Émigré Voices. Conversations with Jewish Refugees from Germany and Austria

328 Pages·19.28 MB·English

by  Bea Lewkowicz, Anthony Grenville (eds.)

Émigré Voices
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Yearbook of the Research Centre
for German and Austrian
Exile Studies
Editorial Board
Charmian Brinson, Imperial College London
Jana Barbora Buresova, IMLR, University of London
Rachel Dickson, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum
Richard Dove, University of Greenwich
Anthony Grenville, Association of Jewish Refugees
Andrea Hammel, Aberystwyth University
Bea Lewkowicz, IMLR, University of London
Sarah MacDougall, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum
Marian Malet, IMLR, University of London
Anna Nyburg, Imperial College London
Andrea Reiter, University of Southampton
J.M. Ritchie†
Jennifer Taylor, IMLR, University of London
Ian Wallace†
VOLUME 21
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ygae
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Émigré Voices
Conversations with Jewish Refugees from
Germany and Austria
By
Bea Lewkowicz
Anthony Grenville
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lewkowicz, Bea, author. | Grenville, Anthony, author.
Title: Émigré voices : conversations with Jewish refugees from Germany
 and Austria / by Bea Lewkowicz, and Anthony Grenville.
Other titles: Conversations with Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2022] | Series: Yearbook Research
 Centre German & Austrian exile studies, 1388-3720 ; vol. 21 | Includes
 index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021041836 (print) | LCCN 2021041837 (ebook) | ISBN
 9789004469075 (paperback) | ISBN 9789004472891 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Jewish refugees—Great Britain—Interviews. | World War,
 1939-1945—Personal narratives, Jewish. | Jews, German—Great
 Britain—Social conditions—20th century. | Jews, Austrian—Great
 Britain—Social conditions—20th century. | World War,
 1939-1945—Jews—Germany—Sources. | World War,
 1939-1945—Jews—Austria—Sources. | Jews, German—Great
 Britain—History—20th century—Sources. | Jews, Austrian—Great
 Britain—History—20th century—Sources. | Holocaust survivors—Great
 Britain—Interviews. | Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain.
Classification: LCC DS135.E6 A147 2022 (print) | LCC DS135.E6 (ebook) |
 DDC 941.00492/4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021041836
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021041837
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 1388-3720
ISBN 978-90-04-46907-5 (paperback)
ISBN 978-90-04-47289-1 (e-book)
Copyright 2022 by Bea Lewkowicz and Anthony Grenville. Copyright of interviews remains with
Bea Lewkowicz. Photographs courtesy of interviewees’ private archives. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV,
Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink,
Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress.
Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for
re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
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In memory of Professor Ian Wallace (1942–2021)
∵
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Der Vertriebene
Nicht immer ist das Wandern des Müllers Lust
Denn nicht alle Wanderwege sind freiwillig.
Wer die Wahl hat, kann sich glücklich wähnen,
Denn keine Wahl ist manchmal auch eine Qual.
Auch das Wandern kann zur Qual werden
Und dieses Wandern entbehrt aller Lust
Auch wenn man ein Bächlein rauschen hört
Und hat man den sicheren Ort gefunden –
Die Angst bleibt trotzdem hängen.
The Refugee
To go a-wandering is not always the miller’s delight
For not all paths we wander are freely chosen.
Those who have the choice can consider themselves
fortunate,
For sometimes not to have a choice is also a torment.
Wandering too can become a torment
And this wandering lacks all pleasure
Even if one hears a little brook babbling
And has found the place of safety –
Still, the fear stays with you.
unpublished poem, written by Hans Seelig, 2000
∵
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgements x
Figures xi
Introduction: The Exhibition 1
Anthony Grenville
Introduction: The Interviews 5
Bea Lewkowicz
1 Doris Balacs 13
2 Norbert Brainin 35
3 Anton Walter Freud 56
4 Richard Grunberger 85
5 Daisy Hoffner 113
6 Lucie Kaye (Schachne) 145
7 Judith Kerr 174
8 Elly Miller 198
9 Lord Claus Moser, Baron Moser KCB CBE 222
10 Andrew Sachs 238
11 Hans Seelig 261
12 Wolfgang Suschitzky 299
Index 313
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Preface
This Yearbook is different from the Centre’s other Yearbooks, which normally
showcase articles in the field of Exile Studies. In this Yearbook, we are giving
‘the subjects’ of our scholarly endeavours the opportunity to speak for them-
selves and the reader the opportunity to learn about the fascinating lives of the
twelve interviewees presented in this volume through the narrative lens of oral
history interviews. All twelve interviews with Jewish refugees from Germany
and Austria presented in this volume were conducted by Dr Bea Lewkowicz
from June 2001 to February 2002, in preparation for a film installation of the
‘Continental Britons’ exhibition at the Jewish Museum. Twenty years later, we
are excited to share the interviews with a broader audience. While the inter-
views have been edited for the purpose of this publication, the authors aimed
to stay as close as possible to the original interviews. We chose to give this vol-
ume the title of ‘Émigré Voices’ because we feel that the conversations in this
book evoke the wider ‘émigré culture’ of the interviewees who came to Britain
as refugees. This does not imply that each of the interviewees would have iden-
tified herself/himself as an émigré.
In this short introduction, Dr Grenville will contextualise the interviews by
looking at the background of the exhibition, and Dr Lewkowicz will introduce
the interviewees and recall the actual recordings of the interviews in 2001. The
last surviving interviewee, Elly Miller, sadly passed away in August 2020. This
book is dedicated to her and the memory of the other eleven interviewees:
Doris Balacs, Norbert Brainin, Anton Walter Freud, Richard Grunberger, Daisy
Hoffner, Lucie Kaye (Schachne), Judith Kerr, Claus Moser (Baron Moser), An-
drew Sachs, Hans Seelig, and Wolfgang Suschitzky.
The publication of this book also marks the 80th anniversary of the Asso-
ciation of Jewish Refugees (AJR). This volume is a fitting tribute to an organi-
zation which has provided invaluable support and help to its member in the
past eight decades and which today proudly supports and funds resources for
Holocaust education in Britain.
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Acknowledgements
The editors of this volume wish to thank the Martin Miller and Hannah Norbert
Miller Trust for its support for the production of the volume. We are grateful to
our peer reviewer for his careful reading of the text and for his perceptive and
helpful comments. We are also grateful to our copy editor, Stephanie Homer,
who contributed significantly to the preparation of the manuscript for publi-
cation and to Kristin Baumgartner for her work on the interviews. We thank
Wendel Scholma, our editor at Brill, whose patience and forbearance helped us
to bring this volume to fruition at a particularly difficult time. Lastly, we wish
to pay tribute to Amanda Riddick, who acted as copy editor for the Yearbook
for several years and who sadly passed away in 2020. Finally, we would like to
thank all the interviewees for generously having shared their stories.
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