Vera Gissing - April 22, 2006
Publishing Book
It must have been very emotional to go back over...
It was incredibly emotional, but, you know, when we had the reunion—it was only a week later after that they left—we had the reunion, I realized that in the book I didn't have just my story, I had their stories too—the rest of them. The whole community of people who were like family and that I owed it to them too and to the kindness of the British people who took us in.
In 1985 you didn't, you didn't know about Nicky Winton.
No, I didn't know about Nicky Winton at all. He, uh, I um, it took me about two and a half years to finish the, you know, two years to finish the book. And then, of course, I was looking for a publisher—a good publisher. And I found a very good Jewish publisher called Robson Books. And uh, anyway—but obviously I did a lot of interviewing as well—updating the people I knew, you know, so that I could draw them into the story. And uh, nobody knew who, who masterminded our rescue. And uh, I was then with my partner, Harry, who was a Jewish uh, colleague of mine from the school—we were in the same class for three years. So we were very close. Our class was just like a family.
What was his last name?
Steinhower. And he managed to get—his—my, his parents and sister managed to come here after him, you know, so. And he—we knew each other from the Czech school and uh, both our marriages had broken down. He married a shikseh and I married out as well, and so it was rather nice, you know, to be together. And uh, and anyway, that's it—he's died now. But we decided to hold that reunion and uh, it, it went down—it just went down so well. And uh, he was um, friendly with Esther Anderson, because you saw the film...
Mm-hm.
...didn't you? And you know where, where we embrace—when Nicky and I embrace and that was Esther Anderson's program. As it happens, Harry looked after Esther Anderson's teeth as a dentist and her husband was a writer as well, Desmond Wilcox, and he was Jewish, she wasn't. She went into the freight, but she wasn't Jewish—oh well I think we got—some message we had will come through. And uh, and uh, anyway uh, I don't know what I was going to say.
Desmond Wilcox.
Yeah, I know I was talking about Desmond, but they sort of, um...
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