Marianne Elsley – a debt of gratitude, and a sonnet

I came here with the Kindertransport in January 1939 thanks to the sacrifice made by my parents, Franz Josephy, a lawyer, and Edith, a doctor, who survived in Germany until sent to Auschwitz on 30 October 1944.

I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to the Quakers who rescued me – Mrs Elizabeth Carter, her daughter Irene, and Miss Rene Courtauld, an attender.

I lived with Mrs Carter at first, who succeeded in getting me a grammar school education, until I started nursing in 1941.

I have already given a detailed day-by-day account of the extraordinary lengths she went to to make me feel a member of her family: her patience, her kindness, and the endless trouble she took to get my parents out of Germany. She even insisted on being evacuated with me, and when necessary sharing her bed with a sixteen-year-old. Miss Courtauld very generously paid all my expenses, invited me to her beautiful home in Weymouth, was willing to pay for my parents to come and liv in England, and even for me to go to medical school, but all, alas, in vain. I am still in touch with two of Mrs Carter’s grandchildren. My husband and I visited Miss Courtauld with our two small children shortly before she died.

I have written two books, “A Chance in Six Million” and “Voices in the Night”. The first is about my coming to England, the second a collection of the eighty or so letters and messages from my parents with a commentary I wrote primarily in memory of them, but as all their letters conclude with thanks to Mrs Carter and Miss Courtauld for doing so much for my safety and welfare, also to explain how wonderfully kind and loving they were to me. The letters will go to the Wiener Library. My two books were the basis of a recent BBC programme in five instalments called “Writing the Century”.

I have given over 100 talks to WIs, the U3A, Rotary Clubs etc., and in that way sold all my books. At my daughter’s university in America I was invited to give the Holocaust address to an audience of 1,500. I have always on such occasions stressed how much I am indebted to my dear Quaker benefactors.

Marianne Elsley nee Josephy
Banbury, Oxfordshire

I am appending a sonnet I wrote for Marianne, which expresses my feelings - especially of Mrs Carter, Irene and Miss Courtauld, whom I knew well.

To Marianschen

Often I hear the voices in the night
Of Franz and Edith; and I sense their pain
When in their letters from Berlin they write:
“Be brave and good, and we’ll soon meet again.”
Kristallnacht warned them that they were to lose
Their daughter of fifteen who was most dear.
If you were to survive they could but choose
To send you by the Kindertransport here –
The Carters and Miss Courtauld rescued you,
And gave you all the love you so required.
It was their kindly help and guidance too
That shaped you as your parents had desired.
To each of them I owe my all, my life,
My brave and good, beloved, precious wife.

Ralph Elsley
Banbury, Oxfordshire