Hanna Ramras - January 26, 2008
Experiencing Anti-Semitism
When you were at boarding school.
Boarding school. ??? High School. And I one day received a package and I opened the package and there were two books inside the package. One was a prayer book in English and in Hebrew, translations, and the other was the Bible--the five books of Moses in English. No letter, nothing. I just wanted to get rid of that as fast as I could and I hid it in my drawer because nobody knew I was Jewish in school--only the headmistress--the principal, Mrs. Wilson.
Now, whose decision was that to not tell anyone that you were Jewish?
I don't know. It must have been a decision by Mr. and Mrs. Style that I should not be excluded in any of the programs, that I went to church with the school on Sundays, that I learned and studied New Testament, the Old Testament, the scriptures--everything that the others did I should not be an odd man out. This is what I concluded myself because if they sent me to school they wanted me to integrate into, into that society.
Did you experience, even before the war any kind of overt anti-Semitism, when you were in school in Pressburg?
In Pressburg I was in a Jewish school
Okay.
In, in, in Aussig I, I knew that I was Jewish and I was kicked out of school because of it.
But nothing, sort of, personal one-on-one...
Yes. If they throw stones on you that's one and, uh...
So you did experience anti-Semitism.
Yes. I ran.
But not in England.
The English society--the British society--have a veiled anti-Semitism...
Very subtle.
Pardon?
It's very subtle.
Yup. We have a very close friend here and from home--from England too. Uh, he was the Israeli ambassador to the Court of St. James. And uh, he was born in England but sometimes he te...told us as a diplomat what the English feel about Israel, Jews, etc.--especially the Foreign Office.
When was this? When did he tell you? Was this recently?
Privately uh, with friends.
But recently?
Oh, yes. He's not, he's not the ambassador anymore but he surely knows what goes on there.
Yes.
Yeah.
[interruption in interview]
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