Bridget Newman Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive 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... Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

998: Red Oaks Boarding School Ruth Jackson, aged 13, came to Britain on a 1939 Kindertransport from Berlin & is sent to Red Oaks boarding school in Essex: Ruth Jackson 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 Adapted from Ruth Jackson's interview with Helen Lloyd for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, August 2004 • Learn More → Ruth Jackson Boarder Food Foster Family Homesick Kindertransport Not Allowed To Visit Cinemas Staying With Strangers Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts England See Locations Full Text Ruth Jackson, aged 13, came to Britain on a 1939 Kindertransport from Berlin & was sent to Red Oaks boarding school in Essex: I was led upstairs to an empty dormitory & told that the very end bed was mine & I should have a bath & come down to tea. I felt miserable. It was empty & cold & horrid-looking. There must have been 10 rows of beds on either side. I went to the bathroom & sat there in floods of tears & I thought what would my mother be doing now & how did she get back home, & is everyone alright & tears were just running down my face & there’s nobody to scrub my back. Then there was a knock on the door, ‘would I please hurry up & come down’. So I hastily got out of the water & my daydreaming, put clean clothes on, & a schoolgirl showed me the way down, there were a few girls still there, & we sat down to what was called High Tea. I was given my first cup of tea with milk which I thought was horrible. I couldn’t eat anything & they looked at me. Some of them tried to talk to me. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I felt a bit like an animal in the zoo. I wished they wouldn't talk to me at all. But, anyway, finally the meal was over and they all went home. I seemed to be left there & nobody else in this empty school for the summer holidays. Teachers had gone, there were a few domestic staff there. One of the maids showed me round the garden & showed me the library. The Headmistress then called for me & said I ought to write a letter home to say I’d got there alright, would I show her the letter before I sent it? So I did & I thought she probably doesn’t understand any German, but anyway I showed her the letter. I suppose she posted it. I had a look at the library, at the books about Australia, & I thought: maybe one day I’ll go there. Then I had to go to bed in this forlorn dormitory, & I couldn’t go to sleep, & I just lay there under the bedclothes sobbing away thinking why on earth did I have to come here, why did all this have to happen? Eventually I did fall asleep, only to be woken by one of the maids to say it was breakfast time & that there were some children coming from the East End of London, for the holidays. We got friendly, & somehow we could understand one another. It was good to have some children there. They took us to the pictures in Epping. I’d never been to the pictures before. It was Old Mother Riley, which I thought was terribly stupid, & Bandwagon. It wasn’t my sense of humour. But what impressed me was that in the interval little trays of tea went round & people had little cups of tea in the interval which I thought was amazing. What worried me was that the teacher had taken me to the cinema. Because I as a Jewess wasn’t allowed to go to the cinema in Germany. She kept saying yes it’s alright. I thought, I hope she doesn’t get into trouble, you know. It hadn’t left me. One day the Headmistress called for me to come to her. It must have been the beginning of September. We’d already been given gas masks. I didn’t like those because I couldn’t breathe in them. The Headmistress said: ‘I’ve got a letter here from your sister, she’s going to come to England soon’. All the letters had been opened beforehand. My sister had written to say that I’d only be alone for another few days because she’d got a visa & would be leaving Germany on the 4th of September. So I thought, Oh good, it’s only next Monday, I can just about cope until then. Then of course she called me in again on the Sunday morning & said in a very matter of fact way ‘Well your sister won’t be coming now because we are at war with Germany’. I felt; well, like somebody closing the door in my face. I just didn’t know what to think. I felt devastated. Then a week later, she called for me again & said ‘You’re to go to London, to another school. So pack your things & the maid will take you to the station" Ruth went to stay with the Yardley family in Letchworth. From the point of view of money, education, & everything else, I couldn’t grumble, I did much better than a lot of them. But the one thing that I needed was love. One day there was a football match going on in the fields beyond where we lived, & there was a policeman standing outside our gate, & I saw him. To me, he’d come for me. I knew he’d been posted there so I couldn’t leave the house. I didn’t think that he’d been posted there because of the crowds of people coming after the football match. Anyway, it was teatime, & Jean called me for tea. I stood behind the curtains watching that gate & I said I couldn’t come. So Mrs Yardley said go & drag her down to tea, see what’s the matter. She came up to my room & said ‘Mother says you are to come down to tea’. I said ‘I can’t’. Why can’t you? I looked out & said: he’s standing there, he’s going to come in for me. So she went down & told her mother. Then to my horror, Mrs Yardley went out of the front door, down the long drive, to the gate. She talked to the policeman & he came in with her. I thought: I thought she was a nice person, I thought she was on my side, & now she’s actually getting this policeman in, & making it easier for him to get me. So I certainly wouldn’t go downstairs. After a lot of persuasion I finally did go downstairs. They sat having a cup of tea. And Mrs Yardley said, ‘This is Inspector whatever’, & he gave his name, & I thought, well, that’s a funny thing. So he said ‘Well thank you very much, Mrs Yardley, for the tea, nice to have met you, Ruth, bye, bye. I’ve got to go out to make sure that we haven’t got too many people up in the fields misbehaving. I thought: how funny. And how clever Mrs Yardley had been, that she’d called him in to have a cup of tea. To show me that I needn’t be afraid of the police. 998: Red Oaks Boarding School Ruth Jackson Adapted from Ruth Jackson's interview with Helen Lloyd for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, August 2004 • Learn More → Text adapted and edited by Susanna Kleeman Facebook & Instagram Posts

928: Goodness Kindness & Helpfulness Susan Pollack OBE Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close 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. Previous Memory 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 Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

August 1939: Kurt Wick & family leave Vienna for Trieste and Shanghai: Unfortunately, quite a few high up Jewish leaders said, ‘It's not a good country for you. Lots of crime, lots of opium, drugs, criminality, brothels. It's dangerous.’ It put quite a few people off. My mother's mother, sister & brother stayed behind. They didn't want to go. Unfortunately, they were all killed, like most people. Kurt was two when he arrived in Shanghai. We didn't have any homes. We had no food, we had no money, we had nothing. Luckily for us there was a Sephardic community there from the 1850s. The Sassoons, the Kadoories & the Hardoons, about 700 Jewish Sephardim there. They owned most of the Bund, a lot of the properties, they had palatial houses. They decided to help. So, they bought up empty warehouses in an area of Shanghai called Hongkew, bombed in ’32 by the Japanese. Cheap primitive properties known as 'Heime'. Families lived separated by blankets, very little privacy. But at least they were safe. They set up food kitchens. I remember the rows of taps for washing. We had the basics of life & we had the Jewish Kadoorie School & 6 synagogues. Gradually, they set up committees to help as well. So we survived. As far as I remember, I was never hungry in Shanghai. It was difficult though: the Japanese were in charge of that part of the city. Why did the Japanese allow us to come there with no documentation, no money, nothing? One reason: they had no idea about Jews. They thought we were all rich bankers & it's good to have us on side. Another reason: the Japanese have never been antisemitic. There's never been any antisemitism in Japan or in China. Things went quite well. People started founding businesses, coffee houses. They called it Little Vienna. My father started making handbags. He managed to get a little shop in East Yuhang Road. He made masks: the Japanese all wear masks. They made bomber heads for the Japanese in leather. They managed to make a bit of a living. They used the sewing machine from Vienna. Gradually, people started to move out of the Heime because of no privacy. The committee lent people money to buy houses. We just had one room. Four beds next to each other, a big table with the sewing machine. A bathtub in the courtyard. Next to that, what was called the honeypot: a non-flush toilet, where they pick up the waste every morning at 6 o'clock. Next to that: a little stove. Very basic, but we were alive. No fridges, nothing like that. You had to go every day to the market for fresh food. You had to boil everything because of typhoid, cholera, dysentery. The next big thing that happened was war between Japan & America, the attack on Pearl Harbour. That changed things radically. The Sephardim could no longer help us because they had British passports & were interned in a camp called Lunghua. The Nazis sent over a top Nazi from Tokyo called Meisinger. His idea was to put all the Jews on three big ships, blow them up & sink it in the Yangtze. The Japanese said ‘We're going to think about this first.’ Luckily for us, they said ‘We’re really not interested in this. What we will do is will confine them in a smaller area, a kind of a ghetto.’ So, they gave us 6 months to go into a slightly smaller area. In ‘44 they started bombing in Shanghai. In early ‘45, there was a Japanese radio station near where we lived. The Americans wanted to bomb this radio station. One of the bombs went astray & hit a Jewish old people's home. 33 Jews were killed that day. That was the worst part. But generally, the Japanese were as decent as you could—don't forget, it was wartime. It was wartime. I would say probably looking back & having studied history, it was the safest place for Jews on Earth. 934: The Safest Place For Jews On Earth Kurt Wick 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 934: The Safest Place For Jews On Earth ← Previous Memory All Memories Next Memory → Kurt Wick Read Full Text Previous Memory Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Edited from Kurt Wick's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, June 2023 • Learn More → Kurt Wick Emigration To Shanghai Ghetto Incarceration Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts China See Locations Full Text August 1939: Kurt Wick & family leave Vienna for Trieste and Shanghai: Unfortunately, quite a few high up Jewish leaders said, ‘It's not a good country for you. Lots of crime, lots of opium, drugs, criminality, brothels. It's dangerous.’ It put quite a few people off. My mother's mother, sister & brother stayed behind. They didn't want to go. Unfortunately, they were all killed, like most people. Kurt was two when he arrived in Shanghai. We didn't have any homes. We had no food, we had no money, we had nothing. Luckily for us there was a Sephardic community there from the 1850s. The Sassoons, the Kadoories & the Hardoons, about 700 Jewish Sephardim there. They owned most of the Bund, a lot of the properties, they had palatial houses. They decided to help. So, they bought up empty warehouses in an area of Shanghai called Hongkew, bombed in ’32 by the Japanese. Cheap primitive properties known as 'Heime'. Families lived separated by blankets, very little privacy. But at least they were safe. They set up food kitchens. I remember the rows of taps for washing. We had the basics of life & we had the Jewish Kadoorie School & 6 synagogues. Gradually, they set up committees to help as well. So we survived. As far as I remember, I was never hungry in Shanghai. It was difficult though: the Japanese were in charge of that part of the city. Why did the Japanese allow us to come there with no documentation, no money, nothing? One reason: they had no idea about Jews. They thought we were all rich bankers & it's good to have us on side. Another reason: the Japanese have never been antisemitic. There's never been any antisemitism in Japan or in China. Things went quite well. People started founding businesses, coffee houses. They called it Little Vienna. My father started making handbags. He managed to get a little shop in East Yuhang Road. He made masks: the Japanese all wear masks. They made bomber heads for the Japanese in leather. They managed to make a bit of a living. They used the sewing machine from Vienna. Gradually, people started to move out of the Heime because of no privacy. The committee lent people money to buy houses. We just had one room. Four beds next to each other, a big table with the sewing machine. A bathtub in the courtyard. Next to that, what was called the honeypot: a non-flush toilet, where they pick up the waste every morning at 6 o'clock. Next to that: a little stove. Very basic, but we were alive. No fridges, nothing like that. You had to go every day to the market for fresh food. You had to boil everything because of typhoid, cholera, dysentery. The next big thing that happened was war between Japan & America, the attack on Pearl Harbour. That changed things radically. The Sephardim could no longer help us because they had British passports & were interned in a camp called Lunghua. The Nazis sent over a top Nazi from Tokyo called Meisinger. His idea was to put all the Jews on three big ships, blow them up & sink it in the Yangtze. The Japanese said ‘We're going to think about this first.’ Luckily for us, they said ‘We’re really not interested in this. What we will do is will confine them in a smaller area, a kind of a ghetto.’ So, they gave us 6 months to go into a slightly smaller area. In ‘44 they started bombing in Shanghai. In early ‘45, there was a Japanese radio station near where we lived. The Americans wanted to bomb this radio station. One of the bombs went astray & hit a Jewish old people's home. 33 Jews were killed that day. That was the worst part. But generally, the Japanese were as decent as you could—don't forget, it was wartime. It was wartime. I would say probably looking back & having studied history, it was the safest place for Jews on Earth. 934: The Safest Place For Jews On Earth Kurt Wick Edited from Kurt Wick's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, June 2023 • Learn More → Text adapted and edited by Susanna Kleeman Facebook & Instagram Posts

976: Coming To England Alone Aged 5 Hannah Wurzburger, age 5, was on the last Kindertransport from Berlin. She left on September 1, 1939, and arrived in Britain on September 2: Hannah Wurzburger 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 Hannah Wurzburger's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, March 2018 • Learn More → Hannah Wurzburger Close Family Murdered Kindertransport Not Remembering Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts England See Locations Full Text Hannah Wurzburger, age 5, was on the last Kindertransport from Berlin. She left on September 1, 1939, and arrived in Britain on September 2: It's a bottomless pit. So absolutely appalling. Children are so vulnerable. Especially when they're separated from their family. I don't know how they can do this. The whole thing is just a nightmare. Terrible. It took a long time to... accept the situation that I had gone through. Hannah's parents & most of her family were murdered in the Holocaust. I left Berlin when I was 5, so I don't have much recollection there. I do remember coming downstairs & saying, “Hello!” to my mother. And she said, “Oh you don’t have to say hello.” My father teaching me a few things in English: “Let me broom the kitchen”, for instance. I was on the last Kindertransport. It was September, a couple of days before they declared war here. I don't remember the journey. I seem to have a picture—whether it's made up or not—of being with lots of children. This train—I think I had actually a teddy bear. My mother I remember, I think, at the station. I don’t know how they got me there. It may be an imaginary thing. I don't know. What you think you remember is probably more important than what actually happened. I don't remember anything of the journey or arriving here. I had an aunt over here. A little while after I left Berlin there was a letter from my mother. A card perhaps with a photo. I can't remember exactly. But that was it. That was all. My aunt went regularly to the—was it the Home Office where you went, to inquire about refugees? Who had escaped & managed to come over? They had lists of names. She went there regularly. She was not worldly, she had such a struggle, she did really quite a lot. But she—she didn’t come up with any family names. I didn't understand my situation. I wasn't very worldly. I mean I just took everything that was thrown at me & there was quite a lot! You accepted it & relied on your fellow sufferers, if you like, for friendship & talking & so on. There was no... It all seemed to be very... narrowed down & concentrated…" If I hadn’t been forced to leave. I think I would have probably learned to play some musical instrument from my parents, both of them. It's fascinating to think about. My life would have been totally, totally different. No one's life follows a smooth path, does it? We're all going all over the place. But. My life certainly would have probably been more stable. I do think Britain should take more child refugees. They seem to have the size & space. But there's this backlash of native people who say, “We get all these refugees, all these bloody foreigners.” They're afraid they're going to impact on their lives, take away their jobs & whatever. But I think there's still room in this country for many more. They've just got to be gradually assimilated at the beginning. You can't just throw them in. But you have to remember, there's no such thing as blue-blooded Englishman, never has been. They've always had foreigners. 976: Coming To England Alone Aged 5 Hannah Wurzburger Edited from Hannah Wurzburger's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, March 2018 • Learn More → Text adapted and edited by Susanna Kleeman Facebook & Instagram Posts

England Bury St Edmunds Memories 952: Interned On My 16th Birthday John Goldsmith In 1940, on my 16th birthday, I was writing an English essay & looking through the window & I saw a policeman... Previous Location Next Location

Anschluss Memories 937: Eichmann Asking For Chopped Liver Fred Barschak On Saturday: elderly Jews scrubbing the pavements & marvellous shouts of ‘At last, Hitler’s found work for the Jews!' Read Full Memory 939: How To Bake A Stuffed Pike Fred Barschak The building still exists. Right next to the Prater, the great playground. But when I went back 25 years later I was disappointed... Read Full Memory 956: Getting To Grips With It Gerti Baruch On Sundays in Vienna my father used to take me to Café Siller, along the Promenade. He used to read the paper... Read Full Memory Previous Experience Next Experience

See Locations Algeria 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... Read Full Memory Ben Chicao Mostaganem Oran Sidi Bel Abbès Locations Previous Country Next Country

995: Father's Shop Harry Bibring BEM Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Harry Bibring, Vienna, 1938: It was perfectly OK to try & obtain Jewish property by purchasing it at a peppercorn price. There was actually an official place in Vienna called the Vermögensverkehrsstelle where a Nazi could go & say, “I’d like to buy a tailor’s shop”, or,“I’d like to buy a flat”, or whatever. I picked up some documents in the '70s in the Austrian State Archives: a man wished to buy my father’s shop for 5,000 Reichsmark, about £200. It was argued that my father’s shop was in debt. That wasn’t surprising, because he hasn’t any customers since the Anschluss. If it had happened, my whole life would have been different. Because my father would have lost his shop to these people. I don’t know why it didn’t go through. If it had gone through, the shop would have survived the war. I would have come back after the war, got my father’s shop back, possibly lived in Vienna. Follow in his footsteps. That’s a possibility. But because that didn’t happen, on Kristallnacht it was destroyed. What happened was this: on November 10 my father disappeared. The last employee that my father still had working for him, a non-Jewish man, a family friend, he phoned up & said my father hadn’t arrived at the shop. We found out afterwards that my father was arrested, together with other men from our block, from surrounding blocks. They were transported by a van to a jail, & locked up for 10 days. 12 to a cell. Fed on bread & water under the cell flap. No exercise whatsoever, except to bring them out for the wardens to amuse themselves & abuse them in various ways. We didn’t know any of that. Later that same day, Nazis came to our flat. And took my mother, [sister] Gerti & me, initially to the headquarters of the local Nazi Party. There were eventually about 30 women & children in this room. We were then marched through the streets for about an hour, flanked front, back & sideways with guards. And brought to a flat way out from where we lived. Some woman’s flat, a Jewish woman, living alone, in a large flat. She wasn’t told we were coming. We were told we had to stay there until further notice. We were actually relieved. I think all of us expected, although none of us said it, that we were being marched to a train station to go to a concentration camp. This was happening all over the city, though we didn’t know at that time. We stayed there for some time & had to find a way of getting food. Eventually Gerti was sent out to buy food. She was told where the local shops were. She took all the money that the old woman had in the flat & that other people had in their purses. She came back with a load of root vegetables, which was clever because they aren't perishable. Every root vegetable that you could think of. So we were all stuck there. After about ten days, somebody came & told us to go home. And when we were going home, we met my father coming from this prison—which we didn’t know he was in—from the opposite direction. We were reunited outside the front door. The scene is indescribable: a happy & sad scene. My father told us what happened to him, & we told him what had happened to us. It was then that he cleaned himself up & went to the shop & found it was totally destroyed. Not a pair of trousers left from his shop. Everything that was breakable was broken. It was also the point when my father told us that he was thinking of emigrating. Because now he can’t earn any money. There’s not much in the bank anymore. So talk started about emigrating. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Adapted from Harry Bibring's interview with Dr Jana Buresova for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, February 2018 • Learn More → Harry Bibring BEM Arrested Destruction Of Property Encounter With Nazi Officials Hitler Youth November Pogrom / Kristallnacht Reunited Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Austria Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

Judith Steinberg Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive Memories 954: Arriving In Auschwitz Judith Steinberg We were put in a big school hall, we were all sitting on the floor with a rucksack. They said we are going to go to work... Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

Ruth Barnett MBE Read full biography at The AJR / Refugee Voices Testimony Archive Memories 931: Let Down Too Many Times Ruth Barnett MBE My mother appeared out of nowhere. Which was how I experienced it: the grown-ups made arrangements & then I was told... Read Full Memory Previous Person Next Person

Ruth Edwards was 12 and a half years old when she came to England from Vienna in 1939: I was on the train and saw my father crying. That made me cry. My mother said, perhaps she doesn't want to go. I said, yes, I do want to go. I remember saying that but not in English of course and the next thing is we were gone. It was a very quick goodbye. Nobody thought that we would never seem them again. I thought it would be a matter of six or seven months and we would be together again. Ruth came to Britain on a domestic service visa. Her parents escaped to Yugoslavia, but were murdered in Zagreb during the Second World War. I got a Red Cross letter in 1945. There was a very good man, a Mr Bloom, who lived just around the corner from us [in Macclesfield]. After the war he used to come in with all the names of people who'd survived. I went through everything & never found their names on it or any of my family names. In 1945 I got an official letter from the Red Cross that they were shot in Zagreb. It would have been nice for them to see me. I know how much pleasure my grandchildren have given me. I used to have the older ones staying with me overnight. I used to take them back on a Sunday to my son and we used to say, "Do you want us to come up every week? It is too much." And he used to say "Mum, you don't know about grandparents, what it is. We never had them so let my children enjoy it." And we have. We have had a very good relationship with all four. It is wonderful, which my parents never had. 964: The Next Thing Is We Were Gone Ruth Edwards 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 964: The Next Thing Is We Were Gone ← Previous Memory All Memories Next Memory → Ruth Edwards Read Full Text Previous Memory Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Edited from Ruth Edwards' interview with Dr Rosalyn Livshin for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, September 2003 • Learn More → Ruth Edwards Close Family Murdered Finding Out Recovery Red Cross Letters Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts England See Locations Full Text Ruth Edwards was 12 and a half years old when she came to England from Vienna in 1939: I was on the train and saw my father crying. That made me cry. My mother said, perhaps she doesn't want to go. I said, yes, I do want to go. I remember saying that but not in English of course and the next thing is we were gone. It was a very quick goodbye. Nobody thought that we would never seem them again. I thought it would be a matter of six or seven months and we would be together again. Ruth came to Britain on a domestic service visa. Her parents escaped to Yugoslavia, but were murdered in Zagreb during the Second World War. I got a Red Cross letter in 1945. There was a very good man, a Mr Bloom, who lived just around the corner from us [in Macclesfield]. After the war he used to come in with all the names of people who'd survived. I went through everything & never found their names on it or any of my family names. In 1945 I got an official letter from the Red Cross that they were shot in Zagreb. It would have been nice for them to see me. I know how much pleasure my grandchildren have given me. I used to have the older ones staying with me overnight. I used to take them back on a Sunday to my son and we used to say, "Do you want us to come up every week? It is too much." And he used to say "Mum, you don't know about grandparents, what it is. We never had them so let my children enjoy it." And we have. We have had a very good relationship with all four. It is wonderful, which my parents never had. 964: The Next Thing Is We Were Gone Ruth Edwards Edited from Ruth Edwards' interview with Dr Rosalyn Livshin for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, September 2003 • Learn More → Text adapted and edited by Susanna Kleeman Facebook & Instagram Posts