Gertrude Black, Munich:
"On the #Kristallnacht, the 9th November, my husband disappeared. I phoned my mother-in-law & said my husband hadn’t come home. She got very agitated & said he must have been taken away. He looked very Jewish. There he is, very Jewish, you can see…"
1/9
"On the #Kristallnacht, the 9th November, my husband disappeared. I phoned my mother-in-law & said my husband hadn’t come home. She got very agitated & said he must have been taken away. He looked very Jewish. There he is, very Jewish, you can see…"
1/9
"They interned him in Dachau. I sat there with a child, really beside myself, nothing I could do. I was still breastfeeding & I was very terrible, alone with the baby. My parents-in-law sent my nephew; he was 13. You know it’s very eerie for a young woman, alone with a baby…"
"Nearly every shop in Munich had a poster ‘we will not serve Jews here.’ But neighbours would offer to shop for you & offer money. A whole lot of very decent Germans helped us. So I don’t have this terrible hatred like some do. There were very very kind people…"
3/9
3/9
"If you go against the government & they intern you, you might still do it. But, if they say we’ll take your children or your wife, you will not open your mouth. I understand, it's only human, you keep your mouth shut. That’s what they did in Germany: absolute terror…"
4/9
4/9
"Neighbours, they’d dare hardly speak to you in case they were caught speaking to a Jew. Go on the other side of the road. Our main sales lady spoke to customers: ‘It’s terrible, our boss is interned in Dachau, there’s a young woman with a newborn baby, how can they get out’?"
"This woman said: ‘I'm a Quaker. Get your boss’s wife to write a letter to Edinburgh Friends House, they’ll probably help her. So I sat down & wrote a letter to whom it may concern. I put in a little photo. In those days you photographed the children naked on a bear skin…"
6/9
6/9
"British people are very charity minded, all the people who have enough to live & are older, all do voluntary work. This lady in Edinburgh saw that photo. Her husband was a minister of the Church of Scotland & had been a missionary in China, a Mr Hope Moncrieff…"
7/9
7/9
"The papers were all full of how terrible for the Jews in Germany. He said: ‘We should do something’. She said: ‘I just saw this morning a photo of a baby with the parents; they looked so innocent. I think we take them’. So they offered us a home…"
8/9
8/9
The photos show Gertrude with her husband & daughters, Glasgow, 1955 + Gertrude during our interview, 2004.
Read more: ajrrefugeevoices.org.uk/RefugeeVoices/…
9/9
Read more: ajrrefugeevoices.org.uk/RefugeeVoices/…
9/9
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
