Anne Hirschle - July 21, 2006
Being a German Refugee in England
Uh, I remember going to the police station. I had heard that you weren't, as a German, supposed to have bicycles...
[interruption in interview]
...radios, you know. So I remember going to the police station to, to forfeit my bicycle and they said I could keep my bicycle to ride to school. And um, but that we did have, we did have these restrictions. Uh, my father wasn't naturalized until quite a few years later. Well, one thing that did happen-the English authorities, of course, they were totally unprepared for this war, totally, and I never blamed them for some of the things that they did. My father, because he was a practicing dentist, was allowed to continue doing what he was doing, but a lot of the other German Jewish refugees-I'm sure you know this-were put into uh, internment camps and some were sent to Australia, some were sent to the Isle of Mann. And I've heard people complain about this now, and I said, "You know, they didn't know." They-the Nazis had apparently planted some so-called refugees...
Mm-hm.
...so how were they to tell in this panic, in this total lack of being prepared for a war who was legitimately a German Jewish refugee and who was...
A spy.
A spy or maybe some dangerous person. And it took them awhile to sort that out, and many of the people, including some cousins of mine and another uncle of mine um, went from internment camps right into the British army. They...
Yeah.
...they, they were then filtered into-but it, it took some time to investigate that. But as far as I was concerned, I, I had a very happy, very happy time growing up in England. I still think it's-some of the best years of my life...
Yeah.
...were growing up in England.
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