Eva Evans MBE came to Britain with her family from Berlin in 1939:

I wanted to be a writer. But I never felt that I could write in English the way I could have done in German. So that was the end of that.

From the time I could read, I was by myself, reading a book. That was my life. My mother used to have tea parties & I’d sit in the corner reading a book. I didn’t hear what they said. I was completely absorbed in books & fantasy life.

We had a garden opposite our house. A whole colony of gardens. In Germany they were called Schrebergärten. I played Red Indians there with my schoolfriend. Our main occupation—such a pleasurable thing I remember from my childhood. We had to walk very quietly across the leaves so the enemy wouldn’t hear us.

Eva's father's Iron Cross, awarded for heroism in WW1, allowed her to stay on at her Berlin school when other Jewish children were excluded.

I remember being asked to a birthday party. The father was in Air Force uniform. I looked at him with a little bit of surprise. He must have realised that I was Jewish & he looked at me with equal surprise. But that was all that happened.

The November Pogrom (Kristallnacht) was traumatic for Eva & her family, who left soon after.

I did feel terrible during those days—really awful. I had a terrible itch, a rash all down my back but there was nothing to see. The only thing I brought with me—I’ve still got it now: when my friend Steffi & I played Red Indians we had little animals & they were our totems. I've got that still. I’m not quite sure where it is at the moment but I know I brought it with me.

At the frontier what I remember is the police & my mother's coat. It had pebbles sewn into the seams so that it hangs. They thought it was jewellery. It wasn’t, it was pebbles.

In England all I cared about was going to school. In Norfolk Court Hotel there were people there who knew both German & English. I was always very good writing essays. I wrote in German & they translated it for me. But when I came to England I lost the fluency of my writing.

When war broke out the family moved to Torquay & then Barrow-in-Furness. Eva's father was interned. Eva did war work, in a shipyard & then in the fire service.

I used to have to work out the amount of petrol to be used by the fire engines. Every weekend I used to hitchhike to see the country. I love nature. It liberates me. I took risks—I would never allow my daughters to do what I did in those days. Stand in the road & hitchhike & lorries. I didn’t go into private cars. I had a pocket knife always to defend myself. But nothing ever happened.

Once the RAF had a dance & I went to that. Otherwise I felt such a gulf that I didn’t try to be intimate with anybody.

Postwar, Eva went to university & worked first in the rare book trade, then with European academics. She has an MBE for services to European Studies.

I had a very good Prussian training. That’s why I’m so good, if I say so myself, at my job. I got that from my father: orderliness. I always did what had to be done whether I liked it or not. That’s a very good thing to be brought up that way.

There is some kind of darkness in my childhood & I’ve never got over that, the Nazi atmosphere that affected my parents. But no, I don't want to say that. I've had a happy life. It’s had a very deep effect but it’s a fact of life. There are lots of other refugees.

War Work

Memories

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