Survivors & Witnesses
in Western  North 
Carolina 

 

Name: Jan Kahn 

Lifespan:

Birthplace: 

Parents:  

Siblings:

Children: 

Grandchildren:  

BAUMGARTEN

BLUM

BRAUN 

CHICOREL

COLIJN

FRIEDLANDER 

FELDSTEIN

HELLER, Max 

HELLER, Trude S. 

HOFFMAN

JANOWITZ 

KAHN

MAJEROWICZ

REICH

REISER, Peter

REISER, Rita

RUDOW

STRAUS

TUSHAK

VANDERWART , Joseph

VANDERWART, Jeanette

WELLISCH 

ZIFFER

Mums story:

It was 1940 the first time we heard the guns. We were away when Chamberlain waved that sheet of paper in the air while declaring 'Peace in our time.' We had gone away because we thought there was going to be a war. We had left London again and were on holiday at Worthing with the Bernards [my fathers business partners wife and two children.] Worthing is on the coast and the house we were renting was very close to the water. They were shelling (in France) across the channel but when I said I could hear guns, Dora (Bernard) said, no, that's not gunfire that's the wind I said "that is guns, I know a gun when I hear it." We read about it in the paper the next day. We came home and I think we went back to London to pack before we left for Devon with Aylsa.

It was the middle of the summer, we were in Columpton, Devonshire staying at ? when the coast guards were shooting the planes down in Hyde park and you said, "Isn't Hitler silly, doesn't he know we've got guns? They were bombing all over the place, nowhere was safe when we left. We'd hear the planes at night, they'd come in from Germany flying over to bomb the Bristol Channel. Every night I had the same dream. There were Nazis at my door coming to arrest me. When Churchill gave his famous speech, "We'll fight them in the trenches...." you were pushing your toy pram [baby carriage] and I was listening to the radio, I remember I was standing up and I was 'crying as I listened. I was so impressed with his speech...we were going to fight on and on...we certainly were not winning at the time...we would fight to the last man as it was. I didn't know we would be leaving England then, it was after that that I got the call.

We were with the nanny when your father called. He said, "We've got a chance for you to go to America." I told him, "I don't want to go to America." He insisted, "I want you to go. I've already spoken to Nat. We want you and Alisa to go with the children." So I went back to London. We were staying at the Mount Royal and Ailsa and we girls had lunch with our two mothers at John Lewis’s restaurant. Both mothers agreed that they didn't want us to go but we should to protect the children as we would be safe in America. [What about the journey?] Everybody knew that the water was bad but it was the only way, they weren't transporting women and children by plane in those days.

I would wake up terrified night after night after my dream and, I think, now that I look back that made it easier to leave England. I think Joe explained to me that if Hitler invaded England, maybe, alone, he could get away, but with the three of us we couldn't get away.

We were booked on the Dutchess of Atholl. It was part of the Canadian Pacific Line and had been put to war work. All the people who were leaving England had had to get a Visa, some had waited up to three days bunked outside until they were issued their Visa's, the American Embassy was to small to accommodate all the people so the were using the ballroom of the Grovesnor House, it was the largest ballroom in England. We were lucky, we had had connections, Nat knew someone in the film business, so we did not have to endure that long vigil. We had had a lot of discussions before we left. When we returned from Devon, we were told we had to get the visa's and sign for them but it had been prearranged by Joe Kennedy's brother, the one who was in the film business.*

We left right after the Battle of Britain. Our journey started in July. We bought all new clothes, our husbands had told us to go out and buy anything we wanted. Of course, when you have that kind of an invitation you really don't know what you want. Sylvia [Mums friend] came with me to shop and we were in Gallery Lafayette in Regent Street and my bag disappeared. I went to the police station and I was told "we have hundreds of reports of these every day but thank you for letting us know."

The day we were to leave England, we all took the train from London to Liverpool together, the Coven family [Ailsa and Nat with their two daughters Jackie age 7 and Angie age 4] and you, your father and me. The Duchess of Atholl left from Liverpool. As we got off the train to get on the ship, there was an air raid warning, the sirens went off. The mothers and children went one way, the fathers another. The all clear sounded and we were hurriedly herded on to the waiting ship with no time for a real goodbye.

As we reached the deck I could see your father anxiously pointing to a furry toy lion, it had a loose eye and a long black hairy main. It was both a toy and a pajama case with a zipper running down the lion's back. He was frantically pointing to it and mouthing that you had left it. Actually it was more important than it looked, because it looked like, and was, a cuddly toy, it was also my emergency bank. For this journey, it housed my diamond bracelet which was our insurance in case we ran short of money. Joe was able to persuade an attendant to take the lion on board and give it to me for "his little girl."

The ship immediately began to pull away from the dock, we only had time to wave and mouth our good byes. We stared after them wondering what was ahead for each of us. lf we would see our parents again, I wondered about my sister, Bea and Joe, what would become of us? We watched them for as long as we could then we went to settle into the cabins. Our cabin had three bunks, one above the other and one underneath the window which is where Nat’s partner, Jerry Rafer’s sister, slept. So many young Jewish men were killed during the war, Sylvia's two brothers were in the air force and were shot down, one was parachuting from the plane. I remember what naughty little boys they were!

Sol Yager had a plane and he flew out and signaled us goodbye because EttyYager* [Sol was the founder of BEA now British Airways] and their son was also on the boat. It took the ship a week to reach Montreal. We had been told we would have an escort for the journey. A plane did fly along with us as an escort the first day but only for the first day, the next day it peeled away to return to England and we were on our own. Everybody knew we had no escort and we had no guns, either, we were all worried and nervous. Once we settled down it wasn't quite as we expected. All the time you could hear children crying, it never stopped. The boat was full of all young children except for a few people traveling over to America on business. The sky was reserved for warfare at that time so everyone else traveled by ship.

Once on the boat you [me] didn't eat anything, just tasted the food. The Cohen kids ate everything in sight. We were to scared to even think about being scared. It was much more scary on the ship than staying home in London. I had a pendent crystal watch and all the family pictures that I had wanted to take with me. I had bought a beaver coat and when we got to America a lot of moths flew out of the trunk but I couldn't see where they had eaten anything so I wasn't worried. We knew that the winters were severe and the summers were hotter than in England. Once we were on the ship, we settled on a table where we would eat our meals.

We had our own three little girls and another young girl who was the younger sister of Nat’s partner. We were to deliver her to a family in Montreal. We brought her back to England with us when we returned. By then Nat's partner been killed when the Germans bombed the Café de Paris, he was on leave, everybody thought the Café de Paris was safe because it was underground but there was no building above it so nothing was there to protect it, and it was full of people. Several of our friends were killed the night that it was bombed. I wish I could remember their names. [The Cafe de Paris was later rebuilt but the night it was bombed was mentioned throughout my childhood. My dad took me there to see Shirley Bassey when I was 18, he talked about the bombing that night, too.]

We all knew that most of the ships that left England had had escorts. After ours left it was tense the whole time. We were always on alert to put on our life jackets but we would have been an easy target because we were just a big ship floating around. [The Duchess of Atholl was 20119 tons, 581 feet long by 75 feet wide at waterline. Driven by steam turbines, she had two masts and two funnels and carried 580 cabin class, passengers, 480 tourist class, and 510 in third class. She was launched July 13, 1928 and her maiden voyage was from Liverpool to Quebec and Montreal. She was torpedoed and sunk in the South Atlantic on a voyage from the Near East to England on October10, 1942.] I began to have terrible stomach pain, so Ailsey insisted I see the ships' doctor. He said it was my appendix, he put me in the ships’ hospital which was a room with a couple of beds in it. I spent the night there Aisley looked after you and put you to bed. And the next day they were going to operate, well, the ship was hooting a peculiar noise and it stopped. It just stopped moving. I thought, "this is it they're coming in with the knife to operate on me." Then the doctor came in and said don’t worry, we’ve stopped because we’ve sighted an iceberg." I was left there, anticipating surgery, for another few hours. When he came back he said, "If you can possibly get up, get up because we're nearly there and I have to put in two children with measles, and if you're in the same room with them I have to put you in quarantine, and you would have to stay on board after everybody else has got off and so will these children. So I said, "I think I can get up now." So I got up. I think it was another day before we reached Montreal. The pain came back once we got home to London and one more time after that, I think it was all nerves, each time.

We had been out at sea quite a while, we were nearer Canada than we were England. The ship stopped and they made some excuse. They had let off a depth charge. Afterwards I noticed there was debris floating on the water. I could see bits of wood, bits of steel that looked like machinery. They did not tell us anything it was never mentioned, after all it was a British ship.

Did I tell you we got you to say your name right before we got on the ship. They said it was a big ship and she had better be able to say her name. It was not long after that you learned to say more than that. One day a nice man had said to you, "Hello, my little ray of sunshine." You answered I’m not your little ray of sunshine, I’m Janice Andrea Lakin. So much for teaching you your name!

Men we arrived in Montreal, it was about 5 am, we were told that Sam Beckman was waiting for us but they couldn’t let him come aboard because of the war. I had been holding you for some time, you were heavy because I was also holding another bag, and papers for traveling and you were squirming while they made sure we weren’t spies. They let a few spies off that ship, mind you. We spent that day at the Beckman’s. We discussed what to do next. We decided to go directly to NYC, and suggested, since we didn't know where we were going to stay, that we stay at his hotel. You started screaming, "I want to go to the beach." You had been on a ship and a train and the only time you’d ever been on a train before was to go to the beach. After we unpacked we took you all out to keep you quiet.

We did stay at Sam’s hotel [Park Central] and then I had to start to search for Harry Massey. Harry had money for me. I began by phoning one or two English people that we knew to see if they knew where he was living. They suggested that we try Essex House and he was there and he was amazed that I found him. I don't think that he lived there, I think he was just with somebody. I said, "I know that some money has been transferred to you." He said, "That's true but that money is not for you, that's for Joe." And I said, "Don't be ridiculous, you know very well it’s for me and the baby. Why do you think he sent it here?" Joe can't stand the baby to go without anything, if he thought his daughter would have to go without a bar of chocolate he wouldn't have sent us here."

He said, "You'd better come and see me." So I took Sam Beckman with me and he said to Harry, "you know that money is for Elsie and the baby." He gave me a $100.

Harry then said "If Joe came here, I'd be gentleman." Sam said, "that remains to be discussed." Joe had given a relative of Harry’s who lived in England about 5000 pounds, Harry was already in America and 5000 pounds was more like 50,000 in today’s money.

It was illegal to take money out of England and so paying in pounds and receiving in dollars enabled us to survive in America. I don’t think Harry paid back that money for many, many years. In the end, Joe said he forgave Harry because he taught him everything he knew in business. Daddy [Joe] had worked for Harry [Omstein and Massof] before he opened his own business, which he opened the day he turned 21 because before that the bank would not accept his signature. Ailsie had got some money and before we left England our two husbands had made an agreement that we girls should share everything, I don't think we put it in a bank, we kept it all in cash, all together so that whoever got money, it just went into the kitty. The next week somebody phoned me, a friend of Joe’s, he took me to the opera, he took me to a birthday dinner for the chairman of the Chase bank, it was at the Pierre Hotel. I got all dressed up. I wore a black crepe long dress with an emerald green bolero with a border of colorful flowers that was printed on the dress and I perspired so much that I ruined the dress and it turned out that I had pleurisy.

I had to stay in bed for several days. [I don't think we had met Sidney Steckel yet so he wasn't our doctor. Sidney never charged us when he came, because he felt it was his contribution to the War effort] any rate, the opera, Lucia de l’Amamore, it was a French interpretation of a story that took place in Scotland, very unusual, and it was at the old opera house in New York. Monday night was the chic night to go. I thought we were going to the plaza afterwards but in the middle of the opera, they brought a horse on the stage and I gasped and sneezed and they had to take me home. Ailsie was home playing bridge. I can’t remember his name. He invited me to go to Aldrich’s, he was the chairman of the bank the Rothschild’s own. He didn’t give me money that night but he did give me money on several occasions whenever the deal was made through London. I did get that money. The next time he invited me out it was for dinner at the Pierre Hotel for Rockerfella’s cousin who was having his 70th birthday and was head of the Chase bank. The next day, to my surprise, I received flowers from a couple of the people who had been there.

Ailsie and I decided that we needed some time together without the children and that it would be a good thing if we could find someone who could walk them to the park. We found Iris. Her parents were French but she was American. When I was wheeling you along when you first came to America, you became very excited and said, "Look, Mummy, there’s a blue man." It was the first time you had seen a black man.

We found a residential hotel on West 72^nd street and we got an apartment on a high floor, and when we found out that it was cheaper to be on a lower floor we moved. But we hadn’t reckoned on the electric bill being so much higher on a lower floor. It was much darker in the apartment and so we had to keep the lights on all day. Then we moved to an apartment on 86^th street.

You had a habit of making scenes when there were plenty of people around. Sidney Steckel wanted you to see a friend of his who was a psychiatrist. We took you to his friends’ home because he didn’t want you to know that he was a psychiatrist. He gave you all sorts of tests and then he said "the shock of finding yourself suddenly with two older children, [one was two years older, the other five years older,] caused you to be too competitive because those kids knew how to schmooze to everybody. Angie would open those big blue eyes and cry when somebody was leaving, but what they didn't realize was that she did it to everybody. So everybody made a big fuss of Angie and ignored you. I think that hurt me more than it hurt you. I don't think you gave a damn.

When we first got to the hotel, maybe a week after we arrived in America there was a phone call from a man from customs. He said he would come to see me, supposedly since I had a young child he wouldn’t put me to the trouble of going there. It was something about a baby carriage that I had with me. He didn’t give me a real reason for coming and we had already been through customs three times. Once to get on the boat in Liverpool then again to get off the boat in Montreal, then to get off the train in New Yolk. I became nervous so I phoned Sam Beckman who was still in New York and I asked him what to do. Sam said, "Don’t worry about it, he may just think he’s being nice. Just make sure you’re not in the room alone with him." It turned out that he was a perfectly nice man who really was concerned that the pram had not been damaged by rough handling on the train.

I was feeling so guilty about the jewelry, and most of those customs people were really hard on us coming in. When I had you in my arms, they went through every little piece of paper, even my address book and anything they could find of personal interest, they had been quite indifferent to the crying babies and, in Liverpool, when we left, they were the worst of all. All the people who were leaving were leaving with babies and they treated us as though we were spies. The British government had encouraged any one who could go to America to go. There were people who lived in the country who took people in, just to get them out of London, some of them were treated very well and remain friends to this day and others had a very different story. You see we all thought it was very possible that the Germans would occupy England and there was a chance for a single male to escape but a man with a family would have a much harder time of it.

Sam Beckman was the only person you would go to and who could quieten [sic] you down. After Uncle Sid [Mum’s mum, Grandma Gilbert’s sister, Annie’s husband] arrived, he was staying at the hotel 42^nd street. He phoned me and said he’d like to see me and Sam Beckman said he’d like to meet him. It was good for Sam’s business as he sold fabric and Sid was a very successful coat manufacturer. Sid was in America on business, this was smiled upon by the government because export was good for the economy. I got Sam and Sid together with the idea that Sid could influence Harry Massey to honor his agreement, since both men were in the coat business. I just thought maybe Sid could get through to Harry. Sid’s response was, "I don’t understand those kind of arrangements at all." Of course he did because his own daughter, Zelda, [Mum’s cousin] had recently arrived in New York with her young daughter and ‘those kind of arrangements’ were the only way you could survive without earning a living. He refused to help. In order to avoid hard feelings, Uncle Sid invited me to go to a ball at the Waldorf Astoria. I gave him our address but unfortunately, we lived on West 64th street and he went to East 64th street which is where Mrs. Roosevelt had a house and it was at her house that Sid found himself. He eventually found our apartment and we went to the ball. He introduced me as his niece and I knew nobody believed him as I think his reputation as a ladies man had preceded him across the ocean, for some reason he took me instead of his girlfriend that night.

We lived in a state of concern about the people we had left behind. At one time they bombed a town where Ailsa’s brother was living. We had devised a code to communicate about money. We would send a telegram using a family member name according to the number in the alphabet. It went like this, "Auntie Edna is much better," meant we could expect a,b,c,d.e..,$500 soon. We would telegram back, so happy to hear Auntie Edna is better," That meant the money had been delivered.

One day a rabbi came to the door and said he wanted to see me. I was in bed. I had the ‘flu. Auntie Ailsa said, "You can’t see her, she’s in bed." He said, "I don't care, I have to see her." So I crawled out of bed. I could barely speak. He gave me about $1000. That’s one thing I must say. Your father found a way whenever he could. The deal was it had to be cash. I have no idea how it turned into dollars. None of us knew. None of us wanted to know, either. We were people who never wanted to be dishonest. Some people just promised to pay and did, in fact, pay after the war. There were some very wealthy Americans who did bring English families over and I think that was why many people returned to England during the war, they felt they were imposing after America entered.

We moved from the Franconia, that was the name of the residential hotel. I don't think it had a restaurant but they cleaned the rooms and changed the sheets. After that we decided we had better go to something more practical. Dick Michaels lived in the same hotel [he became Sylvia’s boyfriend many years later] he was in the movie business and he used to baby sit. He’d just sit and read his book at our place. In those days you didn't think about the terrible things that could happen to children, it just didn't happen. I remember the first job I ever had. The man was touching me all the time. I only stayed there a week I couldn't stand it.

We moved out of the Franconia to 64^th street, anyway the reason we moved was because we could get a very short lease there and in the summer we took a bungalow at Long Beach in Long Island. The Austins [they owned a men’s of that name in New York and London] had a bungalow there and Mickey Hyams came to stay with them. By then we knew several English people so it seemed very convenient for our friends to come out for the day. Since these friends often brought their friends we always had a house full. Ailsa did the cooking and I tidied up the place until one day when I was setting the table I heard one of them say, "Who is she?" So I put my foot down after that and told Ailsa we weren’t going to serve people we didn’t know.

I brought you into town because you were having ear aches and they said you needed your tonsils out. So I went to a tonsil specialist and I arranged that we would spend over night at Sally I can’t remember her name but her husband was the first coat manufacturer to go "public" [that is put his business in the stock market] but that was after the war. Mick Hyams had relatives in America and he invited us to visit his cousins. They had farm eggs there, they sold them. I suggested that I could help them distribute them. It never occurred to me to make a profit on it. I just sold them for what they asked and gave them all the money. Then someone said, "Imagine, now she’s down to selling eggs." That was it, they could eat stale eggs if they wanted. I stopped. I just didn't have anything else to do.

One minute it looked as though the war would end, the next minute it was on again. We realized that we had to decide what to do. We could go into business. We agreed about what the business would be; I would make hats and Elsie would sell them. We could have got a little place on Madison Avenue. We said, "If we can’t get on a ship this summer, that’s what we will do."

The way to get home was on a Portuguese ship. There were a lot of women with children who decided to return home at this time. America was now at War. You came and told us that Sunday afternoon. You said, "Pull the blinds down, the Japanese are coming." One of our friends [women] decided we should all go to Pinehurst in North Carolina together, as it would be safer than staying in New York which was such an obvious target for bombs. Several of us decided, since America was at War, we might just as well be in England where we belong.

Ailsa and I went to the tax office near Grand Central Station somewhere. We both had been given these pieces of paper that were exit permits. I had suggested to Ailsa that we put both papers together in her case because it had a lock on it. Very stupid of me. [Why that sounds sensible to me] Anybody could take the whole thing out. Anyway, when Ailsa opened it to get the papers out because we were packing to leave, mine wasn’t there. I was advised to take you with me to see the exit people, I did take you, I said to them, "I can't find it, I can't find it anywhere. I’m desperate. I’ve already got the booking on the Serpa Pinto." I don’t think anyone had brought a person of your age with them before because they went out and bought ice cream and lollipops for you and made such a fuss of you. And they gave me a new exit permit.

We sailed from Philadelphia. We then had a lovely housekeeper, her son was a musican in the......band. She did this because she wanted to be with people, hated to be alone. She came with us to Philadelphia. She cried because we were leaving. She already had another job. When we got to Philadelphia there were a whole lot of things that looked like snakes in the water. They were submarines. They were parked in the dock. It was a beautiful day, that day, the end of August. It took us a week coming over from England so we thought it would probably be about that going home but we were in the water for two weeks.

When we got on board the first thing we saw was an oversized Portuguese flag, it was painted on a huge wall made of wooden slats and it had great big lights focused on it. That was to let everyone know they were Portuguese and they were a neutral country. We couldn’t go back on an English ship then.

[The Serpa Pinto was owned by Compahia colonial De Navgacao, it was built in 1915 in Ireland and was 8267 tons, 450 feet long and 57 feet wide with twin propellers, quadruple expansion engines, two masts, one funnel it was capable of doing 14 knots and its route was from Lisbon to Santos. It was scrapped in 1955]

The food was quite good if you like eating which the Cohen kids did and, of course, you didn’t. Everybody got sea sick at some time. There was a fierce storm at sea. They didn’t warn us. We had a boat drill before but they didn’t suggest using the boats. They had put up ropes everywhere as the storm approached, and they took all the smaller children a toy or a book to read. They told the kids to lie down on the floor and play with their dolls or read their books. The adults, well, we just sat where we could, you couldn’t walk without holding on to a rope. Aylsie didn’t feel good. I felt OK, remarkably, if a trifle nervous, actually I was frightened out of my life.

Back to Elsie narrating:

The Cohen girls were hungry so they went downstairs to get something to eat from the dining room. You were lying on the floor with the other children, eating was never one of your favorite occupations. I was responsible for all the children so I thought, since you were taken care of, I’d check on the other two. I went down to the dining room. They were the only two people in the whole room. There were Angie and Jackie both eating Steaks as calm as cucumbers. I was amazed that the cook had bothered with them but the Portuguese were wonderful and would do anything for the children.

When it was time for bed, the boat was lurching around. I carried you up to the room, you had your arm around my neck and I had one arm around you and I used the other to hold on to the ledge of the bunk, instead of the bunk staying still, do you remember it came away from the wall we both started yelling "help, help." There was a journalist who had the room opposite ours, his door was open and he was typing at the time. He came across to help. I was trying to push the bunk back but it wouldn't go. I was pinned down by the bunk. [I do remembering the terror of that.] He [the journalist] got it back.

We are told that it is time for us to go to bed. My mother comes crazily toward me. She is zigging and zagging and clinging on to the ropes that have been strung all about the deck for this purpose. She grabs my arm and lifts me toward her. I, in turn, cling on the one arm of my teddy, lifting him along too. We bump into the narrow walls of the inner decks and make our way to our cabin. I can hear my mother wince and let out a little cry as she hits the walls and jerkily arrives at the doorway of the cabin. She half drops me and I lose my grip on Leo but we land on the lower bunk and my mother lands on top of us. She pulls herself up, scoots over to the little dresser and the entire bed apparatus comes away from the wall. My mother is pinned to the wall. She screams. The door of the cabin had remained open. There was and American across the hall, he had managed to continue typing during the turbulence. The door to his cabin had opened and slammed shut throughout the storm. He had heard the thud of furniture followed by my mother screaming and ran into our cabin. He grunted scarily as he heaved the bunks off my trapped mum. To me he was a hero.
Jan Kahn with her husband Fred and granddaughter Jackie (ShP37)

Mum:

It felt as though the air was going round and round. The ship was so unsteady. I think even the officers were scared. The Portuguese are well known to be excellent sailors, said to be the best. The storm lasted a few hours, there were a few accidents, a broken leg, a broken arm, nothing as bad as it could have been, mostly it was the crew who got hurt. They didn't use the life boats because the storm was so bad it would have been useless. When we got to Esteril where there was a big English colony they were so surprised to see us, we were welcomed like celebrities, they told us they didn't expect the Serpa Pinto to make it through that storm. It really was a sensational storm. It was 1943, first week in September. [During the week of September 1^st through the 9^th The U.S. Department of Commerce, Weather Bureau North Atlantic Hurricane Tracking Chart shows storm #4 reaching hurricane stage between 65 and 60 degrees latitude and 25 and 45 degrees longitude this would have directly intercepted the course between Philadelphia and Portugal. Hurricanes were not given names until 1952.]

On the way home we stopped in Madeira for the day, the ship needed supplies, the poor little children were begging on the docks, Madeira was in a bad way.

You said, "Why doesn’t America take care of them they have plenty of money."

You had been ashore with Lady Howard de Walden because when we arrived, we had just passed through that dreadful storm, and we were knocked out. She had two little granddaughters of her own and she kindly took you three children along with her own and told me you were very bright because you had said that. [My mother had told me this many, many times but this was the first time I heard it in context with the hurricane at sea. That storm had always been referred to as a ‘whirlwind’ because when I was little, I thought the boat was spinning.]

You kids had the run of the ship. The officers were wonderful with the children. They let Jackie use the typewriter. Jackie learned to type on that ship. The Portuguese were known to be very kind to children.

We stopped at one other smaller island first [the Azores] where they took on soldiers. We never saw the soldiers again on the ship I don't know where they put them presumably the lower art of the ship. When we stopped in Madeira where we took on bananas. [I remember being encouraged to eat one as I wouldn’t have the opportunity once we got to England] The ship finished the journey in Lisbon. When we arrived there were Cookes Agents telling us where we should go. We went from Lisbon to Esteril. In Esteril you and I were booked into the Hotel Palacio and Auntie Ailsie was sent to some sort of boarding house. I kicked up a fuss because we were traveling together and should remain together so they gave us the Royal Suite at the Hotel Palacio. We stayed for six weeks, our husbands were able to pay directly for that through Cookes, The Royal Suite was the center suite right above the entrance. It had a master bedroom plus a room for the children, Elsie and I shared a room and there was a sitting room too.

One night at bedtime Angie was crying. We could tell she had a high temperature and we asked the hotel to send for a doctor. He was Hindu, dark black, he told us she was seriously ill and we had better take her to the hospital immediately. He thought it might be spinal meningitis. They sent me with some specimen over to the chemist. I think we had to wait until the next day for the results. He ordered an ambulance. We left you asleep at the hotel with Jackie. The three of us rode in the ambulance with Angie. It was dark nighttime. It was the first night of the blackout in Lisbon. The blackout stretched all along the coat and I don’t know how much further, I found out later it covered the whole of Portugal. When we arrived at the hospital there were big wooden gates. They opened up a little teeny part of it and a nun looked to see who we were. The doctor spoke to her and explained. They put Angie in a bed, they told us to leave her and they would look after her. We went home. The next day I went back to pick up the result of the sample and then we went by train to the hospital. While we were there, instead of sending us out of the room, we stood there listening to that poor child scream as they took the spinal tap. Hearing Angie scream like that has never left me. It was terrible. [After that night, Angie seemed to have gained an uncanny tolerance to pain and resistant to other diseases.]

What was amazing was that there wasn’t a nun in that hospital who spoke English and yet Angie managed to get anything she wanted within reason and they could understand her. We found out that another child had come down with meningitis before Angie was diagnosed, we heard it from a cousin of the Wolfsons who lived in Portugal. Every afternoon we would take a train to Lisbon, then a tram to the hospital, we both went because it was difficult to go by yourself, we couldn’t speak Portuguese so it helped for us to go together. By then everybody at the hotel knew what was going on so the English Rothschilds took it in turns to take you and Jackie out for a walk. You loved that because you said whenever the Rothschilds took you out, they bought you ice cream. One day when I returned to the hospital, you said, "A new Japanese spy has arrived." Little did I know until after the war, so many stories would be written about the spying that went on in Portugal. Another time Angie said that a friend of ours had come to visit her in the hospital. He had told her that he was the Secretary General of the Red Cross and was there to make arrangements for all the children from the countries at war to receive oranges. Later I read in the paper that he was arrested for drugs.

It was during the time that Angie was in the hospital that I received a call from the Ambassador’s wife. She called me to tell me that we were on the top of the list for people to return to England. She knew about Angie and that Angie wouldn't be well enough to travel. She understood when I said I could not leave until Angie was ready to travel, too. I might be needed to help carry her or to make arrangements if we had to leave suddenly. Our pact to stay together would always be honored. All the arrangements for our return journey were made by our husbands. We received instructions by letter. You couldn’t talk by phone overseas during the war.

One of the men later told me that when Angie got better and was ready to leave the hospital, the women in the hotel banned together to object, they had all thought that she might still be contagious so he invited her to stay at his house with his housekeeper who had a little girl her age until she got better. He had lived there for some time and was almost a native there and he knew the guests and the staff in that hotel. He was a music professor at the University there. He made a reception at Rosh Ha Shona for all the Jewish people around there. I think he was a bachelor and he sent me a most beautiful basket of flowers, he said it was for the way I acted when Angie was so ill.

We couldn't understand Portuguese so we did not have any idea, if Portugal entered the War, which side it would be on. Years later a Portuguese friend said as a child he hid under their refrigerator during the blackout because he thought the planes would come from Berlin.

Angie stayed with this fellow until the last minute, until we were ready to leave. We left Portugal by plane, it looked like an army plane which had just been converted for passengers. It had some folding chairs put in, they were in rows facing the front, there were no seat belts in those days. We landed in Ireland, and I insisted you had an egg and bacon for breakfast as we weren’t likely to get that again as we’d heard of the shortages in England. You did me the favour of eating it. The plane was actually a sea plane and it landed in the water near Sandbanks. We got out of it into a little boat, a row boat, it seated about 12 people. The man next to you was wearing a brand new camel’s hair coat. He had come over from America, I found out that as I apologized to him. You had vomited all over that coat.

Elsie:

We were whisked out into little private offices where a soldier stood at attention as we were questioned, I didn't think that was too welcoming.

After that we took the train to Victoria station. [This is my first cohesive memory, getting off the train, looking around and seeing a vast greenhouse with all the glass broken out…For me, my life began right there.]

I was wearing a beige suit under my new mink coat. I had bought the coat just before we left America. It was the first time not only the Jewish women were all wearing mink coats, but the Christian women were also wearing them. The spirit prevailed, "We don’t know what we’ll be doing tomorrow, so let’s enjoy to-day," it came over everybody. I had bought the suit from Sylvia Morris, she was a well-known designer in England before she opened shop on Madison Avenue, she later moved to California. She was an attractive woman with an attractive husband but I was told her son came over to America and took all her money and spent it and she died penniless. Vickie Harris* used to visit her in a home and found out that she never even got the presents Vicki took her, that the help took them, but Vicki took the gifts anyway hoping that the help would be extra nice to Sylvia in return.

Your father’s first words were, "You can’t wear that here" referring to the mink coat. I had bought that with the money we had left. You couldn’t take any American money back to England so you had to get rid of it, so what better way than with a mink coat? [Jan, if this should ever be published get some advice from a good lawyer][Why, Mum, are you worried they’ll come and get you?][No, I’m afraid they’ll pull me up from the grave.]

I had been told that I looked like a film star. In those days we got dressed up all the time. I remember stepping down the steps of the train and he was right there. [the he refers to my father] He was in uniform; he was an officer in the home guard. After he said, "you can’t wear that here," he said, "Were staying at the Savoy."

We stayed there for about a year. During these times you were only supposed to stay for about 10 days, I don’t know why but I think it had to do with spies. I think we bribed someone to be allowed to stay on. [What did you do about the bombs, Mum?] The Savoy had a basement, before we left England, we stayed at the place behind the Cumberland Hotel one street back from Oxford street. We had Zelda’s [Mum’s cousin] governess come and look after you and we all went downstairs onto the basement there and we could hear the guns going off in Hyde park and you, who were two at the time said, "Isn’t Hitler silly, doesn’t he know we’ve got guns to shoot him down."

When we came home there weren’t so many bombs because the Germans were preparing for the buzz bombs so they weren’t bombing London quite so much right after we got back.

Our rooms at the Savoy were full of lovely baskets of flowers to welcome us from the Bernards [my father’s partner] and all kinds of people, not at all what we expected. We had a suite with two bedrooms and another separate bedroom. The three girls slept in one bedroom and Elsie and Nat had the adjoining room. Joe and I had the separate bedroom. We stayed at the Savoy as long as we could but we couldn’t prolong it any longer so we went back to the same hotel we had stayed in before we left for America. That was another place you wanted to go on the beach.

[Did you hear any bombs while you were at the Savoy?] I think we must have but the people went on dancing, we did ballroom dancing, you know, the foxtrot, the waltz and the jitterbug were popular then. They would go to the Savoy basement sometimes. We went down to the basement once and we didn’t like it. When we first moved into the Savoy, we went into the Savoy theatre. It was underground. We realized that wasn’t very smart because there was nothing built above it whereas if you were in the Savoy ballroom, there were umpteen floors above. [I remember this Mum, I remember me saying to you, "What happens if the Germans bomb us here?" And do you remember what you said?] No. You said, " The Germans would never dare bomb the Savoy hotel." [and I felt safe] I don't remember saying that but I probably figured they planned to invade England and they’d need somewhere to stay so they would want to stay here, on the other hand it was right by the river, an easy target as they bombed all along the river.

One night, we were with the Cohens and we went to a movie at Leicester Square and the air raid warnings were going when we came out and we ran as fast as we could from the cinema to the Picadilly Hotel. We looked around and we could see all of London lit up from the bombing. We went downstairs into the basement of the hotel where there was a restaurant. We had dinner. When we were through eating we could hear the all clear. One night we were on Peggy’s roof where we watched the bombing, I think they were trying to bomb St. Paul’s Cathedral. It wasn't a clever thing to do, you were supposed to stay indoors when they were attacking. Nat had a friend who had a house that overlooked the park, we sat on the roof and watched the planes going out and we counted them and then when they came back we counted them again to see if any were missing.

The first buzz bomb that fell was the day we moved into Arlington House [an apartment building beside the Ritz Hotel] Joe said, "There’s something strange about that bomb, it was a different sound from the others. We’ll find out tomorrow what it is." The next day they said it was a new kind of bomb. They used to say they were aiming for Buckingham Palace and, of course, Arlington House was just a stones throw away from the palace. We used to take shelter in the hallways there because there was no glass. You had to be careful, if a bomb was a direct hit on the building, you didn’t stand a chance, but you had to watch out for shattering glass so the hallway was safer.

When the buzz bombs started there was a system. When you first beard the buzz bomb, you waited for it to go overhead. If you heard it really loud and it stopped suddenly that was the worst time, if it began to fade, you were safe. During the blackout people helped one another. You didn't have to be afraid of robberies, actually the streets in London were safer during a blackout than they are now.

We also had to consider how to get you girls out of town. Many of the poor children were offered homes in the country away from London and I think other sties as well. As we discussed it, you said you wanted to go where Angie and Jackie went. Elsie had a list of boarding schools and she showed it to me and said, "Which one do you think." And I said, "Battle Abbey." They made exceptions for the city children at that time. I took you down for an interview. [Alone] I think you interviewed the person who was supposed to be interviewing you. I remember you saying, "I understand it’s very much like camp, do we swim everyday?" You had been to camp. I think she said, "It’s similar." [I was the youngest girl in that school from kindergarten until I was thirteen. Each year after my arrival, they eliminated the class I had just been in. It was a Church of England school but there was a Jewish quota, eight girls, if one graduated, another was accepted, if three graduated, then, three new Jewish students were admitted. It was many years before I figured that one out.]

We had been back in England for a few weeks. The girls had to go to school and since you wanted to be with them [I was five] we all went down to Battle, it was near Hastings. [The school was literally built by William the Conqueror in commemoration of his victory over King Harold at the Battle of Hastings. The lake Senlac, on the estate, named for all the blood lost during that battle. The crypt, left by King Harold when he abandoned the Catholic Church and tore down the monasteries, was, in later years, the main focus from my bedroom window. The tomb, to mark the place where the arrow went into King Harold’s eye had equal high visibility from my window. My recurring dream is that the Germans are bombing directly at Harold’s tomb and I am crouching down beside it. For some reason it shelters me.]

Later the school was moved to Devon. After it moved, it took seven hours to get there. We used to come down to visit you during the holidays. We took you to the Imperial Hotel in Devon, it had a nice beach. The hotel was on a cliff and then we’d take you back to school to avoid the bombs. [I didn’t actually go home to London until the war ended, three years later.]

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