Germany Lüneburg Heath Memories 962: Speaking German With An English Accent Charles Danson I'd been the wireless operator for quite some time, so I said to my comrade ‘Let’s change over now’... Previous Location Next Location

Algeria Mostaganem Memories 933: Interned In Algeria Erna Klein One Arabic sentence helped a lot. It meant: ‘Are you drunk or whatever is the matter with you?’ That helped me out of a few difficult situations... Previous Location Next Location

Switzerland Lucerne Memories 947: The End Of The Gallery Tom Heinemann My grandmother ran the gallery very successfully. Then she got arrested on some trumped up currency charges & put into prison... Previous Location Next Location

928: Goodness Kindness & Helpfulness March 1945: Susan Pollack OBE, age 15, is on a death march from Guben slave labour camp to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp: Susan Pollack OBE Read Full Text Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Home All Memories About Menu Close ← Previous Memory All Memories Next Memory → ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Edited from Susan Pollack OBE's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, October 2023 • Learn More → Susan Pollack OBE Bergen-Belsen British Army Concentration Camp Guben Liberation Recovery Slave Labourer Swedish Recuperation Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Germany See Locations Full Text March 1945: Susan Pollack OBE, age 15, is on a death march from Guben slave labour camp to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp: I never exchanged a word with anyone. I was on my own, withdrawn within myself. If you'd been found talking to someone, you'd have been shot. No place to escape. I didn’t know anyone. Where would I go? Who'd help me? I was very obedient & did what I was told. That was their way, making sure that you follow. I don’t know how we survived, how anybody survived. Conditions were so dreadful. A long, long, long walk. I wasn’t there very long, the barrack in Belsen. Conditions were… bodies all over, dead, rotted. I woke up to find my neighbour dead. I heard shouting when the liberation came. But it didn’t mean anything to me any more. It didn’t matter. Bergen-Belsen was a place of death. Look, I’m grateful I’m alive. I’m grateful that I could survive with an enormous amount of pain. The Swedes were helpful actually, in creating—that’s what music does to one’s life. Music, that was my recovery, help. We walked away, there was no revenge. We walked away, we didn’t commit any crimes or hate or anything like that. I’m glad we did not. We just walked away & hoped perhaps we can somehow build a life, just a little life. I became a Samaritan, that was very helpful to me. I used to take my children at Christmas time to hospitals & relieve the staff from serving tea. We would do it. That I found, for me, is very helpful. I had befriended a number of British soldiers who had liberated Bergen-Belsen. They are my real heroes, who liberated after such a long battle & yet retained kindness, helpfulness. That stayed with me. Goodness, kindness & helpfulness are the driving forces for life. After liberation Susan was sent to Sweden to convalesce. I began to understand that there is a goodness in the world. I don’t have much recollection about getting there. I was in a daze. I thought it must be a dream, a fantasy that people cared about me. I feared that the picture will disappear. I didn’t completely understand liberation myself yet. It had to come gradually. Listening to music every night. This wonderful, youngish man had a very big collection of music he played to us. Lights off, we sat in the dark. And I learned I had an inner life. That inner life was strengthened by listening to the music, because Beethoven understood me. Somehow the beautiful, lyrical music was there. And the darkness opened up like a flower. 928: Goodness Kindness & Helpfulness Susan Pollack OBE Edited from Susan Pollack OBE's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, October 2023 • Learn More → Text adapted and edited by Susanna Kleeman Facebook & Instagram Posts

Harry Weinberger Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive Memories 932: A Cigarette For An Iron Cross Harry Weinberger A very young lieutenant in charge of us told me that the British Army will fight to the last alien, to the last foreign soldier... Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

During the Anschluss, Fred Barschak's father Aaron ran the Restaurant-Hotel Barschak in Vienna's Leopoldstadt: The building still exists. Right next to the Prater, the great playground. But when I went back 25 years later I was disappointed. It's lost all its charm. At the time there were maybe 40 kosher restaurants in the area. Three different categories. Some had very good food & were hardly kosher at all. Some were kosher but the food was... ‘unessbar’: uneatable. One or two managed to combine good food & kashrut, & ours was one of them. Us & Schreiber: so kosher that when tens of thousands of Galician Jews fleeing the Russian armies in WW1 came through Vienna, the one thing they knew if they wanted to be kosher, they came to either Schreiber or Barschak. Neugroschl may also have been kosher. I’m not 100% sure. Restaurants in Vienna & all over the continent stayed open on Shabbat. This is how. The staff were non-Jewish on Shabbat. The method was used all over Vienna & in Berlin & Lemberg in Poland. We had a regular clientele, known as the Stammgasts. We had markers, I remember them. 8 sides, bronze & numbered. Every table had a number. If Mr Cohen came in & had a meal on Shabbat, there was a box—there were maybe 80 boxes—& a little marker was put into that box & that meant that on Sunday, when father did the accounts, he'd send out a bill to Mr Cohen whose address he knew. Or in fact he didn’t have to because Mr Cohen usually either paid before or afterwards. As to the casual visitors, my father always took a chance. If somebody wanted a meal on Shabbat, he got it even if he hadn’t paid. He hardly ever lost any money. The restaurant was busiest on Shabbat. Friday night you had a full menu. A choice of stuffed carp, six other hors d’oeuvres at least. Friday night, it was usually only one soup: chicken soup with whatever you wanted in it. Then then they could have roast chicken, roast duck. Braised beef, which we called Gedämpftes Fleisch. We had about 14 entrees. Shabbat it was more limited. The fish was always there. The gefilte fish, the stuffed carp, & above all stuffed Hecht, pike, which is a labour of love. It is a schwere Arbeit, you know." To bake a stuffed pike this is what you have to do: you have to take the pike in your left hand, use a very sharp fishmonger’s knife here, go around getting the skin away from the flesh & you peel the skin of this long fish as if it were a stocking. It could take 20 minutes. You mustn’t pierce the skin because if you do you’ll have to sew it up. You get all the flesh away & you keep the bone. From the flesh you make the minced fish & you never have just the pike. Gefillte fish is always better when it’s made from three fish. You choose what you want. You usually choose whiting. Mackerel is not good. Funnily enough, hake is quite good, makes more jelly. Then you have a recipe: onions, almonds, a little salt, pepper & certainly sugar if you come from Galicia. And then you mix the fish & you put the fish into the stocking. Separately, with the bones & whatever else, you make a stock & in that stock, which takes ¾ of an hour at least, you poach the fish in a fish kettle very, very gently for 2¼ hours. Then you do have a gefilte fish. That’s why it’s called gefilte fish [stuffed fish]. It’s not the balls that you get in England. And the Cholent. It was different at Barschak. Hungarian Jews put in—in addition to all the normal ingredients of Cholent—some smoked meat: geräuchertes fleisch. A very special flavour. That's what Barschak’s was known for. 939: How To Bake A Stuffed Pike Fred Barschak Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory All Memories Next Memory → Previous Memory Next Memory 939: How To Bake A Stuffed Pike ← Previous Memory All Memories Next Memory → Fred Barschak Read Full Text Previous Memory Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Edited from Fred Barschak's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, February 2007 • Learn More → Fred Barschak Anschluss Food Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Austria See Locations Full Text During the Anschluss, Fred Barschak's father Aaron ran the Restaurant-Hotel Barschak in Vienna's Leopoldstadt: The building still exists. Right next to the Prater, the great playground. But when I went back 25 years later I was disappointed. It's lost all its charm. At the time there were maybe 40 kosher restaurants in the area. Three different categories. Some had very good food & were hardly kosher at all. Some were kosher but the food was... ‘unessbar’: uneatable. One or two managed to combine good food & kashrut, & ours was one of them. Us & Schreiber: so kosher that when tens of thousands of Galician Jews fleeing the Russian armies in WW1 came through Vienna, the one thing they knew if they wanted to be kosher, they came to either Schreiber or Barschak. Neugroschl may also have been kosher. I’m not 100% sure. Restaurants in Vienna & all over the continent stayed open on Shabbat. This is how. The staff were non-Jewish on Shabbat. The method was used all over Vienna & in Berlin & Lemberg in Poland. We had a regular clientele, known as the Stammgasts. We had markers, I remember them. 8 sides, bronze & numbered. Every table had a number. If Mr Cohen came in & had a meal on Shabbat, there was a box—there were maybe 80 boxes—& a little marker was put into that box & that meant that on Sunday, when father did the accounts, he'd send out a bill to Mr Cohen whose address he knew. Or in fact he didn’t have to because Mr Cohen usually either paid before or afterwards. As to the casual visitors, my father always took a chance. If somebody wanted a meal on Shabbat, he got it even if he hadn’t paid. He hardly ever lost any money. The restaurant was busiest on Shabbat. Friday night you had a full menu. A choice of stuffed carp, six other hors d’oeuvres at least. Friday night, it was usually only one soup: chicken soup with whatever you wanted in it. Then then they could have roast chicken, roast duck. Braised beef, which we called Gedämpftes Fleisch. We had about 14 entrees. Shabbat it was more limited. The fish was always there. The gefilte fish, the stuffed carp, & above all stuffed Hecht, pike, which is a labour of love. It is a schwere Arbeit, you know." To bake a stuffed pike this is what you have to do: you have to take the pike in your left hand, use a very sharp fishmonger’s knife here, go around getting the skin away from the flesh & you peel the skin of this long fish as if it were a stocking. It could take 20 minutes. You mustn’t pierce the skin because if you do you’ll have to sew it up. You get all the flesh away & you keep the bone. From the flesh you make the minced fish & you never have just the pike. Gefillte fish is always better when it’s made from three fish. You choose what you want. You usually choose whiting. Mackerel is not good. Funnily enough, hake is quite good, makes more jelly. Then you have a recipe: onions, almonds, a little salt, pepper & certainly sugar if you come from Galicia. And then you mix the fish & you put the fish into the stocking. Separately, with the bones & whatever else, you make a stock & in that stock, which takes ¾ of an hour at least, you poach the fish in a fish kettle very, very gently for 2¼ hours. Then you do have a gefilte fish. That’s why it’s called gefilte fish [stuffed fish]. It’s not the balls that you get in England. And the Cholent. It was different at Barschak. Hungarian Jews put in—in addition to all the normal ingredients of Cholent—some smoked meat: geräuchertes fleisch. A very special flavour. That's what Barschak’s was known for. 939: How To Bake A Stuffed Pike Fred Barschak Edited from Fred Barschak's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, February 2007 • Learn More → Text adapted and edited by Susanna Kleeman Facebook & Instagram Posts

England Cumberland Hotel Memories 992: Chickenpox Bridget Newman I was stuck. Then one day, the doorbell rang: a Gestapo. He came in, he was really rather nice. He had white hair & a big, white moustache... Previous Location Next Location

Germany Hamburg Memories 961: Having My Revenge Willy Field I was a refugee from Nazi oppression. I wanted to have my revenge & I had my revenge. That was a wonderful feeling... 977: The Cruel Guardian Maria Ault My first guardians were fine. But when we were evacuated we stayed with a very, very, very, very bad person who used to hit us... Previous Location Next Location

Bea Green MBE Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive Memories 945: Dad's Blood-Drenched Shirt Bea Green MBE I believe trying to protect your children by not telling them everything is a terrible thing. Because it makes them imagine things worse than reality... Read Full Memory 966: I Thought You Were A Nazi Bea Green MBE There were two girls who often turned up with their Hitler Youth uniform. I stayed clear of them. One of them found me after the war... Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

Walter Kammerling Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive Memories 965: Wounded Animals On The Farm Walter Kammerling It’s that type of work that put me off gardening. When you go on a cold, wet January & you get a big bag & are told to pick up... Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

England Grasmere Memories 948: Not Remembering My Emotions Hella Pick CBE I can still see myself arriving at Liverpool Street Station. But I can’t remember much about the journey. Just a blank. It’s shocking... 967: Fitting In Hella Pick CBE The other pupils must have known I was a refugee. I became a Girl Guide & we were performing something & I was an African chief... Previous Location Next Location

England Thetford Memories 961: Having My Revenge Willy Field I was a refugee from Nazi oppression. I wanted to have my revenge & I had my revenge. That was a wonderful feeling... Previous Location Next Location