Bea Green MBE went to secondary school in Munich:

There were two girls who often turned up with their BDM—their Hitler Youth uniform. I stayed clear of them. One of them found me after the war. There were five Jewish girls in a class of 40. The five of us were in a little bunch.

The other 35 were in their larger circle. It didn’t bother us, it kind of seemed normal & it didn’t mean that I didn’t talk to the others ever. I didn't think about them until the article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung about the Kindertransport & my visit to Munich.

She read this article & rang the editor who gave her the address of the woman who wrote the article who rang me up & said could she–I said yes, you can give her my address.

So she didn’t want to wait to write, she got onto directory enquiries & got my telephone number. The telephone rings: “Is that Mrs Green?” This is in German.

“Ja.”

I’ll tell it in English. “Were you the Beate Siegel?” Yes.

Ah, she said. I remember, you were sitting in the front row by the door & you used to go & look out for the teacher. When he or she came, you used to dash back into the classroom & say: “Er kommt, er kommt” “He’s coming, he’s coming” But you were so quick that you were sitting down before he actually came to the door & I admired that because it was so courageous.

After all this I said to her, but who are you? She told me her name. Now, the next bit came straight out, without going through the filter of my head, came straight out from wherever my soul is: 'But why are you ringing me I thought you were a Nazi?'

Boom. Moment silence.

Then she said: how can you say that, I was so shy.

'But you used to turn up in your BDM uniform'.

Then she said that there was a good reason for that: 'I can explain it.' Her explanation was that her father was a civil servant accused of anti-Hitler sentiments, so she was making up for it. And I believe her, she’s decent.

She said, but “Ich hab’ die Treffen immer geschwänzt”: I always played truant when it came to the meetings of the Hitler Youth by saying I have to practise my piano. She is now a professional pianist. You know, it rang true, I believe her, & we are in touch even now.

When you hear stories like that, you get a view of history where you have to distinguish between the real bastards & those that kept quiet when they shouldn’t & those who kept quiet when they perhaps had no choice.

She told me a good story also about the Director of my school. During the war, after I'd left & was in England, in German schools, whenever Hitler made a speech, all the children had to listen to the speech, so they were all taken into the big assembly hall.

She told me the director had a pact with the janitor who fiddled with the radio. It crackled & crackled. The janitor would say every time “Sorry but the radio’s broken” & they all clapped & went back to the classroom, never listening to Hitler’s speech. Little anti-Nazi tricks & a director who was courageous enough to do it & a janitor who worked with him.

And the girls who didn’t object or didn’t go home & denounce the director. So this went on in Germany throughout the war.

Bea Green MBE

Memories

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