They Came At Dawn

They came at dawn. At least, that's how I imagine it. The truth is, I don't know when the actual knock at the door happened. But sometime, they were woken up, or were already awake, bags packed, waiting. Weeks ago, when the latest race laws came into being, their windows had been broken by students from the local schools, graffitti sprayed on the outer walls, chants of 'Go to Palestine' shouted in the street. Since then, they were living on borrowed time. They must have known it.

What were their thoughts as the uniformed men led them from their comfortable home, where they had lived as valued members of their Jewish community? Grateful that their two boys, Kurt and Hans had escaped: one to Israel, one to Britain? Did Alma cry as she realised she would no longer be able to send food parcels to her youngest son, interned somewhere in England? Did Raphael, a devout orthodox Jew who prayed every morning and celebrated every Shabbat, thank G*d that Kurt would never again be taken down to the local police station and beaten up by the police, now that he and his new wife were safe in Israel ~ the country Alma and Raphael had tried to enter, but had been sent back to Nazi Germany by the British authorities as their 'paperwork' wasn't correct.

At the station, did they meet others, known faces? Did Raphael help his wife to clamber aboard the cattle truck, find a place to sit as it filled up with terrified families, all of whom would have been known to them? I try not to imagine that journey, days with little food, no water, perhaps a latrine bucket that would have slopped over onto the filthy straw. Human beings treated worse than cattle, robbed of their possessions and their dignity as the train bore them onwards out of their town, out of their country, toward the Polish concentration camp.

And then finally, the train arrived at its destination. The doors were slid back. I imagine men in uniforms shouting at them to get out quickly, snarling dogs straining on leashes, the elderly forced to jump down from the train, breaking their limbs as they fell. Sticks and batons raining down on terrified, exhausted, bewildered people as the cattle trucks disgorged their human cargo. Did they manage to stay together for those last few minutes? Look into each other's faces, touch each other before they were parted for ever, Alma led away to 'the showers', Raphael to whatever was to be his fate.

There is a Jewish tradition that every person dies three times: once when the body dies, once when the soul leaves the body, and a third time after the very last time that anyone still living says their names out loud. This is why every year, on the anniversary of their deaths, the names of family members are said aloud. It is called the yahrzeit. 

I do not know when Alma and Raphael died. I know where they died, and how they died. So on this 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, on this Holocaust Remembrance Day 2025, I will remember them, my lost grandparents, and I will say their names out loud.

Alma Flatauer:

Raphael Flatauer:

The house still stands, still empty. The family who took it over, have  always refused to return it to us. But in front of the house, in full view of every passer-by, and in a perpetual memorial, are the two stolpersteine, marking the fact that a Jewish family, my family, once lived here.

© Carol Hedges 2025. No part of this blog, or family photos may be reproduced in any format without permission of the author.

The Adventures of L-Plate Bubbe: 'Speak the speech trippingly on the tongue'

So my Yiddish class is now on its annual break. This means that as a keen student and committed adult learner, it behoves me to continue working by myself over the Summer.

Thus I am ploughing on with Colloquial Yiddish (the textbook), commiserating with Dovid that his family are all totally meshuggeneh (mad) while admiring Chana's extensive apartment.

I have also purchased a Yiddish Dictionary & Phrasebook because it seemed like a good idea. Now, a quick recap: Yiddish is the lingua franca of the Jewish population (not all: in Israel they speak Hebrew). It is a universal way for Jews to be able to communicate with other Jews whose first language might be Polish, German, Lithuanian etc. 

My mother who worked for a Berlin-based refugee organisation trying to get Jews out of Germany before Hitler closed the borders, used to go to international conferences where Yiddish was the language employed by delegates and speakers. However, although it is a recognised language in many countries (Sweden, I learned recently), it has no country of its own. 

Like its speakers, Yiddish wanders the earth, refusing to be wiped out by events like the Holocaust and allowing itself to be mangled by people like me. This lack of a 'Yiddish country' is reflected in the phrasebook. For instance, search as I might, there are no phrases demanding consular access. 

However, on the plus side, the Yiddish Dictionary & Phrasebook does go into great detail about the three big Jewish concerns: food, health and how to complain. Other phrasebooks might have a few instructions on ordering a meal or dealing with an illness ... the Yiddish Dictionary & Phrasebook has PAGES! 

Dining out, 9 pages/ Food & Drink,13 pages

 If the food is too hot, too cold, not what you ordered, too expensive, too spicy, not spicy enough, if you want to sit over here, over there, by a window, in a corner, you think the waiters are inattentive, too attentive, if you have waited too long, if you want to pay separately, together, by cash, by cheque, by barter ... you will find a phrase.

Health, 20 pages

Similarly, if you have any minor, major, strange, unidentified, possibly fatal, ailment involving some body part, if you are limping, bleeding, allergic, vomiting, anaemic, constipated, need pills, potions, a bandage, a doctor, a hospital, medical attention of any sort there will be a phrase. Believe me. I have read them all.

Armed with these essentials, the Yiddish speaking traveller is equipped to confront the perplexities and problems of modern travel. Thus, if a fellow voyager asks Vos makst du? (how are you?) it is possible to reply with absolute accuracy. 

Similarly, an invitation to brontsh (brunch) or vetshere (dinner) can be accepted in the full knowledge that one's ability to kvetch (complain) is amply and fully catered for. Which, in essence, is all the Yiddish speaker needs to know.

The Adventures of L-Plate Bubbe: Wine & Tears

This month (April) marks the festival of Passover (Pesakh in Yiddish), when Jewish communities and families remember the story of how the Jews, led by Moses, escaped from slavery under the Egyptian ruler Pharoah. It is a festival of joy at liberation, but sorrow at the suffering that preceded it. Passover always comes before Easter. There is a reason for this and I'll explain it shortly.

The festival is celebrated by a special family meal, called a Seder, which consists of prayers, blessings, songs, giving thanks for deliverance and looking forward to the coming of the Messiah. The photo shows my Passover plate: each of the little bowls represents some symbolic item relevant to the biblical story, which is told over the course of the evening, culminating in a lovely meal. 

(You can find out more about the plate and its symbolic contents here https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-seder-plate/ )

The Passover meal was the one Yeshua (Jesus) took part in and is referred to in the Christian New Testament as 'The Last Supper'. This is where the two religions (or the extension of one by the other) coalesce. Christianity focuses on what happened AFTER the meal, but it is clear from reading the text, that it was a traditional Seder.

My family always used to attend synagogue for the Seder meal, which meant we kids had to behave better, couldn't leave the table for any reason whatsoever, and we got ribena instead of wine (such a disappointment). 

The whole concept of the Seder is not only to recall a very grim period in Jewish history, but to make sure the memory is passed on to future generations. Thus there is a point, early on in the celebration, when the youngest child asks 4 questions. They're called the Ma Nishtana, and revolve around querying why this night is different from other nights in food, in the way people sit at table etc. 

Every Jewish child in a religious household HAS to learn it, in case they end up being the youngest. I remember the sheer terror of realising one year that I was that child and I was going to be called upon to perform. I think being able to recite the Ma Nishtana is another of those Jewish identifiers, along with possessing your mother's recipe for chicken soup. 

It is also something that never leaves you. Even at the great age of 72, I can still, if prompted, recite the Ma Nishtana. If you are Jewish and reading this, I bet you can too!

The Adventures of L-Plate Bubbe: Bus Girls

                                          

Jews are probably the most travelled people on earth, and I'm not talking air miles here. From the Diaspora to today, they have schlepped their families and belongings from one country to another, building communities, setting down roots, starting businesses, and then at the whim of a ruler, a government or a baying mob, packing up and schlepping their stuff somewhere else.

I am in New York, having schlepped myself here via American Airlines. I'm not immigrating, I'm visiting family, but I know there have been Jews coming here since the 1840s, so I'm hoping to encounter some Yiddish speakers to try out my very basic attempts at speaking.

First attempt comes while visiting the Jewish Museum close to Central Park. I spot a couple of Jewish mums with their daughters. I edge closer and ask if they 'rednt Yiddish?'  One nods. I try a bit more. She frowns, corrects my pronunciation (Two is 'zway', not 'zwei' ~I have defaulted to German again). Discouraged, I move off.

Now it's my final day in the city. The kids are back at school and I'm on the Lower East Side, visiting The Tenement Museum, one of my favourite places. I lunch at Katz, managing to try out a few basic phrases, much to the amusement of the cutter serving me.

Then back on the bus. Two stops and a couple of women my age get on. They park themselves behind me and ... whoah! they start chatting to each other in Yiddish. At least I think it's Yiddish. Now's my chance. I turn round. Take a deep breath and launch out.  "Shalon aleichem. Ick heisse Carol. Ick com fum England," I say, smiling with fake confidence.

There is a pause. I am eyed thoughtfully. Then the greeting is returned, politely. I explain about learning Yiddish at 72, and why I'm doing it. The women (we'll call them Sara and Rokhel) smile back cautiously. There is another pause. The conversation founders. 

Then inspiration hits me. "Host du ayniklakh?" (Do you have grandkids?) Immediately, their eyes light up. They nod. Suddenly, the atmosphere changes completely. Phones are dug from handbags. Photos are found, passed round. I show them my pictures in return. We coo and admire.

And all at once, we are no longer three strangers; we are united in our love for our grandchildren. There is a word for this in Yiddish: naches. It means bursting with pride over a child's achievements. So here we are, three dames of the Diaspora, three bus bubbes, sharing a moment's naches on an uptown bus in New York. 

And it makes all my linguistic struggles totally worthwhile.

The Adventures of L-Plate Bubbe: The Tao of Chicken Soup

 

What makes me a Jew? It's a good question. And like everything else connected with Judaism, there isn't one single answer. Sorry. Look up an official definition and you get something like: Jews are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah. 

So, maybe that.

Jewish law (Halacha) states that to be Jewish, you have to be born of a Jewish mother, as the descent is matrilineal. However, the Bible (Torah) sees Jewish identity as patrilineal. 

See what I mean?

When I was applying to get my family's German citizenship 'restored' after the UK left the EU, the German government was only interested in whether my family's loss had occurred on my father's side. However when my brother's secular marriage broke down and he went frum, emigrated to Israel and subsequently wished to marry an Orthodox Jewess, my mother had to prove she had married in synagogue for it to be allowed. (The first marriage was discounted as the former wife was a gentile).

There are also various rules, complicated definitions, arguments, counter arguments etc. for people who decide to convert, or people who have one non-Jewish parent. We Jews love a good debate. We will kvetch and kibbitz until the sun goes down. And then some.

However, I believe there is one question that covers everything, and the answer to which proves definitely, once and for all time, whether you or I are really Jewish or not. And it is this: Do you have your mother's recipe for chicken soup?

I do.

                         My Mother's Chicken Soup

For this you will need a large pot, into which you put chopped celery, chopped onion, sliced carrots, then place on top a chicken (my mother used to actually pluck the chicken, then singe the remaining quills. I can still smell it). Add salt, peppercorns (my brother and I used to have a competition to see who had the most peppercorns: think 'Tinker tailor', Jewish style), and enough stock/water to cover the bird.

Slowly bring to the boil. Skim the fat off the surface ~ it's known as schmaltz, until the liquid is clear. Then cover and simmer very gently until the meat is so tender it falls off the bones.

Add some noodles to the pot and let them soften, just before dividing up the meat, the vegetables, and the lovely broth and placing it all in soup plates. My mother always served ours with thick slices of white bread to mop up the last of the soup.

Ess gezunterheit!

                                                                      

The Adventures of L-Plate Bubbe : 'My Yiddish Notebook'

Before embarking upon any new enterprise, it is always good to do some pre-prep. This is especially true when one is about to begin learning a new language. 

Thus, while waiting for my Yiddish classes (Absolute Beginners) to start, I have decided to prepare myself for the challenges ahead by plunging straight in and acquiring some stationery. 

Yiddish is a polyglot language. Much of it derives from Hebrew and Aramaic, but there are also borrowings from German, French and Italian. Having established itself in Europe with the migration of Jews in the 10th century, the language did a bit more borrowing from various Slavic and Romance languages.

However, the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were wiped out, almost marked the 'death' of Yiddish, as nearly all the main speakers were killed. To make matters worse, after World War Two, Yiddish as a spoken language by was banned by Stalin. So it looked for a while as though Yiddish would morph into another dead language.

But it lives.

What I particularly like about Yiddish is that it is the language of the home, spoken, taught and passed down by women. It exists in the female space. Hebrew is the language of the Torah, the Talmud, the Cheder ~ traditionally male spaces. Yiddish belongs to us women, to the kitchen, the table, the family gathered to eat and share.

With that it mind, I have chosen a notebook that contains all the colours of the rainbow, as Yiddish contains all the linguistic borrowings. And two pink pens. Because.

As for the title of this piece? There is a lovely Yiddish word ~ Schmaltz. It means (amongst other things) something very sentimental. When I was growing up, my parents possessed a scratchy 78rpm record of Sophie Tucker singing My Yiddishe Momme. 

If you copy the link you can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=triCX77tl8s

The Adventures of L-Plate Bubbe: IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE BEGINNING

There are many reasons why one might decide to learn a new language in old age. The major one seems to be the incentive to stave off dementia. Struggling to master basic tenses and phrases in supposed to sharpen the synapses and keep the mind agile for longer. Ditto doing a daily Sudoku.

Neither of these is why, at the age of 72, I have decided to learn Yiddish. 

"Why are you doing this?" You Must Be Mad (now relocated to New York) asked, when I informed her this weekend, via Facetime, of my decision. "You should learn something useful."

I pointed out that I am reasonably fluent in French, can speak German as long as I don't think about it too hard and thanks to L-Plate Grandad's Italian classes, I have a smattering of Italian...though I have not mastered the pluperfect tense (neither has he).

My decision to learn Yiddish is visceral: it's the language of my tribe; it's part of my Jewish identity, which is being threatened, mocked, abused and belittled and generally ignored. Yiddish was the lingua franca of European Jewry, a way that all those in the camps could confer. My mother spoke it. My grandparents who died at Auschwitz spoke it. Now, I want to speak it too.

And there is another reason, less noble. Yiddish has probably the BEST insults and original curses of any language on earth. I mean, SERIOUSLY the best. English invective is like watered down milk in comparison. So when I tell some corrupt MP: "May you live to build yourself a house from your kidney stones" I want to be able to say it in Yiddish. Because it sounds so much better.

So I have signed up to an online language class in Basic Yiddish. It might take a while to build up to the cursing, but one has to begin somewhere. I start in 2 weeks. There will be updates. Watch this space.

Rejoicing or 'Remoaning': How's your Brexit journey?

So how is it for you? Are you basking in those sunny uplands yet? Enjoying the gold dust of the Golden Age?  Celebrating your newfound status as OfBoris?

Me neither.

As many of you know, three years ago, as a direct result of the Referendum outcome, I applied for, and got, restored German citizenship, as my Jewish parents were forced to flee their birth country and my grandparents Alma and Rafaele were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz. You can read about it here.

What I did not realise at the time, was that the after-effects of the Holocaust were felt not only by those who survived the camps, or escaped from Nazi Europe, but can be tracked, by some process I do not comprehend, in those born later.

In combat terms, it is like having PTSD. Another description could be 'survivor guilt'. For Jews like me, born to parents who got out of the utter hell that was Nazi Germany, it manifests as a constant reminder that however safe we feel, there lurks in the shadows of our past, a time when a whole nation lost its reason, when millions of people who had done nothing more than not be 'them', were denied basic human rights and dignity, rounded up, starved, worked to death, experimented on, or shoveled into huge ovens and gassed.

And we were told, over and over, by concerned parents and relatives that the time could easily come again, if the right circumstances and the wrong leaders align.

Listen, I grew up on stories of the gradual indifference of neighbours, the relentless seeping into public consciousness, via a carefully controlled media, that certain races and religions were responsible for all society's problems, and needed to be expunged from the face of the earth. I lived with it. I still do.

But back to you. How's your journey? Did you just shrug when the media was full of photos and video clips of Union Jack-waving white guys setting fire to EU flags and singing Rule Britannia? Were you concerned when certain journalists were banned from government briefings? Does it worry you that attacks on EU citizens (and Jews) have now become so frequent, they almost don't register as shocking any more?

You should be worried.

We, who carry the horrors of the past in our DNA, are lighting our candles and stepping out into the encroaching darkness, and as we hold them up in front of us, we can clearly see shapes and contours that are both alien and strange, and yet chillingly familiar at the same time.

Holocaust Denial

Search Results for:
Last / Maiden Name = Flatauer        First Name = Alma        Place = Berlin
                                                                                                                         
Alma Flatauer: 1889 Berlin, Germany List of murdered Jews from Germany.    Murdered

Alma Flatauer 1889 Berlin, Germany Page of Testimony.                                  Murdered

Alma Flatauer 1889 Berlin, Germany List of deportation from Berlin.                Murdered

Alma Flatauer 1889 Osnabrueck, Germany Page of Testimony.                          Murdered


We live in a 'post fact' (or as I prefer to call it, downright lies) era. This means that the internet is currently ablaze with Holocaust deniers, claiming that the massacre of Jews, gypsies, disabled people, and gays, under the Nazis did NOT happen.

The survivors of Hitler's 'Final Solution' are gradually dying. Those that are left, frail but undaunted, spend their last few days having to tell their harrowing stories over and over again, as the stinking sewage of denial washes through social media. When they are gone, who will bear the torch?

As many of you know, I am the daughter of German Jewish refugees, and post the fiasco that was Brexit, I have applied for and received restored citizenship, so that my descendants will never have their 'Citizen of the World' status wrenched from them, as my grandparents' and parents' right to citizenship was by the German government. At the head of this piece is the visual proof, taken from German documentation, of the 'fate' of my paternal grandmother.

But this is my mother's story, not mine: she was born in Berlin and as the anti-Jewish laws started coming into force, she was in her early twenties. She had to leave university, where she was studying art & design, and went to work for one of the many Jewish organisation that had started getting Jewish families out of Germany as they could see what was going to happen in the future.


She helped organise Jews leaving Germany, and her refugee organisation supplied the papers and documents needed. These organisations also helped make the situation of German Jews very public and were hated as a result. Eventually, Hitler decided to close the borders. The last train was scheduled to leave Berlin on December 7th, 1941.

The way my mother always told it: she sent her own parents to the UK where, as the Daily Mail article shows, the identical 'anti-semitic/illegal immigrant' rhetoric was alive and well then, as now, but she felt it her duty to stay in Berlin and help out to the end.

So it wasn't until the last day that she packed her suitcase and headed for the station. The queue stretched for yards. She stood in line, wondering whether she was too late. Then the German police started going down the line, checking passports and documents. Time ticked on. Finally they reached her, and roughly demanded her papers.

My mother handed them over. A brief scrutiny. A consultation. A list was checked. Then she was beckoned out of the line and ordered to go with them. Her heart sank. Was she about to be refused exit? Was she going to be imprisoned? Tortured? Deported to a work camp?  She followed the police .... along the platform ... past the waiting crowd ... straight to the barrier where the train was waiting.

A curt command and the barrier was raised. She was pushed onto the platform. The barrier was closed. Still not quite believing what had just happened, she took her place on the last train and came eventually to the UK, where she met and married my father, also a refugee. Nine years later, I was born in the UK.

My father's family refused to leave Germany, believing, as so many EU citizens, migrants and refugees believe today, that civilised people would never try to deny them their human rights. They perished at Auschwitz. My parents died many years ago. I am now the bearer of my family's story.

If you read a tweet, or an article, or a book by someone denying that Hitler and his military machine ruthlessly and systematically exploited, tortured, and murdered eleven million human beings whose only 'crime' was that they were not ''them'', then remember this: the people who ignore the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them.

Over and over again.

Add caption

'Two Roads Diverged in a Brexit Wood'

Tabloids 2016

Daily Mail 1930s

As most of you know, my parents, Hans and Suzanne Flatauer were German Jewish refugees - my mother came from Berlin, my father from Hanover. They met at an international Jewish conference. This was in the early 1930s, when many predicted, correctly, that Hitler's rise to power would mean persecution in some form. Although those who'd read Mein Kampf could deduce what form this was going to take;  a lot of people felt equally that the German population would see through Hitler and his thuggish rhetoric, and vote his party out.

As restrictions on the lives of Jewish citizens began, including their right to education (my mother had to leave Berlin University), and attacks on individual Jews went unpunished, they decided it was time to leave. My mother's family, Lotte and Richard Mannheim came with her and settled in Hendon, north London. My father's parents Raphael and Alma Flatauer, affluent, highly intellectual Orthodox Jews, but maybe not so worldly-wise, decided to stay. They subsequently perished in one of the camps - part of Hitler's deadly 'Final Solution'.

In their absence, my parents' German nationality was taken away, as happened to all who fled Nazi persecution. They never went back, and I was born in the UK, grew up here, suffering racial taunting from time to time ~ age 7, I remember asking my mother why a kid in my class had called me 'a dirty Jew' when I had a bath every night. I was though, to all intents and purposes, a British citizen. I had a British passport, then in time, an EU one. And so my 'story' might have run its course - until June last year, when this country voted to leave the EU.

Me as a student in the 1960s

My parents were stripped of their German citizenship. Soon, I will be stripped of my EU citizenship. As it currently stands, I and my descendants will no longer be able to start a business, work, live, or study freely abroad without restrictions. Once again, other people have removed at a stroke my 'identity' in the name of 'getting back control' and all the lies we have been spoon-fed by the right wing individuals who poured millions into the Brexit campaign.

It would be easy to shrug, and say that everything will be OK eventually. That was what so many German people said, and truly believed. But I don't think I can, because I don't believe it will be. When I read of people being stabbed because they are not 'British', it is time to speak out. When I see the AFD gaining 13% of the German population vote, it is time to speak out. When I see my EU friends having their bank accounts 'searched' for evidence that they are here in the UK illegally, or being discriminated against because the are from the EU, it is time to speak out. When the Home Office sends over 100 letters of deportation, wrongly, it is time to speak out. When our prime minster falsely claims, on my behalf, that 'WE' never felt entirely at home in the EU' (Florence speech) ~ it is time to speak out.

How do you 'speak out'? This is how I do it. I blog. I march. I write letters to the local press. 'But it won't happen here', I am told. 'Oh, we don't mean people like you', my EU friends are told. Same empty words. Same well-meaning but gullible sentiments.

London EU march (with yellow banner)

And I use Twitter, Facebook and every opportunity I can to alert people to the path this country is currently stepping down.

Am I being too alarmist? Well, last week, a caller rang the BBC Any Answers programme and suggested that once all the current EU workers had gone, it would be time to retrospectively deport all those who were born here of foreign parents. The conversation was closed down by the host. But subsequently, many people on Twitter thought the caller should have been allowed to finish what they wanted to say, and it was wrong of the BBC to cut them short. This is where we are today. Where we will be tomorrow, is anybody's guess. But I know where I don't want to be. And so, I hope, do you.

Holocaust (Greek: sacrifice by fire)

 Results for:  Last / Maiden Name = Flatauer        First Name = Alma        Place = Berlin
                                                                                                                         
Alma
Flatauer 1889 Berlin, Germany List of murdered Jews from Germany    murdered
Alma
Flatauer 1889 Berlin, Germany Page of Testimony                                   murdered
Alma
Flatauer 1889 Berlin, Germany List of deportation from Berlin                murdered
Alma
Flatauer 1889 Osnabrueck, Germany Page of Testimony                          murdered

We live in a 'post fact' (or as I prefer to call it, downright lies) era. In this Holocaust Memorial time,  the internet is ablaze with Holocaust deniers, claiming that the massacre of Jews, gypsies, disabled people and gays under the Nazis did NOT happen.

The survivors of Hitler's 'Final Solution' are gradually dying. Those that are left, frail but undaunted, spend their last few days having to tell their harrowing stories over and over again, as the stinking sewage of denial washes through social media. When they are gone, who will bear the torch?

As many of you know, I am the daughter of German Jewish refugees, and post the fiasco that was Brexit, I have applied for restored citizenship, so that my descendants will never have their 'citizen of the world' status wrenched from them, as mine was by the alt-right German government. At the head of this piece is the visual proof, taken from German documentation, of the 'fate' of my paternal grandmother. 

But this is my mother's story, not mine: she was born in Berlin and as the anti-Jewish laws started coming into force, she was in her early twenties. She had to leave university, where she was studying art & design, and went to work for one of the many Jewish organisation that had started getting Jewish families out of Germany as they could see what was going to happen in the future.

UK Daily Mail pre-WW2 headline

She helped organise Kindertransports and her refugee organisation supplied the papers and documents needed for adults to leave. These organisations also helped make the situation of German Jews very public and were hated as a result. Eventually, Hitler decided to close the borders. The last train was scheduled to leave Berlin on December 7th, 1941.

The way my mother always told it: she sent her own parents to the UK where, as the Daily Mail article shows, the identical 'anti-semitic/illegal immigrant' rhetoric was alive and well then, as now, but she felt it her duty to stay in Berlin and help out to the end.

So it wasn't until the last day that she packed her suitcase and headed for the station. The queue stretched for yards. She stood in line, wondering whether she was too late. Then the German police started going down the line, checking passports and documents. Time ticked on. Finally they reached her, and roughly demanded her papers.

My mother handed them over. A brief scrutiny. A consultation. A list was checked. Then she was beckoned out of the line and ordered to go with them. Her heart sank. Was she about to be refused exit? Was she going to be imprisoned? Tortured? Deported to a work camp?  She followed the police .... along the platform ... past the waiting crowd ... straight to the barrier where the train was waiting.

A curt command and the barrier was raised. She was pushed onto the platform. The barrier was closed. Still not quite believing what had just happened, she took her place on the last train and came eventually to the UK, where she met and married my father, also a refugee. Nine years later, I was born in the UK.

My father's family refused to leave Germany, believing, as so many EU citizens, migrants and refugees believe today, that civilized people would never try to deny them their human rights. They perished at Auschwitz. I am the bearer of their story. If you read a tweet, or an article, or a book by someone denying that Hitler and his military machine ruthlessly and systematically exploited, tortured, and murdered eleven million human beings whose only 'crime' was that they were not ''them'', then remember this: the people who ignore their mistakes are destined to repeat them. Over and over again.

Some 2016 UK Brexit headlines

A journey to myself: The end of the journey.

It is one thing to be researching the past for a work of fiction, it is quite another thing to be searching it for one's own past. I sent my family name out into cyberspace, not sure what was going to come back. Not much did, to begin with. I found a reference to my father's business. I found a list of the books my mother had translated from German to English. Nothing significant.

I emailed the German Embassy to suggest that I was probably not going to be able to apply for restored citizenship after all as I was not in possession of the correct documentation. Privately I decided to give up. The Embassy's reply, when it came, was unexpected and heartening:

''Dear Ms Hedges,

if you are not in possession of the documents you can nevertheless apply according to Art. 116 and submit all documents or copies of documents you find. The application process is free of charge.

Best regards''

I resumed the search. And then someone on Facebook suggested I try Yad Vashem - the organisation that has painstakingly listed the names and last known details of every Jewish person who perished during the Holocaust. So I found their site online. I typed in the names of my paternal grandparents. I pressed send. And unbelievably, there they were on the database. Alma and Raphaele.

Their names were on pages of testimony from survivors, on a deportation list from Berlin, on a list of murdered Jews from Germany. The map accompanying their entries gave their final destination as Katowice, in Poland. The location of Auschwitz concentration camp. Under the heading: Fate, one word: murdered.

When I got over the shock of what I was looking at, I tried to recreate what I'd been told about them. It was so pitifully little. They were affluent members of their community. They were highly educated; they had read Goethe and Schiller. They had a maid called Kate who spoiled my father and his brother with sweets and cake.

I also knew that, despite the huge privations they were beginning to suffer, Alma made up a food parcel every fortnight to send to my father in England. Like all Jewish refugees, he was interned here for the duration of the war, meaning that he was forbidden to work and was dependent upon charity and meagre handouts from the state.

I thought about their final days together as the net closed upon the remaining Jewish population in Berlin. How two intellectual and cultured individuals were marched out of their comfortable family home, pushed into an over-crowded cattle truck, denied food and water and then, when they reached their destination, brutally separated from each other and summarily gassed, because the government of that time had decreed they weren't human beings any more.

And when I had stopped weeping, I thought about all the words we use to describe those other people, the ones that are not us: migrant, foreigner, immigrant, refugee. Jew, Arab, Muslim. Words that we think give us permission to hate. And I felt great sadness that nothing much has been learned.

So my journey to discover myself reaches its final stages. At the end of this month, I shall make an appointment with the German Embassy to present my documents. I hope that what I have discovered is enough to convince them to restore my family's citizenship and ensure that my descendants will forever be members of the European family to which they have a right to belong.

I will let you know their decision in due course.

UPDATE 

I heard back from the lovely UK German Embassy last night (23rd November)

Dear Carol,

 I hope this email finds you well.

I have today received an email from the Federal Office of Administration  stating that the processing of your application is just about to be completed!

However they need certified copies of the following documents:

-          your marriage certificate

-          your parents’ marriage certificate   

       We are making progress! The first document is not a problem. The second will involve some searching through the UK General Register Office. I have initiated the search.

 UPDATE 2

 Feb 2018. Halfway through radiotherapy (another story): THIS arrived:

Dear Carol,

Happy New Year!

I am delighted to inform you that ‘Bundesverwaltungsamt’ in Cologne has approved your application for naturalisation according to Art. 116 (2) Basic Law. I have just received your certificate of naturalisation, which needs to be handed out personally.

I can currently offer you dates throughout Jan/Feb/March/July for an appointment in the Embassy.

Meanwhile .....

 
Out locally campaigning for staying in the EU in the middle of radiotherapy

FINAL UPDATE

April 16th 2018: I am given my certificate of naturalization, my badge, and (later) a lot of prosecco!

My journey finally comes to an end.

I

A journey to myself ...ctd.

The 'welcome' that awaited my parents

To be honest, the fightback to preserve my identity post Brexit was going no further than a few rants on social media. And then last week I saw an article in the Guardian 'Family' supplement and everything changed. I did not know before reading it that I was entitled to apply for 'restored citizenship' thanks to a little known act passed at the end of WW2 which states:

 'Former German citizens who between 30th January 1933 and May 1946 were deprived of their citizenship on political, racial or religious grounds, and their descendants, shall, on application have their citizenship restored.' 
German Basic Law, Article 116, para 2

The phrase 'and their descendants' leaped out at me. The writer, also of Jewish descent, described how his feelings towards the nation who had destroyed his family had, over time, undergone a change. Like me, he had been favourably impressed by the way Angela Merkel welcomed refugees into the country, comparing her actions with the weasel words uttered by our own Prime Minister.

It is easy to point the finger at Nazi Germany and conveniently forget that this country's government did very little to help Jews fleeing persecution. The extract from the Daily Mail shows clearly the thinking of many people in the UK, an attitude that we have seen emerge once again thanks to the legitimization of xenophobia during the EU Referendum campaigning.

So here's the plan: I am going to apply for restored citizenship, given that I and my family will soon be restricted in our opportunities to work, study or live abroad by a set of mendacious politicians intent on promoting their own agenda. I have already emailed the German Embassy. Ideally, I'd like dual nationality, so that my family could take advantage of it too.

I am estranged from my family - and my parents are now dead, so I have little original documentation to support my application - no birth certificates or proof of residence, thus I am now researching on the internet, looking for any information about my father's Jewish parents~ my grandparents, whose names I know, but whose faces I never got to see in this world.

Wish me luck!


To be continued ....

A journey to myself

As some of you know, my parents, Hans and Suzanne Flatauer were German Jewish refugees - my mother came from Berlin, my father from Hanover. They met at an international Jewish conference. This was in the early 1930's, when many predicted, correctly, that Hitler's rise to power would mean persecution in some form. Although those who'd read Mein Kampf could deduce what form this was going to take; many people felt equally that the German population would see through Hitler and his thuggish rhetoric, and vote his party out.

As restrictions on the lives of Jewish citizens began, including their right to education (my mother had to leave Berlin University) and attacks on individual Jews went unpunished, they decided it was time to leave. My mother's family, Lotte and Richard Mannheim came with her and settled in Hendon, north London. My father's parents Raphael and Alma, affluent, highly intellectual Orthodox Jews, but maybe not so worldly-wise, decided to stay. They subsequently perished in one of the camps - part of Hitler's deadly 'Final Solution'.

In their absence, my parents' German nationality was taken away, as happened to all who fled Nazi persecution. They never went back, and I was born in the UK, grew up here, suffering racial taunting from time to time - age 7, I remember asking my mother why a kid in my class had called me 'A dirty Jew' when I had a bath every night. I was though, to all intents and purposes, a British citizen. I had a British passport then in time, an EU one. And so my 'story' might have run its course - until two weeks ago, when this country voted to leave the EU.

My parents were stripped of their German citizenship. Now I have been stripped of my EU citizenship. As it currently stands, I and my descendants will soon no longer be able to work, live, or study freely abroad. Once again, other people have removed at a stroke my 'identity'. But this time, I refuse to submit quietly.

This time, I am going to fight back.


To be continued ...