Gerti Baruch came to Britain from Vienna in 1939:

On Sundays in Vienna my father used to take me to Café Siller, along the Promenade. He used to read the paper. I used to have soft-boiled egg & tea. There was an ice cream parlour next door. Then the Anschluss. We had a caretaker downstairs in our block. Overnight he was in Nazi uniform. My mother was very determined not to stay.

On Kristallnacht my father was taken to Dachau. My mother got him out & he went to Palestine. I left Vienna with my mother, two weeks before the war. We didn't see my father for 11 years.

My sister had a permit to work as a nanny in Kensington. Somehow she managed to get a permit for my mother to come to England as a cook. I don’t know how my mother managed it, but we had a beautiful Art Deco coffee set, quite heavy. She managed to bring that over. It's standing in my house. And a Kaffeemühle [coffee mill] which my daughter has.

I was very unhappy at first because I was separated from my mother & had to be fostered. Her employer didn't have room for me. And the whole English way of living was strange. Tea with milk. One of my foster families lived in Ruislip Manor. They didn’t send me to school. I more or less looked after their little boy. I was only 12.

Eventually my mother managed to get an apartment in Belsize Grove. My sister & my mother & I lived there. My mother got a job as a machinist in Clerkenwell Road, for C&A. My sister & I got jobs there too. I was only 15 & underage so was employed illegally as an overlocker. We used to go by underground to Goswell Road, then walk down to save the bus fare. We walked in the blackout to Clerkenwell Road.

During the war we went to sleep in Belsize Park Underground Station every night. It was very, very sociable. When the sirens went we went up & then the all-clear. Then we showered & went to work.

Then I worked in Argyle Street as a machinist. I was 16 so it was legal. A Jewish firm. They had a son who took me out to a Chinese restaurant. I didn’t have a clue about Chinese food & was too shy to ask. I just couldn’t eat anything. But that was the first outing. It was a sociable place. Somebody there pierced my ears. But eventually I worked with my mother at home. My mother smoked, then I smoked. That wasn’t a good thing.

My mother used to receive letters from my father in Palestine via the Red Cross. He was very unhappy. Unsettled. The climate didn’t agree.

I had boyfriends. They used to take me to Fischer’s off Bond Street. A tea dance. My mother enrolled me at Saint Martin's School of Art. I did fashion drawing & still life. Then I went to Hammersmith School of Art. I was always into fashion. It was always my pet thing. Until I got married at the age of 21.

His name was Max & he came from Germany, on the Kindertransport. We went on honeymoon to Torquay, to a hotel where about six other young married couples stayed.

In 1950 my mother managed to get my father over to England. He wasn’t very happy. By then I had a baby. He couldn’t get to grips with it. Nor my mother. Very strange.

Very sadly, Gerti's father killed himself.

Hitler destroyed lots of people. I’m so lucky to be here. But I often think what would have become of me in Vienna. I often think of that, you know. It’s like a dream. I've been back. Vienna was - is beautiful. I went back with my children & showed them.

In London we used to visit the Cosmo Cafe a lot with the family. Very social. You always saw the same people in Cosmo's on a Sunday. We used to have Schnitzel & a Continental salad from the bar. You could help yourself.

I haven't done too badly. Sometimes people ask: 'Where do you come from?' I say, 'From Austria.' 'Oh, Australia! Vienna, Australia!'

Gerti Baruch

Memories

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