Margarete Treharne – “Thank you, England.”

I am 85 years old. Thanks to the British Government of the time, the Quakers, the Kindertransport, the family who took me in, and my own determination to escape from Nazi tyranny, I am able to tell my story.

I was born in Berlin, of Jewish parents. I had a happy childhood and felt no different from my German friends. At Christmas, we had a Christmas tree and received presents from Father Christmas, and we had Easter eggs at Easter.

Normality changed when Hitler came to power. In 1934 my eldest brother, 10 years my senior, emigrated to Palestine. In 1936 my father left home to live with his sister in Holland. I don’t know why we didn’t go with him.

In 1938 I was expelled from school for being Jewish. After Kristallnacht, I contacted relatives in London to help me leave Germany (without the help of my mother). I came to England in the summer of 1939 on the Kindertransport, having left behind my young brother, aged six, and my mother. She said she would leave on the last train, in the last carriage; she missed it and instead, in 1942, was deported to Riga along with my poor little brother. Nobody knows what became of them.

I was taken in by Mrs Mendoza, an elderly Jewish lady, her 19 year-old son Henry, and their butler. We lived in Herne Hill, and I was treated well. Henry introduced me to classical music, opera and ballet, taking me to the Promenade Concerts, Covent Garden and Sadlers Wells. Mrs Mendoza owned three sweetshops, where I often helped out, mainly because I enjoyed it.

In one of the first big air-raids on London we were bombed out; the Mendozas moved into a residential hotel and because Mrs Mendoza was no longer responsible for me under Kindertransport rules (I was no longer a minor) I was homeless and scared. I sought advice and help from Mr Schultz, a regular at the sweetshop, how and where to get a job, and somewhere to live. He gave me £5, which I spent on food.

I got a job in the sewing-room at Peter Jones in Sloane Square. They allowed homeless employees to live in their shelter so my home was a bunk-bed and a locker. I went back to the bombed-out house to salvage a few belongings, especially the jewellery my mother had given me. It is the only memento I have of her.

After a few months, I left Peter Jones to do war-work, as a machinist, making battle-dresses. I lived in a sparsely furnished room, where I was very lonely.

In 1944 I got married; after the war we had two children and I studied to become a teacher.

In 1946 I was reunited with my father, who had survived the Nazi occupation of Brussels by living under a false identity.

Later, I received restitution money from Germany, which enabled us to purchase land and build a house, where I still live.

Thank you, England.

Margarete Treharne née Adler
Leicester