Ernest Rodker (ER) Born May 1937 Interviewer: Felicity Winkley (FW) and Ruth Dewa (RD) Date: July 10Th 2015
After Hiroshima Interview transcript Interviewee: Ernest Rodker (ER) born May 1937 Interviewer: Felicity Winkley (FW) and Ruth Dewa (RD) Date: July 10th 2015 (0:00) ER: Uhh… I suppose compared to… I come from a family of of people who’d been involved in objection to, uh, particularly, war and… and battle. I mean, my father was German and not that I knew that much about him when I, when I was getting into the age when this was important to me but my, but I subsequently found that if these things had come through DNA then, then I’ve got a lot of it in my body ‘cause my, my dad is German and he was very involved in the anti-fascist movement in Germany. And um, although he didn’t talk much about it, I did get some stories from him but he was arrested and tortured and, and uh, uh, the person he was arrested with was beaten to death so he had a, a real experience of what being a protestor and being sort of against, um, the dominating force at the time in his country meant to him. He eventually got to this country and um, um, um, settled here. Uh, and my mother was very involved in the Communist Party and the Peace Movement, umm, in, in the years before I was born in, in the 40s. Oh sorry, um oh yes, yes after I was born but mostly in the 30s and 40s. My grandfather was a conscientious objector, um, into being called up in the First World War, which I knew nothing about really, so, um, I… was in the household d… didn’t really impress upon me the whole question of demonstrating, it was possibly a good move on my mother’s not to do that.
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