Table Of ContentWE
BUILT UP
OUR LIVES
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WE
BUILT UP
OUR LIVES
Education and Community among
Jewish Refugees Interned by Britain
in World War II
Maxine Schwartz Seller
Contributions to the Study of World History, Number 92
GREENWOOD PRESS
Westport, Connecticut • London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Seller, Maxine, 1935–
We built up our lives : education and community among Jewish refugees interned by Britain
in World War II / Maxine Schwartz Seller.
p. cm.—(Contributions to the study of world history, ISSN 0885–9159 ; no. 92)
Includes bibliographical references and index. (p. )
ISBN 0-313-31815-8 (alk. paper)
1. Refugees, Jewish—Great Britain. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Jews—Great Britain.
3. World War, 1939–1945—Concentration camps—Great Britain. 4. Jews, German—Great
Britain—History—20th century. 5. Great Britain—Ethnic relations. I. Title. II. Series.
DS135.E5S45 2001
941'.004924043—dc21 2001023340
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright 䉷 2001 by Maxine Schwartz Seller
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without
the express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001023340
ISBN: 0–313–31815–8
ISSN: 0885–9159
First published in 2001
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.greenwood.com
Printed in the United States of America
TM
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright Acknowledgment
The drawings from the Orchan Pioneer are from the journals collections of the Imperial War
Museum Department of Printed Books.
For Andrew, Levi, and Marnina—with love.
Whatever I do is wrong.
The story of blame is long,
Just listen to my song:
Like me there are quite a few;
In Germany they call me a Jew.
In Britain a “fifth columnist”;
In Russia a great capitalist,
In Spain a hot anarchist
In America a red communist.
The Truth is: I want to write,
Paint, love and fight,
For what I think is right.
Jack Bilbo
Onchan Pioneer, December 29, 1940.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 “We Had to Go”—Life in the Third Reich 17
2 From Refugees to Internees 47
3 Making the Best of It 77
4 Creating Community 113
5 Education in the Men’s Camps 151
6 Education in the Women’s Camp 183
7 Getting Out and Looking Back 213
Bibliographic Essay and Sources 247
Index 255
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people helped make this book possible. The N. Littauer Foundation pro-
vided generous support for this project. I would also like to thank the staff at
the Imperial War Museum and the Wiener Library in London, the Public Rec-
ords Office in Kew, and the Manx National Heritage on the Isle of Man for
their generous and expert assistance. The Imperial War Museum and the Manx
National Heritage graciously allowed me to use photographs and other materials
from their collections. I would also like to thank Mrs. Thea O’Rourke, Mrs. Feo
Kahn, and Peter Daniel for permission to use materials in their possession. I
would especially like to thank Yvonne Cresswell at the Manx National Heritage
for the many hours she spent helping me locate documents, artifacts, and pho-
tographs from the museum’s collections and for putting me in touch with in-
formants on the Isle of Man. Friends and colleagues in London, Miriam David,
Gaby Weinar, Ann Kershen, Louise London, and William Fishman provided
important background information and helped locate a number of my respon-
dents. I thank them all.
At the University at Buffalo Mary Beth Boger translated newspaper passages
from the German, and Gloria Gibson and Susan Ott did a skillful job of editing
and proofreading. Their help was greatly appreciated. I also want to thank my
colleagues Adeline Levine and Marion Kaplan for reading parts of the manu-
script and making many constructive suggestions. Mistakes in facts or interpre-
tations are, of course, mine, not theirs. Finally I want to thank my husband Bob
for his assistance with photography on the Isle of Man and for his encourage-
ment and support.
Most of all, I want to thank my respondents, the remarkable people who so
x • Acknowledgments
generously shared their memories with me. I appreciate your kindness and hos-
pitality to me as a person as well as your patience and openness with me as a
historian. Everyone who spoke with me or wrote to me made important contri-
butions to this book. I have tried to tell your stories as you told them to me,
and I apologize in advance for inaccuracies of fact and interpretation, which,
despite my best efforts, are certain to appear. I hope this book will capture at
least some sense of that special combination of qualities—courage, persistence,
resourcefulness, and resilience—with which you built up your lives. I will not
forget you.
INTRODUCTION
Fearing an imminent German invasion, the British government arrested and in-
terned 28,000 “enemy aliens” of German and Austrian nationality living in Brit-
ain in the spring and summer of 1940.1 Eight-year-old Renate Steinert (later
Renate Olins) and her parents were among them. The Steinerts were Jews. They
had fled from Nazi Germany to Holland in 1937 and arrived in London in 1938.
Mr. Steinert set up a small factory there, and Renate started school. In May of
1940 two police detectives knocked at the door of the Steinert’s modest apart-
ment and announced that they had come to take Mr. Steinert away. Fifty-five
years later, Renate’s memories of that night were vivid:
My mother said he was not at home. They said they would wait, and sat down in our
little sitting-room until my father came home, and when he found the two detectives
there he went ashen. . . . I locked myself in the bathroom and cried, sat on the floor with
my head on the lavatory basin. After a time my father’s suitcase was prepared. My mother
had got supper ready, but they wouldn’t wait for him to have supper.
I was asked to come out, and I kissed him goodbye, which was quite dreadful, quite
dreadful. I was crying, and my mother was crying. My father was struggling not to cry,
and then he was marched off, we didn’t know where. . . . My mother and I were left
alone, and there followed weeks of misery, absolute misery, while my mother worried
desperately about where my father was. We could get no news. And then one day, a
couple of months after he’d gone . . . there was a knock at the door, and there stood two
more detectives, a man and a woman. And they explained that they’d come to collect
my mother and that she was being interned, but they had no instructions about the child.
I said, “Well. I’m coming, too.” We were marched off, each with a little suitcase, to
Harrow Road Police Station.2
