Biographical Research Project

Susanne Medas, *1923 Berlin, lived in Prague from 1933-1939, came to England on Nicholas Winton-Kindertransport in 1939, living in London

Background of the interview

I am seeing the lady fortnightly, we are usually talking about everyday topics – about was is going on in her neighbourhood, about Berlin or Prague and we both do pottery so we talk a lot about that as well. When I got to know her better after a few visits she started talking about her life at the time of the Nazi oppression, she also mentioned that she feels the urge to talk to younger people about that so that it won’t be forgotten.

That is why I decided to ask especially her to do the interview with me; I was very pleased that she was happy with doing that from the very beginning. In addition, of course, she was a great interviewee as she is marvellous at telling stories and a very interesting and active character with nearly 90 years.

Over the course of that interview, we discovered many things we have in common. It is not only the pottery, we both attended holiday summer camps on the harbours side of Germany when we were children and both hated the strict German rules such as separate going-to-bed-times for children, the being forced to punctuality for breakfast or lunch time, keeping lists and records of everything and other German stuff. She was lucky when her father picked her up and she could get home earlier than the other children.

In addition, we both have been to a Lyceum/humanistisches Gymnasium, when talking about school life in Berlin.

The interview turned out to be a great chance to get to know her much better, to relate to her in many ways and feel a little close to her. At the beginning, I was concerned about the interview; if she would have the feeling, I am just doing it as a part of my work and not because of my personal interest in her. However, in fact, it was a great thing to get our conversation started and it did intensify our relationship.

The questionnaire I took, on purpose, from the Holocaust Memorial Museum in USA Washington D.C., as I was not sure what type of questions would be appropriate to ask and which would not. It also makes a difference because she is no relative of mine.

We did not speak about her whole life, that would have taken hours and it would have been difficult to choose a part of her life to take a close-up of. Therefore, we decided just to speak about her childhood in Prague, the changes in her life when Hitler came to power and any anti-Semitism she experienced before she came to England.

Usage of Voice Recorder

- Maybe introduction (description of herself)

- 10:51 to 13:42 Experience of anti-Semitism in her childhood, changes in her school when Hitler came to power, religious background of her friends, environment she grew up in

24:58-26:22 also about anti-Semitism and the changes in Prague when Hitler came to power

- 22:16 – 24:48 Interest in politics, how politics infected her family life (father editor of communist paper falcon), how much did she/they know about what was going on

- 33:20 to 34:14 bond between each Kinder who left together to England

Interview

1. Please describe your life before the Holocaust. What was your family like?

• born in 1923, in Berlin, going to be 90 years old

• father Richard Bernstein (Jewish name) (*Vienna) was political editor of “Vorwärts”

• one brother (8 years older)

• she went to the local primary school and had happy childhood

• when 10 years old (when Hitler came to power) – Father went into exile to Prague (as relatives there) with his family

• “Vorwärts” was immediately banned (otherwise editors would’ve been sent to Dachau)

• Mother from Bohemia

1. Was your family religious?

• Jewish, but not religious

• knew from her father’s birth certificate that in1909 he left the Jewish community (deliberately done because parents didn’t want to have the traditional Jewish wedding)

→ “my father’s religion at that time was socialism”

• Faster was university student (chemistry) in Vienna when socialism was on the rise, his father wanted him to work in his tannery business in Vienna, but his interests were more in intellectual pursuits (music, opera, politics and journalism)

1. What was your community like; did you have many non-Jewish friends?

As a child, she did not know which of her parents friends were Jewish and which not

→ Father did not make any distinction between colour or race

• her grandfather was not happy about her father being a socialist (was afraid he might go to tannery workers to tell them “You’re not getting enough money, your conditions aren’t good) → grandfather even cursed his son on his deathbed

• mothers family: father of her mother was also a socialist – son in law and him got on very well

1. Did you remember experiencing anti-Semitism when you were growing up?

• When she lived in Germany – her parents never spoke about it

→ She went to an ordinary primary school

• It just did not arise, unless she would’ve had stayed longer in Germany

• Then she left to Prague

• president of Prague (democracy) not only tolerated the Jews from Germany and Austria, he had been a lawyer having had a case where he had defended a Jew himself who had been wrongly accused of having murdered a girl

• until 1938 this question did not arise in Prague, she was not aware of it at all until her last year of school when she was 14

“Hier kommt das das Judenschwein”

→ She was surprised as she doesn’t consider herself as a Jew at all

→ Didn’t know it was no state, but a private school financed by Germans who had made the Jewish staff redundant and replaced them with Fascist teachers (some parents supporter of Henlein)

• considered herself as lucky having left Germany in 1933, not having experienced what other did who didn’t flee Germany until around 1936

1. What do you remember about your escape and life in Prague?

• didn’t have any wealthy relatives to take them, so they were divided and happy with everyone who could take them

→ temporarily, until her father managed to get work again and rent a flat

• she shortly stayed with relatives who had a nice house and a dear in their garden (as a town child from Berlin she loved it and played with it)

• she didn’t go to school until Autumn (too late to enrol her immediately)

• as a journalist her father managed to secure work as foreign correspondent to a number of left-winged newspapers

→ enabled him to rent a flat for his family

• started school again in Autumn

• after 1939 (the German invasion) every child had to learn German in school

→ Czech friends of hers can still speak German as they were forced to learn it in school

• went for one term only in primary school and was then old enough to go to Lyceum in Prague (standard school year)

→ Czech as first foreign language (picked up the language with 10/11 very fast with good teacher and living in Czech environment)

• very important then and for her later life was the fact that she joined the youth group “Der Rote Falken” (Red Falcons) – youth group of the social democrat party

• children of that group were German refugees, some German speaking Czechs (spoke German, but Czech as well)

→ idea of that group was to break down barriers between people of different nations, races (had Jewish and non-Jewish friends)

• wonderful time: similar activities to those of guides and scouts (camping trips, sleeping in tents, campfire, skiing trips in Czechoslovakia, summer camps, Völkerball, singing)

• great, because she didn’t have the kind of home life where family goes on holiday or do things together on Sundays

→ wouldn’t work as father was working nights as political editor (leave flat in the evening and return in the early morning when she was on her way to school)

→ Brother (linguist) and father were working together reading foreign newspapers and writing articles

→ Mother as housewife was looking after family

→ can’t remember any family holiday, but many with Red Falcons

1. Who was aware of the fact that you were the daughter of Bernstein?

• Everyone in Red Falcons, as children of left-winged socialist parents

• she herself not interested in politics, rather resented it

→ Christmas time: father/brother switched the radio over from Christmas songs to the news

“I just wanted to be like the other children and listen to Christmas songs. (…) I thought: I don’t like politics at all”

1. Did you know about what was going on?

• She didn’t know much about concentration camps and these things

• one exception- remembers one boy Werner Tabaschnnik

• his communist father has been in Dachau and was released

→ when he was released he had the opportunity to escape with his family to Prague

→ When he was in Dachau his wife got permission to visit him with little Werner, who could not recognize his own father as he was beaten up so badly

• “parents want to protect children and didn’t tell me much about what was going on, probably also because my mother didn’t know much about politics”

1. How did life change when the Nazis came to power?

• When she went home and told parents about “Hier kommt das Judenschwein”, they said “You don’t go back to school”

• from November 1938 until June 1939 she didn’t go to school

• she knew that they were many people who knew that is was very likely the German army would invade the whole of Czechoslovakia as they had already occupied the Sudetenland

→ people were trying to get out of Czechoslovakia, they could do so until the outbreak of war September 1939

1. Memories of the Kindertransport: What was your experience when you came to England?

• 1937 international camp in Britain run by an organisation called the Woodcraft Folk (Youth Movement of Labour Party) offered Red Falcons from Czechoslovakia a summer camp in August 1937

→ Father could afford to pay for her, she was one of the lucky ones 250 children

“I would’ve never imagined that two years later I would come to live here forever”

• man, who had organised it kept in touch with youth leaders of Czechoslovakia, knew that it was time for Jews in Czechoslovakia to leave the country

• Henry Fair wrote to Czech youth group leaders and adults of Woodcraft Folk in England whether they would be prepared to take one or two children in view of the fact that the whole family would be threatened

→ Idea of Mr Fair: if children come to England a few years later the parent can come. If the whole business with fascism comes to end end, the children can go back again.

• Mr Winton was the one who gathered the names of these children

→ Youth leader gave the names (about 20), nearly 20 Woodcraft families were prepared to take a child, this is how she came on the list to come to England

• left on 30th of June with Mary, Ruth, Hans, Teddy and all of those who were on the list, didn’t have to leave on her own

• 2000 children were on Nicholas Winton’s list, but at the end just under 700 were saved as war broke out

• there was just one transport every month by train children came to England

• from Red Falcons 10/12 of them came to Britain at that time

→ difficult to keep in touch with them as she was supposed to go to Woodcraft Folk family in London, but brother already came to England in 1938 on back of somebody’s motorbike (trough France) and parents must’ve written to brother in Cambridge

“She shouldn’t have done that”

• Sad to leave her group of friends at Liverpool Street Station

• Got in touch many years later, many reunions, even in Germany, Czechoslovakia and of course Britain

→ 33:20 to 34:14 bond between each other

1. What happened after you arrived in England? What happened to your family abroad?

• Arrived in England on 1st July, war broke out in September

• She could just take one suitcase, and mother said “You take the pictures and I take the album, when we are together again we put it back again”, so she was lucky being one of the only children who had family pictures

• they thought they would be together again, but then war broke out, Czechoslovakia was already occupied by Germany, as was Poland

• it was enemy country, so there was no chance in going back or then getting out when her parents tried to get out of Czechoslovakia too

• Father had some connection with Norway as he was foreign correspondent to a Norwegian newspaper (maybe attended international conference in Norway)

• Parents were hoping to get out to Norway

• was now doubly difficult for father getting out, at that time to get permit to leave the county you had to go to the GESTAPO

• If he had done that, the first thing they would say “Aha, Richard Bernstein, now we’ve got you! You escaped us in 1933, we’ve got you now”, he could not do that

• with the help of Czech Red Cross or maybe the Norwegian Red Cross her parents did get out to Norway in 1940, but the same year the Germans occupied Norway

• Parents were taken to Auschwitz, this is where they died

1. After the war, did you return to Czechoslovakia?