Martin Hyman
You’ve all had an awful time of it for the last six months, get on this train and you’re going somewhere safe. I just can’t imagine what that must be like.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Hello, good afternoon welcome everyone to this Mishcon Academy session. A series of online events, videos and podcasts looking at the biggest issues faced by business and individuals today. I am Adam Rose, a partner here in Mishcon de Reya and it is my pleasure today to welcome Martin Hyman. Martin is a Trustee of two refugee and race relations based charities, The International Rescue Committee and of 00.42, which is how I met him as I used to Chair that charity. Various lecturing roles and directorships are held by Martin; in particular he is director of Fractional CFO business for SMEs. He’s also a volunteer mentor with the King’s Trust and he’s a regular speaker on behalf of the Northern Holocaust Education Group. So welcome Martin, why don’t you start just by telling us a bit about yourself, a bit about your family story, your mother in particular and let’s see how the conversation goes.
Martin Hyman
Thank you very much Adam and thank you very much everyone for coming in, for inviting me here today. As Adam says I’ll tell you a little bit about my family story and about myself over the next half hour or so. If we start this is some of my family that you can see on the screen. They are the Beres family and I’ll start telling you their story. On the left that’s Max my grandpa and he was born in the 1880s in a place called Brody which is now part of Ukraine and he worked in import and expert and in the middle that’s my grandma, Rosa. She was also born in a place that we are sadly all too familiar with now, Lviv but was called Lemberg back then. Obviously also now in Ukraine and like many women back then she was a housewife. And on the right, that’s my mum, Ilse and they are the three main members of my family whose lives were changed in unbelievable ways by the Holocaust.
But I am going to start the story telling you about my family not in the 1930s or the 1940s but back in the 1880s and 1890s because back then when Rosa and Max were living in, in Ukraine there were a lot of what were pogroms, both in Russia and in Ukraine and a pogrom was simply when local inhabitants surrounding villages would uprise and riot against Jewish settlements, Jewish villages. And by rioting I don’t just mean a little bit of a protest, they would go to the Jewish villages, they would attack Jewish people, they would loot Jewish houses, Jewish shops, Jewish businesses, perhaps burn down the houses and in many instances murder and rape Jewish people living there. And I’d like to have thought that back then the equivalent the Ukrainian police, the Ukrainian authorities would have done whatever they could to stop that. But exactly the opposite happened. The Authorities supported the rioting, they’d join in, they’d encourage it. And that made it a very, very difficult and awful time to be Jewish in Russia or Ukraine and I am sure that’s why my family, why Rosa and Max together with Rosa’s parents left. They left the Lviv area, the Lemberg area and moved west to Vienna and that’s about 200 miles and I am sure you probably can’t get planes out of Lviv at the moment, I don’t know but if you could it is probably what an hour, two hours plane journey, pretty quick on the train but back then obviously no planes in the 1890s and I imagine it’s a journey they probably had to do on foot. So not a journey they would have taken very lightly at all and carry everything with you that you possessed that you wanted to keep.
But it wasn’t just my family that did that, the Jewish population of Vienna as an example, in 1860 was about 6,000. Just forty years later by 1900, by the turn of that century it was nearly 150,000. So tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Jews were moving west to Vienna, to Berlin, to Prague and other places in central Europe to escape the pogroms. And to start with they had a very happy life there; they integrated into Viennese/Austrian society. My grandpa had a job in import and experts, I think I’ve mentioned, working you know, with Jewish people possibly, certainly with non-Jewish people and had Jewish and non-Jewish friends and they did all the social things that people would have done back then in central Europe and in 1924 my mum, Ilse was born. Again, she had a very happy childhood to start with, you know, she was in school plays, she you know, liked playing with her friends, you can see her there in the park with two of her closest friends, the one in the middle, her friend Eva she stayed in touch with for the rest of her life. You know, she went skiing, obviously it’s nice and easy to do from Austria, despite that she clearly was not very good at it but I think that’s one thing I’ve certainly inherited from her. And so she had a very happy childhood to start with but at the same time as mum was growing up in Austria, in Germany as I am sure you all know, in 1933 and then consolidated in 1934, Hitler took power and the Nazi’s took power in Germany.
As Hitler became Führur in 1934 after the death of President Heisenberg and the economy in Germany back then was awful in between the Wars, you know, and hyperinflation, mass unemployment, things were very, very difficult and rather than trying to sort out the economy one of the first things that Hitler did when he seized power was to put in place anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish laws. Really as a scapegoat, who can we blame for all this, we’ll blame the Jews. The economies in a mess, it’s the Jews fault. So almost immediately on seizing power, it became illegal for Jews to be civil servants, to be lawyers and many other professions. And he further consolidated that in 1935 with the Nuremberg laws which started to make it illegal for Jews to be teachers, for Jews and non-Jews to have relationships or to be married. Just gradually ostracizing Jews more and more from society and then it became illegal for Jews to go to school, Jewish children obviously, to go to school. But all of that was in Germany and my family lived in Austria so while the two countries obviously border each other, it was separate and I am sure they would have been concerned about what was happening in a neighbouring country but it didn’t directly impact on them.
That all changed in March of 1938. In March of 1938 the Nazi’s marched in to Austria and unlike you know when the Russians marched into Ukraine almost three years ago now and Ukrainian’s fought back and they are still fighting back, Austrians didn’t fight back at all. There’s pictures, I’ve got pictures of the Austrians just waving and welcoming the Nazis in, waving Nazi flags and one of the reasons for that was obviously they’ve got a common language but also up until the end of the First World War, Austria was a key lynch pin of the Austro-Hungarian empire which had, you know, back in before the First World War was a big powerful empire. That was all disbanded by the Treaty of Versailles and Austria became a fairly small, fairly insignificant country and many Austrians perceived that by joining up with Germany and embracing Germany into one greater German country, one greater Germany they could become big and powerful again or part of a big, powerful entity so they welcomed the Austrians in.
But that meant for my family, for Rosa and Max and IIse, my mum, that all the anti-Semitic laws, all the anti-Jewish laws that had been placed in Germany over a number of years became law in Austria literally overnight. And my mum told me that within a few days of the Anschluss, it was called the Anschluss when the Nazi’s marched into Austria that my grandpa was forced to clean the streets. But he along with many other Viennese Jews were forced to clean the streets. And as you can see there, they weren’t given big brushes or whatever tools you would have used back then to clean the streets, they were on their hands and knees, in some cases with little scrubbing brushes and in some cases with literally with toothbrushes to clean graffiti off the streets. And every time I look at that picture, as Adam says, I’ve been doing this talk on numerous occasions for the last two or three years now, I see a different thing. To start with I just saw why aren’t people helping you know, you wouldn’t clean the streets with a scrubbing brush. Why are people just watching and humiliating them. And if you look closely you’ll see the people, they’re laughing and these aren’t complete strangers, these are people who up until a few days ago were their neighbours, their friends’ maybe, their work colleagues, people who they knew them well. They are just standing and watching, watching them being humiliated. But worse than that, some, I only noticed recently, they, to clean the streets with a brush you’ve got to be on your hands and knees so you are literally kneeling in subjugation. And the people that aren’t helping probably thought, oh well it doesn’t affect us, we might get into trouble, what will the Nazi’s do to us if we help but they are doing nothing.
This is years, several years before Auschwitz and the gas chambers were built, before there were mass exterminations there or by shooting or people in burial pits, but people were just watching and doing nothing and in my mind that’s just the start of accepting it’s alright, it was alright to treat Jews differently. Because Jews weren’t working with you anymore, the Jews didn’t go to school with your children because they weren’t allowed to go to school and in school unlike today here in England, children are taught everybody’s equal, we’re all, we’re all different, we’re all unique but everybody is the same. Back then in Germany and Austria children were taught that Jews were sub-human, somewhere in between animals and people. So again it makes it easier to humiliate them doesn’t it, and not treat them as well, because they’re not really human anyway so we can treat them differently, we can make them do these awful jobs. I just can’t imagine how humiliating it must have been for you know, my dad, sorry my grandad and the hundreds of other Jews that were made to do the same thing and feeling powerless.
And that’s my grandpa again, that’s Max again. He’d fought for the Austro-Hungarian empire alongside Germany in the First World War. As I said he and Rosa, my grandma had become very integrated into Austrian life and Viennese life. I am sure in his mind how could he possibly be the enemy but the Nuremberg laws and the Anschluss meant that to the Nazis he was the enemy, he and his family were the enemy. He lost his job. My mum had to leave her school and lost many of her friends. Why? Simply because they were Jews and it was an awful time for my family and millions of other Jews throughout Europe. And I think my grandpa must have seen the writing on the wall. He tried to get out, tried to escape and they applied to go to Argentina. He’d never been to Argentina, he knew very little about it and obviously it wasn’t like today when we can quickly, have a quick Google and we are suddenly experts in something. He certainly didn’t speak Spanish but he’d got a distant cousin who lived out in Argentina so he applied for him and the family to go over there. But just like today, people aren’t keen, weren’t keen to take in refugees so the Argentinians rejected his application so they all had to stay in Vienna under Nazi rule.
In November of 1938 a senior Nazi was shot and killed in France and this was before remember, the First World War so France was not under Nazi occupation. The Nazis blamed a Jew for doing it. And as a result Joseph Goebbels who was the Propaganda Minister for the Nazis said that anybody who attacked Jews or Jewish property on the 9th and 10th November would not be punished would not be arrested. Again, looking at the scapegoat, who can we blame? And that became called ‘The November Pogrom’ or you may have heard it called ‘Kristallnacht’ or the ‘Night of the Broken Glass’. Because on those two days, just like in the pogrom’s that happened in Russia and Ukraine forty, fifty years earlier, Jews were attacked in the streets, Jewish property was burnt down. You can see on the left there, that’s one of the Synagogues being burnt down. All bar three Synagogues in Austria were burnt down and the only reason those three were spared was because they were joining other important buildings and obviously the fire would have spread. Jews would have been beaten up in the streets, Jewish shops were broken into, obviously Jewish shops owned by Jewish people and good stolen and again, the Sturmabteilung who were the paramilitary arm of the Nazis joined in, they encouraged it. They certainly weren’t going to try and stop and like any riot, the more people see it happening, the more people joined in and again you haven’t seen these people at work for a while because they’re not allowed to work with you, your children are coming home and telling you, did you realise that Jews were sub-human, so why wouldn’t you take their goods, you’ve had a recession for years, why not take somebody else’s goods to help you if it’s allowed and it’s not from you know, human beings anyway. And everything just felt hopeless for Jews all over Germany and Austria.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Let me turn to what happened next in terms of your mother’s story and the kinder transporters as we know now. Do you want just to say a bit about your mother’s situation at that stage and what the kinder transport was?
Martin Hyman
Yeah, can I just say one more thing about the pogrom?
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Martin Hyman
My mum’s told me that on the night of The November Pogrom, they had gone home to their flat where they lived. She says they were asleep – I don’t know how you could have slept after that – but they were asleep in bed, probably petrified and exhausted and there was a loud banging on the door and before they’d even managed to put some clothes on to answer and see what it was in the middle of the night, the door was smashed in and Nazis charged in and dragged my grandpa away. And my mum and my grandma didn’t know where he was going to, being taken to, what would happen next to him, what would happen to them, they’d seen the horrors during the pogrom itself and they were very, very scared. Both for themselves and also obviously for him and I still don’t know where he was taken to. Many, many other Jewish men and it was almost exclusively men that were taken away that night, many were taken to Dachau which was a concentration camp near Munich, not that, which isn’t that far away from Vienna, others were taken to police cells in Vienna itself. I don’t know which one my grandpa was taken to and he probably wouldn’t have known either. But he did come back a few days later Adam, but he had been very, very badly beaten up and I think that’s really when my family realised it just was not safe anymore to be here, sorry to be there in Austria under the Nazis.
But coming back to the kinder transport and the, shortly after The November Pogrom there was a lot of lobbying in this country and what can we do, it’s clearly dangerous you know, fatal for Jews to be in Austria and Germany particularly but many other places within central Europe and the British Government agreed to allow children who were the victims of Nazi persecution so not just Jews but they were mostly Jews, who had been the victims of Nazi persecution to come here, come here to Britain.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
I am just going to interrupt there quickly and just pick up on the word that you said there, the children.
Martin Hyman
Yeah.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So the programme only extended to children?
Martin Hyman
Absolutely. It only extended to children under seventeen to come on the programme and not only did you have to be under seventeen but it wasn’t just anybody, there was far more than… in the end the programme bought 10,000 children over and there were far more than 10,000 children who were the victims of Nazi persecution, you had to apply and there were criteria that, it’s a bit hazy, but certainly it would have excluded disabled people, people with learning difficulties from coming and you had to effectively be sponsored, sponsored to the tune of £50 which is the equivalent of about £4,000. But remember that certainly in Germany Jews hadn’t been able to do many jobs for a number of years, in Austria it might have only been six months but that’s six months with no income so £4,000 is a lot of money anyway, it would have been a fortune when you haven’t worked and you’re worrying about everything else and so that sponsorship was for the British Government to make sure that the children wouldn’t be a financial burden on the State here. A lot of the money from the children was put up by the Quakers. Obviously some was provided, some families may have had sufficient money but a lot of it was provided by the Quakers and my mum was lucky, if you can call it lucky being involved, being a victim of the Holocaust but she got on the second kinder transport train to leave Vienna in 1938 and all of the transports came by train. Mainly from Prague, Berlin and Vienna and if I just go on to the next slide. There you can see parents waving goodbye to children as they got on the train in Vienna.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So she was how old by then?
Martin Hyman
She’d have been thirteen then. She’d never been away from her parents before overnight and I don’t know how many of you are parents here today but I know when my children were younger, when they were at primary school, they were on their first overnight school trip and I, along with all the other parents turned up to drop them off and they were going away with all their friends from school, they were going to be with teachers that they know, I wouldn’t say love, but they knew, teaching assistants and we knew we were going to get a WhatsApp or a Facebook or something later that day with lots of smiling faces. And I still saw plenty of parents in tears as they got on to the coach and we knew exactly what was going on, we almost had a minute by minute itinerary.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Being fully health and safety tested.
Martin Hyman
Oh absolutely, fully health and safety tested. They were, you were putting your child on a train knowing that in theory it was going to England but would it really go to England. Not knowing what would happen to them when they got to England. Not knowing who would look after them. Not knowing when you’d hear from them again. Obviously no social media, no phones, there was only letters.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Did your family have any family in England?
Martin Hyman
No, no family. I am not aware other than a distant cousin of any family outside of central Europe. So I just can’t imagine what it must be like, both as a parent to basically give your child away hoping, knowing or feeling that you are going to see them again some time but not knowing where or when or as a child who had never been away from home, saying get on this train, we’ve all had an awful time of it for the last six months, get on this train and you’re going somewhere safe. I just can’t imagine what that must be like.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So that was when, in ’38?
Martin Hyman
That was December 1938.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
And she gets on the train in Vienna?
Martin Hyman
She gets on the train in Vienna on the 8 December and that train, and she knew nobody. There was no friends with her, no one she knew at all. As I say, you had to be under seventeen so really sixteen and younger but there were new born babies there. Parents you know, with a new born thinking this is an awful life if I have my baby here so you’d have the older children such as my mum almost looking after the toddlers and the new-borns’ who couldn’t look after themselves on that journey and the train went through, would have gone through Austria into Germany, through Germany and then to the Netherlands but all the kinder which were the children on the kinder transport, all they could take with them was one small suitcase, one toy and nothing of any value. If you had anything of any value the Nazis would just take it off them. And my mum said she was sitting on the train in a carriage, it was all carriages back in those days and absolutely petrified and the Nazis were marching up and down with big German Shepherds and they made her empty her suitcase. Again for no reason that I can think of other than to humiliate her. They probably saw that she was particularly scared and they made her empty it to humiliate her and the one toy she had taken with which was a teddy bear, they took off her. Again obviously I am sure no Nazi wanted a teddy bear, it was not exactly of any value but again because they knew that would make her cry even more and be even more scared and for them to feel powerful. My mum for the rest of her life was absolutely scared of dogs and I am sure a big part of that was seeing the German Shepherds there in that position of power.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So I’ve seen your mother’s birth certificate and I know she was born on the 23…
Martin Hyman
23 December.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
23 December.
Martin Hyman
Yes, yes.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
And she got to England when?
Martin Hyman
She got, I think it was the 12 December 1938.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So just before she turned fourteen.
Martin Hyman
Just before, just before her fourteenth birthday yes.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
And what happened? Where did she land? Where did she go? What, what was the story then?
Martin Hyman
Well when she landed, when they got to the Hook of Holland in the Netherlands which obviously wasn’t under Nazi control then, they were put on to a boat that went from the Hook of Holland to Harwich which was in East Anglia and from there she went to a place called Dovercourt and Dovercourt was a holiday camp but obviously nothing like Centre Parcs or Haven, it was very much wooden shacks designed for the summer. She arrived as you said Adam, in December. So there was no heating as it was designed for the summer when people went on holiday, so mum said there was ice on the inside of the windows. They served her food that she’d, okay it wasn’t nice but she wasn’t familiar, it was all the things that might give us comfort if we’re away from home, totally different, things like porridge and jelly which might sound strange but just strange food when you’ve come from central Europe and you want something to remind you of home. And you were surrounded by people you know, looking after you but don’t speak German and she didn’t speak, she had a smattering of a few words of English. So she was very scared and you mentioned health and safety before Adam, and the idea of Dovercourt, effectively a refugee camp but it wasn’t that the children would live there forever but it was a holding place before they move on elsewhere. And not only was there no health and safety back then, there was no safeguarding so to find a family to look after you, it was, if you were the family relatively straight forward you just go, yeah I’ll have you or I’ll have you.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So just to stop there, so a train load of kids turn up at Dovercourt?
Martin Hyman
Yes, yeah.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Aged almost fourteen being one of the older ones there.
Martin Hyman
Well they could have been up to sixteen.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Up to sixteen.
Martin Hyman
Yeah.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
And she didn’t at that stage, she didn’t know where she would go after Dovercourt?
Martin Hyman
She had no idea what was going to happen next.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
And what did happen next?
Martin Hyman
What happened next was, what happened next was nothing. Well many of the people that wanted to choose a child, because there were adverts in the papers – little mugshot and a few words – and people would want either the little kids, the toddlers because they’re small and cute or the sixteen year olds because they were a bit bigger, bit more intelligent, bit more stronger and they could help around the house, they could do the cleaning, the gardening, perhaps if you’ve got a shop they could help in the shop so people wanted unpaid servants effectively or they wanted the cute kids. Nobody wanted you know, young teenagers who were a bit awkward and but not big enough and strong enough to really, so she was there for quite a few weeks and it was cold.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So she had her fourteenth birthday in Dovercourt.
Martin Hyman
She had her fourteenth birthday there, on her own. I am sure she’d met people but no one she really you know, would say was a close friend and it was just very cold and dark and lonely but eventually she was taken in. She was taken in by a family called the Lessers who lived in Birmingham.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
And they were a Jewish family?
Martin Hyman
They were a Jewish family, I am not sure how they chose her or what made them choose her you know, I’d like to think out of you know, out of kindness and wanting to help and she went to live with them in Birmingham where she lived for the rest of her life but they were quite a lot, firstly they obviously weren’t her parents but they were a lot older than her parents would have been, they were in their early sixties and she was fourteen by the time she went there. Whilst they had children they were adult children who’d left home and were married and they were obviously very good to my mum because she stayed there until she got married herself about ten years later and she befriended their older nephew who also lived there who was probably I am guessing about ten years older than her and they stayed in touch for the rest of his life and I remember him coming round when I was a child, coming round to the house quite often. But it must have been a very lonely situation for her, a very miserable situation being basically the child refugee away from home, away from everything you are familiar with. And you mention the kinder transport and the kinder transport my mum was one of the earlier children that carried on until September 1939 when the Second World War started.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So it went on for about ten, eleven months I guess.
Martin Hyman
Yeah nine, ten months, yeah, yeah.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
And about 1,000 kids a month roughly.
Martin Hyman
Yeah I don’t if it was even but yes that sort of order.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Martin Hyman
And as I say, those kids not just from Vienna but from, the trains would arrive from Berlin and Prague as well.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So I know you’ve got in your sort of, in the family archives…
Martin Hyman
Yes, yes, yeah.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
…a folder or however you keep them, you’ve got some letters and things like that from, from back home.
Martin Hyman
Yeah, yeah. I first saw them when I was about sixteen. My mum had this folder, there was probably about thirty/forty letters in them from her, her parents, my grandparents to her. And I was probably a typical stroppy sixteen year old. You have to agree with me there Adam.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
I do agree.
Martin Hyman
You do, you do and I saw these letters in German, in handwriting that was difficult to read anyway, they weren’t addressed to me and I wasn’t very interested and I just put them away. Which probably broke my mum’s heart in hindsight because it was the one remaining tangible connection she’d got with her parents and I almost forgot about them. And then when my mum died about twelve years ago now I rediscovered them and I had them translated into English. And I started reading them and reading them and reading them again because they told me so much about my mum as a child, as a young person and about my grandparents who I never met.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Tell me a bit about your grandparents. You, you’ve mentioned they did import and export. What’s that mean?
Martin Hyman
That’s a very good question Adam, I don’t know either because again my mum told me, you know, I am sure when your children were thirteen they probably still don’t know what you do but I am sure…
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
They’re not alone.
Martin Hyman
...there’s people here that don’t know what you do Adam.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
I don’t know what I do.
Martin Hyman
Yeah but I think he probably said to IIse at you know, eleven, twelve, thirteen year old you know, daddy works in import and expert. I went with my mum, I went once when I was interrailing and saw where she, where she lived which by the time I went with my mum was now an office block but I went, mum had always said she’d never go back to Austria and then probably about ten years before she died she decided she wanted to go back just the once and she showed me the office that my grandpa used to work in so he worked in an office doing import and export.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Import and export.
Martin Hyman
I have no idea whether he was a drug dealer or worked for the equivalent of DPD but import and export and…
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Tell me a bit about the letters.
Martin Hyman
The letters yeah. And the letters I just couldn’t stop reading them because they really, not just the individual ones but they tell a story as you go through. I was, I will just read out a few extracts from little bits that, this is December 1938 just, well a fortnight, a fortnight after she had left home – We were thrilled to receive the postcard you sent from Nuremberg as well as your two letters. I probably don’t need to tell you anymore that you should behave yourself. Mrs Wise would really like to get Susie out but it’s really hard. Lots and lots of kisses from mummy. And then just a few months later in April 1939 – For the last ten days the weather’s been great and yet we are constantly at home, why? You must know already. And then although the War started in September and she said Austria and Britain were at War, my mum still got letters. I don’t know how much of that is because of my grandpa’s connection with import and expert, he wasn’t working by then but I am sure he still had people he knew that could get things out. And then – Uncle won’t be able to work anymore, daddy hasn’t got much work but it’s alright. And that’s in December 1939 just before Germany invaded France, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. In May of 1940, so just a couple of years after we saw people standing by and watching us, my grandpa and others were forced to clean the streets, the death camp at Auschwitz was established. And in June of 1941 - Mrs Polithca told us you mention you haven’t heard from us in a while. This surprises us very much especially since we write to you regularly and reply to your letters straight away. One of my favourites, August 1941 – It seems like a little poppet has become a proper lady who goes to clubs and casinos. I like that one as well.
And the, I don’t remember telegrams either, Adam probably does but with telegrams the way they used to work was you used to go to the Post Office, you’d write out your message, you’d pay I think by the letter and then somebody would send it, the person would type it in and it would go down the wire to the other end where it would be printed out and then hand delivered. So it was probably, it was the nearest they had then to instant messaging. It would take a day and you could only send small things but because you write it out at this end, I’ve got some of the telegrams that my mum sent to my grandparents. This is March of 1942 and I am guessing there weren’t some earlier because she didn’t have the money or the wherewithal to think about sending telegrams rather than letters – Beloved overjoyed about your message. Doing extremely well. Tailor shop great. Very good progress. School nice. Everyone sweet. A million kisses, yours IIse. And then in April of 1942 – No news from you in a long time. Worried. Please write immediately. I’m doing extremely well. Making progress at the tailor shop. Going out a lot. Kisses to everyone, yours IIse. As I say I’ve got several dozen letters…
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
When was that just to give…
Martin Hyman
Sorry, that was April 1942. But I’ve got several dozen letters you know, overall and but to me there’s a very clear pattern. It starts off similar to the sort of messages I might have sent my kids, you probably sent yours Adam when they were younger you know, are you behaving yourself, are you happy, is the… most importantly is the food alright but very, very quickly remembered they’re writing to a fourteen year old girl in a foreign country – Do you know anyone who can get us out of here? There might be some immigration lawyers amongst you here, if someone asked me how could I get somebody out of another country I wouldn’t know where to start. And then you know we all try and put on a brave face and show positive things to our young children you know - Is there anything you can do to get us out of here, is there any way you can help? To a young child she’s only fourteen. And there’s one that I read out from my grandpa where he is saying – The weather’s great, but we are constantly at home you must know why. Because clearly he felt and I imagine rightly that if they put anything negative about the Nazis or about what was going on the letters were almost certainly going to be read, not only would the letter not make it through but the repercussions to them would be horrific and you can see that some of the letters weren’t getting through by the fact that I think both my mum and my grandma saying – not heard from you in a long time.
And it sounds like certainly to start with they are writing almost daily. Just that love and that scaredness they must have both felt and you asked me about the date of the letter of that last telegram which was April 1942 and that’s about the same time as the letters stopped coming from Austria you know, there were fairly frequent letters with gaps but fairly frequent letters from literally the month that mum got on the train but then from the summer of 1942 there were no more letters.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So I guess everyone can imagine what might have happened next to your grandparents but do you want to tell us what you think did happen next?
Martin Hyman
Yep. Well things, well not even things, there’s bit that I know what happened next because the Nazis kept very detailed documentation about most of what they did. Some of it they destroyed you know, just before the camps were liberated and before the Nazis were overrun and to hide it but still a vast amount of documentation, there’s even more now you know, being discovered all the time in archives and my grandparents were sent to a place called Theresienstadt and Theresienstadt’s about an hours’ north of Prague. And Theresienstadt was a ghetto and a ghetto in the sense that you could only go into it or out of it with the Nazis permission. You wouldn’t ask for permission to go in, they forced you to go in but you can only leave with their permission and you would have many families living in one house you know, cramped bedrooms, no clean water, no medicine, very little fresh food and we all saw, what four or five years ago during Covid we were told to be two metres apart because how quickly diseases spread. There when you’ve got several families into one ill kept house with no medicine and no clean water, diseases spread ridiculously rapidly so many, many people were murdered not with a gun, not in a gas chamber, just by putting them into conditions where you had no choice you know, there was nothing else that could happen. You were going to get diseases and certainly vulnerable people did not survive very long. And my grandparents were amongst 144,000 Jews who were sent to Theresienstadt and of those 33,000 were murdered there and another 88,000 were sent to Auschwitz and I am sure we know what would have happened at that point. Very, very few survived. And these are original Nazi documentation. The one on the left is very brief, it’s a death certificate or in my mind, a murder certificate. That’s for Max my grandpa and he was cremated on the 10 October 1942. I don’t know how he was murdered, that’s the only information I’ve got. On the right as you can probably see it says, transported. That’s the transport documentation for my grandma Rosa almost exactly two years later on the 9 October 1944 to be sent to Auschwitz. She was put on a train to Auschwitz. There’s no record of her having arrived at Auschwitz and I don’t know whether that’s because the record was destroyed. I don’t know whether because at that time and her age then, early forties, she’d have been sent straight to the gas chamber and it was such a production line there wasn’t time to keep records, it just processed them along or whether she was murdered on the train journey. The only thing I know is neither Rosa or Max ever saw or spoke to their only child, their only daughter IIse again after waving goodbye to her, saying goodbye to her on the train station in Vienna in December of 1938.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
I just want to pick up what happened with IIse after that?
Martin Hyman
Yeah. IIse as you can see, she married my dad in, as I mentioned already, in 1948. That was in Birmingham. But none of my mum’s family were at her wedding. They’d all been murdered. And she lived very happily in Birmingham for the rest of her life, or as happy as you can knowing that all of your parents, all your family had been murdered and mum, the Holocaust you know, wasn’t just over for her in 1945 with the liberation of the camps, it continued you know, there was always something there but if there was anything on tv about the Holocaust she would sit there almost in a trance watching it, she wouldn’t talk, didn’t want to say much about it afterwards but it was a massive, massive part of who she was and I think since she passed away, it’s… I’ve almost taken on that mantle in many, many ways but she lived in Birmingham with my dad for the rest of her life and she worked as a dress maker and she and my dad they were very happy together with the odd moment obviously, for nearly sixty five years until she died in 2013. And she went on to have one child, me and two grandsons and the first time I put this photo in because well she’s no longer around, her family, my grandson who was born about a month ago, carrying on the family, you know the Nazis tried to end the family, tried to end Jews full stop but it is carrying on. But by the time, sorry the history bit really, you know by 1945, by the time the War ended and Auschwitz had been liberated as I am sure everybody knows, six million Jews had been murdered but that includes one and a half million Jewish children.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Your mother was very lucky to get here.
Martin Hyman
Oh incredibly lucky you know she had a, you know an awful run up to it. I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose your parents and have them murdered and not knowing for a long time what was happening to them but very, very lucky because of the Jewish population of Europe before the War, before the Holocaust was nine million so two thirds were murdered, two thirds were just wiped out within the space of a few years.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So one of the things that you and I spoke about and when we caught up a couple of weeks’ ago before this was the fact that this whole family has probably disappeared, were probably murdered in the Holocaust but I guess and one of the things I was saying to you that I have done and I don’t have a Holocaust story in my background but was DNA testing and we have discovered distant cousins…
Martin Hyman
Yes.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
…who, who share DNA lines and I don’t know if that’s something, I know when we spoke you, you sort of said I’ve never thought about it and I was thinking about it. I don’t know if you’ve given any more thought to it and what, what that might achieve I’ve no idea?
Martin Hyman
Well honestly that’s something I’m definitely planning to do. Up until our conversation what had worried me most was what was going to happen to my DNA but I met a data lawyer who said it might…
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Who said it was okay.
Martin Hyman
He said it might be okay so I though oh maybe. If not you’ve heard me told it was okay if anything happens.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
I think it’s the, the modern science…
Martin Hyman
Yeah, yes.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
…I’ve no idea you might find that you’ve got second cousins somewhere who are…
Martin Hyman
Oh absolutely.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
…distant, distant relatives of yours who, who could be living down the road in Manchester from you and you don’t know.
Martin Hyman
They could be living anywhere in the world and it would be wonderful to make contact. Very recently on my dad’s, not on my mum’s but on my dad’s side I found via Facebook of all places a, some fifth cousins who we’ve managed to trace back.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
You’ve actually traced.
Martin Hyman
We’ve actually traced, traced back so particularly on my mum’s side where at thirty you don’t really know who your fam… you know the very immediate family.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
You barely know who you are it’s…
Martin Hyman
Yeah but certainly aunts, uncles, cousins, they are just boring old people in many respects and I think with all the trauma like somebody asked me the other day, did my mum have siblings and I thought well she’s always said she didn’t but was there anything she was burying away, I don’t know.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Martin Hyman
I’d imagine not but…
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
No I think it’s, it’s very possible.
Martin Hyman
But it’s things that…
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Martin Hyman
…could be discovered through DNA so that would be very interesting.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
But the other thing and I picked up on it when you were talking earlier was the fact that the UK opened this programme which was in its terms relatively generous in letting 10,000 children in.
Martin Hyman
Yes, yes.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
But the idea that you would only let the children in and not their parents is I don’t know, I don’t know how the world would react now to a similar programme when you have the War in Ukraine, we opened up a scheme that allowed families in and the idea of just letting in the children both seems as I say, incredibly lucky if she was one of the 10,000 let in. Incredibly cruel to say to her parents you’ve got to wave her off at the train, you might never see her again and to say to her and she was at an age where she could understand.
Martin Hyman
Yes.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
She wasn’t a three or four year old who had no idea what was going on but aged thirteen almost fourteen she, she understood that she was going on a long journey, for her, the other side of the world.
Martin Hyman
Absolutely yes and I think that’s a very, very difficult you know, argument as you say, I’d always, I’m so grateful that she was allowed out, did get here. Obviously if she didn’t I wouldn’t be here but equally why didn’t her parents come in. If it was going to be 10,000 people, people does that mean another 6,000, 7,000 children wouldn’t have been allowed out and will have been murdered. The bigger question is why weren’t more people by more countries let in and I think the arguments back then were very much the same arguments that we hear now that they’ll take our jobs or they’ll come here and they won’t work or they’ll, they don’t speak…
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
With hindsight it would have made no difference if more of Western Europe had let people in because they were already invaded anyway.
Martin Hyman
Yeah absolutely.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
As it happens she was incredibly lucky that the scheme that existed was here…
Martin Hyman
Yeah.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
…and not somewhere just slightly east of here because it wouldn’t have helped.
Martin Hyman
Absolutely yes, yeah.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
So in terms of your mother and her, her sort of attitude, what sort of person was she, was she, was she always, was she always traumatised? Did she get on with it? Was she very British? What was her, her thing?
Martin Hyman
I think she became very stoic, whether she’d always been a stoic type person or this, the trauma that she’d been through taught her to be very stoic and get on with things and on the surface she was very positive looking on the bright side but always felt an unspoken dark cloud there that you almost couldn’t mention. And she always wanted to help people.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
But I get the sense she, she really didn’t talk about it at all and, and do you think that was you knowing you shouldn’t ask, you just being as you said a kid who didn’t ask and then it became too late and you never got round to it.
Martin Hyman
I think, I think it was a mixture. She’d tell me snippets and it wasn’t only really until I put this talk together that I started piecing all the snippets together so she told me a reasonable amount over the years. When I asked her and spoke about this earlier Adam, that when she was probably in her seventies, I said, mum I know you don’t like talking to me about it but will you find someone who would you know, video your life story, you know, just you talking over a period but you might feel more comfortable and she said, no she just didn’t want to talk about it in one go openly but yet there was almost the conflict with stuff on tv that must have looked identical in many respects to what she had physically seen herself, she had to watch it, just couldn’t avoid watching it so it was always, always a big part of her and very, very important to her.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Martin thank you for your time, thank you for telling your family’s story. Really, really appreciate it. Thanks for coming in.
Martin Hyman
Thank you very much for having me here Adam.
Adam Rose, Partner
Mishcon de Reya
Thank you.
Martin Hyman
Thank you.