Tamara Sessler - February 4, 2008
Mother's Life in England
And after I came out of school my mother had--oh, this I must tell you. My mother in the mean time had gotten herself a position with a refugee lady in London. My mother was her housekeeper and this lady was from Germany.
German Jew?
German Jew. I didn't understand at the time what was going on there. Um, she was manageress in a home where they made doll's clothes and my mother managed the house for her. And I was there for a short time--that's where I was before school. And this lady was from Breslau. She got interned and my mother looked after everything she left behind: her furniture, her clothes, her jewelry. Whatever she had my mother was in charge of but she stipulated she didn't want a child in the house. That's why I had to go to school. And I didn't know that until many years later but my mother wanted to keep me there with her, yes? But she wouldn't allow it. My mother needed the job so I had to go to school. When I came up before that there was another family who maybe wanted to take me in. My mother took me there before sch...before I went to the school and they were charming people but then they said, "Oh, it'll be so nice to have a little girl to go to church with my daughter every Sunday." So I said, "I don't go to church. I'm Jewish." That was it, they wouldn't take me in and then I had to school. And when I came out of school I did hairdressing. Do you want--are you interested to know how it was that I came to Israel?
Eventually.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn