Ruth Rogoff, Zwickau, 1938:

My father was a courier for getting people out of Germany & over the border into Czechoslovakia, illegally. One day he was betrayed & caught & put in prison. 

My mother managed to get him out but his number was up, he was under surveillance. So he decided to go. Obviously they couldn’t take anything with them, so we went on foot, at night, with whatever we could carry, over the border, the route he knew. Left the car behind, left everything & went into Czechoslovakia from Germany.

Then the Nazis occupied Prague, in March 1939. As soon as they came, he went to Poland, because his parents had been deported there from Germany because they were ‘Ostjuden’. 

My father went back to see if he could help them. He couldn’t because he had no means. Nobody could help anybody, this is the point. He went back there & then disappeared to all intent & purposes. He couldn’t contact us & we didn’t know where he was.

He had an interesting journey, you might say. He made his way to the Balkans & got on a ship that took on political refugees. Because of his work as a courier he was considered a political refugee & was accepted onto this boat in June 1939. 

The strange thing is, if you talk about quirks of fate, when it came to the Channel, the boat, the ship was so big, it couldn’t come into the Channel. So they divided the people on into three sections, alphabetically. My father was sent on a ferry to England, by chance. Another section was sent to France, which of course was at that time still free. The third lot remained on the boat & went to Canada. So, the luck of the draw.

He came to England. He was desperate to be in contact with us. He didn’t know any English—he heard the kids selling newspapers shouting “England in danger, England in danger!” His heart sank, he got a paper & got somebody to translate what was England in danger from. It was a test match: cricket.

Ruth's mother won a cookery competition organised by the British Embassy in Czechoslovakia. The prize was 3 visas to England. Ruth, her mother & brother arrived on September 3 1939.

We had no idea where my father was, that he was in England too. He was in a hostel for Jewish men, they were divided. He used to go into Blooms in the East End & get a bowl of soup & with it they brought a huge pile of bread. For sixpence he had a bowl of soup & about six slices of bread. He did really very well out of it. He wasn’t allowed employment. He couldn’t speak English anyway. 

But the wonderful thing was when we arrived, we were put into a hostel & the first thing my mother did of course, was to go round the men’s hostels to see if anybody knew. She went with a photograph, asked if anybody had seen him, heard of him, knew what had happened to him. That’s what people did. She knocked on the door of this Highams Lane Hostel. And my father opened it. Quite remarkable, isn’t it? Just remarkable. That’s how they found each other.