Henry Wuga MBE came to Britain on a Kindertransport, settled in Glasgow and became a chef:

Ingrid & I got married on December 26 1944. In the middle of the war. We were in love & there was nothing to wait for, not really. We were 20.

We had the wedding in the synagogue & the function in Ingrid’s parents’ flat. A very nice party. I got one of the chefs from the hotel to do the cooking while we were at the synagogue &, well, again, we tried to do it differently. The menu is still hanging up out in the hall.

We delivered a special menu. I was determined. Food was always important, just the presentation. I made bombs, ice cream bombs, yes. I had shapes, you filled in the ice cream but then you have to freeze it. Now we had no deep freezers or anything like that in these days. On the day of the wedding, I went down to the local Italian shop, asked his permission to use his ice cream machine, filled our bath with ice & sea salt to make it into a saline solution, & froze the bombs in there. Crazy, but that gave us a lot of pleasure. A very nice wedding.

Just a few months before the wedding I was sent by my employers, a big catering firm in Glasgow, to Abbotsford, the home of Sir Walter Scott, to cater the wedding for his great-great-granddaughter. I was very greatly honoured at age 20 to be sent to arrange this wedding.

I had tremendous help from the local baker, who supplied me with staff, with sandwiches. The gamekeeper’s wife happened to be French, so she came & helped me in the kitchen for a family dinner. It was war time, but being on a private estate, consommé, lobster, pheasant, partridge, was not a problem. It was for me a wonderful experience.

They were very kind & this baker eventually said to me, ‘When you are getting married in December we will do the wedding cake.’ He sent me a 3-tier wedding cake but you wouldn’t recognise it. It’s silver in colour because the outside was made of these cake boards in papier maché. You were allowed to bake cakes but you were not allowed to ice them. That was the war time restriction. But it was very generous of this man to send me a cake.

Henry met his future wife Ingrid at a refugee club:

It didn’t have a name. We just called it the centre, was a little house called ‘the house on the hill’ in Sophie Hall Street, where the dental hospital is now.

It was financed by the trade union movement in Glasgow. We learned a lot about music, we had lectures, we had meetings on a Saturday afternoon. On Sundays we went for rambles. There were discussion groups & helping the war effort. We founded a group singing Czech & Austrian songs for Mrs. Churchill’s aid to Russia fund. We toured Scotland, performing in the Usher Hall, in St. Andrew’s Hall, in the music hall in Aberdeen to raise money for Mrs. Churchill’s aid to Russia fund.

We were fairly left-wing in climate, 1st of May march, etc. Ingrid's father warned her, ‘Don’t get involved in left-wing affairs.’ But luckily she did.

It was so egalitarian because we all had no money. You did what you could. On a Saturday we went for a ramble. You made yourself a sandwich or something, but, some people had more money than others. So you threw your sandwich in the middle in a cloth, & then took a dip & had to eat whatever came out. Nobody should suffer from not having enough money to put whatever they want in their sandwich.

The club was great. We made great friends that lasted many, many, many years.

Henry Wuga MBE

Memories

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