Thread by @AJRefugeeVoices

After his #Kindertransport, Stefan Ruff was housed in a Jewish old age home in Walton-on-the-Naze.

"I was a little distressed. The great aim was to get a family to take you into their home. Nobody ever showed any interest in me. I was most upset. I thought ‘Why don’t they’?"
1/8

"From there we were shipped to another refugee camp: Clayton House, near Ipswich. My father placed an advert in the British pharmaceutical press before they went to Shanghai, March of 1939, asking if anybody would want me. A pharmacist in Glasgow volunteered, a Christian family."

"I stayed with that family. But, at that time, school-leaving age was 14. The thought of me going to school after 14 or even going to university never entered their head. As far as they were concerned, I was 14, I didn’t need to go to school, I needed to find somewhere to work."

"I was a fairly badly behaved child, not very good.They were Christians anyway, so in the end, after about 2 or 3 months, they went to the Jewish community in Glasgow & said ‘For God’s sake, take this bastard away!’ You know, to put it bluntly, I think. I was 14 & a bit stroppy."

"Luckily for me—this is how I never plan anything, it always works out alright—luckily for me there was a family in Kirkcudbright called Sassoon. David Sassoon, an artist. They had a seaside hut on Carrick Shore. They were offering holidays to refugee children in this hut."

5/8

"The Jewish community put me there. It was absolutely idyllic, one of the happiest holidays I can remember. Other refugee boys were there. I’m still in touch with them. I got back to Glasgow & the Jewish community was running a hostel for refugees in Hill Street. I was put there"

"But war started on September 3rd. A group of us were sent to a farm in Perthshire. Then we were taken off that farm & put onto a smallholding. Lovely place, a Mrs Campbell, a village called Glencarse. In the summer holidays I worked on a pig farm, taught me a lot about pigs."

"Then the Jewish community in Glasgow opened a Jewish evacuation hostel for Jewish children in Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbrightshire, & I was shipped there. Went to Castle Douglas High School for my 3rd year at school & then Kirkcudbright Academy for my 4th & 5th."

"I didn’t have parents who'd gone to war. I was being looked after, we had plenty to eat, we had no problems. Money wasn’t a problem, everything was done for us. It was alright, fine."

Photos show Stefan in Vienna, 1936 & during our interview, 2004.
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