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Translated memories of WW2 Sheffield, by a young German-Jewish refugee


Mike Couchman

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Hi.

This extract which concerns Second World War Sheffield is my uncle's story, and is taken from the book, 'Der Jude mit dem Hakenkreuz’ [The Jew with the Swastika’], by Lorenz S. Beckhardt. Aufbau Verlag. 2014. pp. 253-260.

 

The book tells the story of the WW1 German-Jewish pilot, Fritz Beckhardt (my grandfather, whose planes bore his personal lucky symbol of the swastika) and his family. In June 1939 Fritz's son Kurt, (born 1927, and my uncle), is sent to England as part of The Kindertransport, (an escape route out of Nazi Germany and Austria for about 10,000 predominantly Jewish children). His experience of life in England turned Kurt into a confirmed Anglophile.

 

In 1940, at age 13, after first spending some time in a hostel for Jewish boys near Ipswich, when that hostel closes Kurt is sent as one of a dozen boys on to Sheffield.

 

(Note: it must be borne in mind that the book was written in German and for a German audience, although the author is keen to bring out an English language version. I hope you find it interesting).


 



Quote:  ''...... The hostel at Barham House having closed... Kurt and a dozen young boys were sent to a Children's Home in the industrial city of Sheffield. There three German women took it in turns to cook for them.


“Kurt went to Pomona Street Elementary School, where he was taught English, Arithmetic and Sport. Each day began with five minutes of 'mental training', short fast general knowledge questions, at which Kurt did not shine. Football suited him better. A high point was a competition in which the lads from Sheffield played against a rival primary school from Leeds. Sheffield United versus Leeds United in miniature!

 

“In the school little mention was made of the War. One exception was on the 18th. June 1940, when the entire nation were glued to their radios. Churchill spoke in the House of Commons. The French Government had asked Germany for a cease-fire. In vain had Churchill and General Charles de Gaulle who had fled to London, challenged the French to continue the fight against Hitler.

 

“As Churchill spoke you could hear the emotion, 'The Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: This was their finest hour.'


“In July 1940 the Battle of Britain began. Initially the Luftwaffe attacked only military objectives such as airfields and radar stations in order to eliminate the air defences. When this did not succeed, they also began to attack civilian objectives. By August there were air battles involving thousands of planes over the English coast; the German losses were much higher than expected, leading Churchill to comment on the British pilots: 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’.


“In September Hitler announced in the Berliner Sportpalast that he would ''eliminate'' England's cities. London was to be bombed by day and night. In October the Luftwaffe expanded its targets to include the English industrial heartlands. A map in Kurt's school showed that the attacks were getting closer.  In November German bombers attacked the Rolls-Royce engine works at Coventry, killing 600 people and destroying the medieval Cathedral. Now the Royal Air Force also flew more intensive counter-attacks against German cities.


“On 12th. December at 19.41 the sirens began howling. Kurt was in bed when one of the cooks appeared at the door and screamed at him to get up. He pulled on his trousers and jacket, jumped into his shoes and ran with the others down the steps down into the cellar. Outside 'the Sheffield Blitz' was under way.


“In Sheffield the engines for the Supermarine Spitfire were constructed, This fighter was the most effective weapon against the German bombers. The nights that December were frosty and clear. A full moon was due. The 280 German bombers that flew in three waves over the city had a clear vision of their target. First they dropped aerial mines, which fell to the ground hanging on parachutes and which exploded shortly above the houses, creating a pressure pulse that blew off roofs, and blew in windows.


“The boys sat squashed together underground. Outside was quiet. Then came the droning of  airplane engines. Otherwise nothing, no detonations, also not the usual whistling of falling bombs. The aerial mines floated silently downwards. Then an ear-splitting roar broke the silence. Kurt felt the air pressure in his ears and on his chest, he had difficulty breathing, he heard the sound of walls crashing above him. A cloud of dust forced its way into the cellar. The boys sat still on the floor. Outside was the 'chak chak chak' of the anti-aircraft cannon and the noise of engines grew quieter.


''Move! Get out!'' shouted one of the older boys. Kurt got up, shaking, ''I was terribly frightened. Fortunately the exit from the cellar exit was clear. Although the house lay in rubble and ash, we could still get out”.  Outside in the street Kurt could see that some of the boys really had 'filled their trousers'. In front of the house opposite an Englishman waved and called out 'Come in!' The boys ran across the road, and the man showed them where to take cover under some stairs. Then he closed the front door.

 


''My whole body was trembling”, Kurt recounts, ''but the man – typical English – said, ''Come on, cheer up! We'll sing a song”. He sang, to drive away the shock, and we sang along with him, although actually we didn't really know any English songs. Every time when I heard explosions or the AA guns outside I sank deeper into myself.''


“Hardly had the boys taken cover under the stairs when the next attack wave came. Following the aerial mines the German bombers dropped 11,000 fire bombs on the city, until peace finally descended at around 4am.


“When it became light the boys stood in front of the ruins of the Children's Home. Kurt looked up at the last remaining wall. ''Where my room had been there was now only a shelf. My thought was: “Dear God, my suitcase and all my things. Now I have nothing!'' He only had what he was wearing. The exhausted boys were brought to emergency accommodation and slept, head to foot, two to a stretcher.


“Three days later the German bombers returned and dropped even more bombs than they had the first time. The Sheffield Blitz resulted in 700 dead, 500 injured and 40,000 homeless. From 150km away one could see the reddened sky over the burning city.

Following the Blitz the Jewish Orthodox community took in the homeless boys from Germany. The boys lived on the ground floor of the big synagogue on Wilson Road, a classical brick temple with high windows, an elegant portico and a prayer room in the art déco style. The three German cooks now worked in the synagogue's kitchen, but the food was grim. Kurt makes a face. ''A rabbi named Cohen, a thin, unsympathetic man, came regularly in order to check that everything was kosher. The quality of what we ate was irrelevant to him; what mattered was, it had to be kosher. This is when my anti-religious feelings kicked in.''
On Shabbes (Sabbath), the members of Sheffield's devout Jewish community came to the synagogue and wrinkled their noses at the scruffy lads before them. ''They were all rich,'' says Kurt, ''but none of them did anything for us.'' Only a clothes manufacturer named Brown – ''not one of the religious ones'' - took them to his firm and presented each of them with a suit.
Kurt got his first pair of long trousers at precisely the right time, as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth came to visit the bombed city. ''He looked very stiff in his uniform,'' Kurt remembers, ''but she had a magical smile.'' Kurt also saw Winston Churchill during a visit after the Blitz, as he raised his fingers in the symbolic V-sign. …….

 

“…….The boys moved into a Children's Home on the Glossop Road, in a working-class district. The head, Mr. Roberton was the son of Sir Hugh Roberton, the conductor of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir, who along with prominent intellectuals such as Benjamin Britten and Bertrand Russell was a member of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU). This society of radical Pacifists had wholeheartedly supported Chamberlain's appeasement policy, and even argued for the abandonment of the European mainland without a fight in order to avoid a war: In its 'Letters to Peace Lovers' the PPU criticised the bombing raids by the RAF against German cities: that 'morale bombing' that was meant to destroy the emotional resistance of the German civilian population. Mr. Roberton was a 'Conscientious Objector', one who refused military service. Kurt had never met such a person. That a healthy man in a land at war did not have to become a soldier – inasmuch as he was not a Jew – was beyond the ability of any boy who had grown up in the Third Reich to comprehend.


“The Robertons took great care of the boys. They visited the opera with them, when the tenor Richard Tauber, who had emigrated to Great Britain due to his Jewish father, came with 'Land des Lächelns' (Land of Smiles) to Sheffield. …... The Robertons cooked, ensured order and cleanliness, and intervened when conflicts arose, for in the neighbourhood there were also gangs of boys who did not shy away from fistfights. Kurt recalls that once children from the district had attacked a blind man and it affected his conscience for a long time afterwards that he had not gone to the man's aid…..

“…...In April 1941 Kurt was ''freed from the duty to attend school'' by the City of Sheffield Education Committee. He was by now 14 years old, and the Refugee Children's Movement had no money to send him any longer to school. Uniforms, books, school fees – only those children with foster parents had a chance to continue with their schooling, attend a higher school,or possibly even go to university.


''We had to do 'war work','' Kurt says. The other boys also left the school in Pomona Street. Many workers had gone to war, and the armaments industry needed every available pair of hands, for the air battle for England had not yet been won. Great Britain was building 500 fighters every month, twice as many as the Germans, although Kurt only learned this after the war. He got a job at Gordon Tool Ltd., a metal factory in Newcastle Street, which belonged to the Jewish families of Wilson and Cantor.


“He stood at a drilling machine and made holes in components which comprised links in the rudder steering mechanism for Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes. ''We found him intelligent, honest and quite hard-working'' states his report. ''We helped to win the Battle of Britain'' Kurt grins……


“……...From the first money he earned, Kurt purchased a bike – unfortunately one that had been stolen. ''I had hardly begun to ride it, when I was stopped,'' he says. ''I didn't know that the bike had been stolen. At the Police Station I was trembling with fear at what might happen, would I be sent back to Germany?”, but when the policeman heard my accent he said, 'Don't worry, we're not the Gestapo.' ''   (Which really sort of says it all........)

 


(NB: Kurt was reunited with his parents in late 1941, and in 1950 Kurt and his parents returned to Germany......)  


Translation courtesy of Rabbi Dr. Walter Rothschild, Berlin; and has been amended slightly by myself.

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