owners who came to England, gave their fleets to England for transporting ammunition and so on in the Atlantic convoys. And these people did not go to the bank, because they did not trust banks. So they had cash, a lot of cash, in their pockets. Either they were paid very well for the trips to America and back, if the ship survived, and if they were sunk, the shipowner got compensation. It took me some time, but eventually I got their confidence. So I got masses and masses of money for the war collection.
When the war was over, in 1945, everybody in England who did especially notable war work was invited to Buckingham Palace. I was chosen as one of the best collectors. Out of each borough of London two people were chosen and I was one of the ones from Paddington. I had collected hundreds and thousand of pounds. With my hatred of Germany I was so intensely keen to help England that I really worked day and night to get as much as possible. So I went off to Buckingham Palace for this garden party.
A number of prominent people were presented to the King and Queen. And the King and Queen, now the Queen Mother, and the two princesses went around talking to people at random. Maybe 5000 people there. I said to myself, ‘I’m not here not be to be talked to. That’s out of the question.’ So I followed the King. But he spoke only to men, so that was no use to me. And I didn’t want to speak to the princesses, I wanted to speak to the Queen. So she went this way, I went that way, round the garden to meet her. And it was like Coueism: I set my heart and mind on meeting her. I said to myself, ‘You have to talk to me, you have to talk to me!’ And she stopped. And turned to me and said, ‘Where have you come from?’
Now is the terrible thing. I ought to have said, ‘From Paddington’, but what did I say? I said ‘I come from Germany.’ She looked at me and said, ‘And you are invited here to this party?’ Very strict with me. I said, ‘Yes, Your Majesty. I worked very hard during the war and I have collected millions of pounds for the war effort.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you mean you are a refugee from Germany.’ ‘Of course, Your Majesty.’ ‘That’s different, my dear child. I’m glad you have escaped and made your way here.’ Then where I took my courage from I still cannot say, and I said, ‘Yes, your Majesty, but may I tell you what happened to my family?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ ‘All my family have been killed in Auschwitz.’ She made a gesture, like shielding herself. She said, ‘If only I hadn’t asked you.’ I said, ‘On the contrary your Majesty, this is my kaddish, the prayer we Jews have for the dead, that I could tell their fate to my Queen.’ She took both my hands and she pressed them and said, ‘My darling child, I hope nothing else bad will happen to you and that you will enjoy your life and God bless you.’ I stood there crying, crying, crying.
Everybody asked me, ‘What did the Queen talk to you about for so long?’ If I would have just said what I ought to have said, that I came from Paddington, she would have just said, ‘Paddington has done wonderfully,’ or something. Finished. But through my silly nonsense I had this very long talk. But that was not the end of the story.
Exactly 40 years after I spoke to her, in 1985, I was invited to join a friend of mine who was going to Buckingham Palace as part of a group of people who won VCs and GCs in the war. They meet every two years and the Queen Mother is their patron. This time my friend said, ‘We are allowed to bring one friend with us, would you like to come?’ I said, ‘Would I like to come! I’d love to come and see the Queen Mother again.’
So we had a wonderful service at St Martin’s in the Fields, then we were taken in buses to St James’ Palace and we were seated at lovely tables. So I was seated between a lady and a gentleman whom I didn’t know, but we got talking and I told her my story and said how much I still loved her. Then at 5 o’clock to Queen Mother went from table to table, talking to the VCs and GCs and then she came to our table and said, ‘I hear there is a lady here at this table who has spoken to me once forty years ago. Who is that lady?’ I nearly fainted. ‘It’s me, your Majesty." ‘Come and talk to me. Where have we met?’ So I told her the whole story all over and she remembered. And she asked me how I did in the meantime. So I said that I did well, but I’d lost my husband and I was now 92. So she said, ‘Well, I can’t catch up with you, I’m five years younger.’ ‘I know, your Majesty, and I love your Majesty.’ She said, ‘My darling, I am so pleased that I met you again and I wish you all the best.’
This is very moving, Jonathon. Thank you for sharing it.