How A Jewish Girl Was Saved By A Good Samaritan

I am submitting this story on behalf of my friend, Mary Bell. Mary is aware of the BBC's Rights And Responsibilities Policy and has agreed to her story being told under them.

Mary’s father was a regular soldier, a major in the Royal Artillery, stationed in Lahore, India. (Now in Pakistan.) Mary was born in Murree, a hill station, and her sister was born in Simla. Mary’s parents loved India and the Indians and quickly became fluent speakers in Urdu. Family holidays were spent camping (to save money) in Gulmarag, Kashmir, a place her mother thought was the most beautiful she had ever seen. Mary realised only recently that the Kaye family were also in Gulmarag, “living it up” on houseboats. Mrs Kaye (Daisy), regularly sold her charming watercolours at local art clubs, as did her daughter, for less money. The daughter became famous as the author of “The Far Pavilions,” “Shadow Of The Moon” etc. Mary realised that she has one of Daisy’s sketches of Gulmarag. M.M. Kaye’s 3 volume autobiography, published in 1990, 1997 and 1999 is enchanting and has a great deal about her time in Kashmir, Simla and Delhi.

Mary’s family came back to Deepcut, near Aldershot, she thinks, in 1937. Mary’s mother was a great admirer of the German language and its literature: she detested what she heard of Hitler, especially his treatment of German Jews. She found that a few German Jews could leave Germany for the UK, provided they could find a sponsor in the UK who could offer a home and a job. She applied for a girl who could speak both German and English and who could act as a nanny to Mary and her siblings and who would teach them the German language. Trudi Gassenheimer arrived in 1938, a lovely person who was not allowed to bring anything out except a large box with a few things, for example: a new sewing machine. All of them got on very well. All of Trudi’s relatives were killed by the Germans

. In August, 1939 the family, minus father, travelled to Shetland to spend their usual holiday with Mary’s maternal grandfather. (Mary presumes that her father remained behind owing to the imminence of war.) In any event, Mary’s mother travelled back south to see her husband off with the BEF. Owing to transport difficulties, Mary’s mother did not arrive back in Shetland until Christmas. The children went to the local school and Trudi’s love of the local people was reciprocated. Mary’s mother took the children and Trudi down south , this time to Lympstone in South Devon. For a short time Mary and the local children had a governess, then Ashford High School for Girls, in Kent, one of the best schools in England, was evacuated to South Devon. Mary praises her good fortune in having a “superb” teaching staff. One humorous incident recalled by Mary is the time the head mistress told assembly that she had “a very serious announcement to make.” Three years earlier the bursar had mistakenly ordered 3 years’ supply of lavatory paper instead of one year’s supply. Stocks were now running low; therefore, economy was the order of the day. Traffic was very light since petrol supplies were confined to doctors and the like. Children could walk, tricycle or bicycle in complete safety. They walked to the station and caught the train to school and generally walked around the beach and countryside at will. There were few people about, with tourists being practically non-existent.

Mary’s mother kept hens, geese and rabbits. She also kept a large garden which provided vegetables and fruit. Eggs were preserved, while much time was spent on baking and jam-making. The children helped in attending to the animals and in fruit-picking, packing the fruit in kilner jars. “Dig for Victory” was a great slogan and the children felt that they were doing their bit in this respect. Also in the garden was an Anderson shelter and there were bunks under the stairs. The latter was the safest place; German bombers had a nasty habit of visiting of what they had left of their bomb load on the countryside after they had done their worst on Bristol. An aunt of Mary’s received a direct hit on her flat in Bristol and was taken in by Mary’s mother. Sadly, the aunt died shortly afterwards, Mary’s first direct experience of death.

When invasion became imminent, the Government decreed that all Jews must — for their own safety — move away from the coast. Trudi was directed to work in a boot factory in Birmingham. The family were very sad to lose her. Not surprisingly, given wartime conditions, the family and Trudi lost touch. Amazingly, however, a resourceful friend of Trudi’s traced Mary and her family through a bank manager in Lerwick who immediately recognised Mary’s grandfather’s house through the description supplied by Trudi. Trudi said how much she had loved Mary’s mother and of her sadness at losing contact. Six years ago Trudi now married with a son was reunited with Mary and her sister in Edinburgh. Sadly, Trudi died shortly after this happy reunion, while Mary’s mother had passed away in 1957.

Mary learned through the Holocaust Memorial Events in Edinburgh that very few British people acted like her mother in sponsoring a Jewish immigrant to the UK. The British Government had very strict immigration controls. The stance was modified slightly in respect of refugees in 1938 & 1939. In 1940 40,000 Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were allowed entry, partly from outrage over the Anschluss. ( The German annexation of Austria.) and the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938 when there was widespread desecration of Jewish property and synagogues. From Mary’s interest in the Holocaust, she learned that the British Government feared the mass immigration of hundreds of thousands of refugees from German, Poland and Czechoslovakia. The government also feared that many may wish to flee to Palestine where the growth of the Zionist militants was watched with alarm.

Mary’s father was sent to join the 51st Highland Division in S.W. France some time before Dunkirk, and then returned safely to the UK. Her father, by now a Lt. Colonel, became C.O. of a regiment on the borders of Devon and Cornwall, a stroke of luck for the family. In 1944 he developed a duodenal ulcer and was invalided out of the army to rejoin the family, much to Mrs Bell’s relief. Mary’s mother had been a “single Mum” for the duration of the war. Col. Bell immediately became a prominent member of the Home Guard and the British Legion, to which he was devoted. Two evacuees from London joined the family in Lympstone, but their stay was short-lived: they disliked the country and their mother escorted them back to the capital.

Mary considers clothes rationing to have been a trial. She and her sister dressed in ‘hand-me-downs’ and her mother seemed to knit endlessly, not only for the family, but also for the troops and those in far-off Russia. Holidays were few and far between: rationing, lack of money, poor transport and boarded-up guest houses made holidays a practical impossibility.

Mary remembers everyone felt very patriotic: for example, the blackout was “very vigorously adopted.” The depth of bath water was regulated and heating was at a minimum level. Mary remembers VE Day very well — “wonderful.” VJ Day, however, was a quieter affair.

So ended Mary’s war, an eventful one with surprising - and sometimes sad — twists and turns.

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