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.

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.

'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.