... And the Policeman Smiled (33 page)

I was sent to join the 5th Division as a full lieutenant in Trieste in northern Italy. From there I was sent to Germany, which was a very strange experience – to enter war-torn Germany as an officer.

Many refugees found themselves in the same position. As the Allies advanced across the continent, there was a huge demand for interpreters and for interrogators to interview German and Austrian prisoners of war.

The Intelligence service was even prepared to give young Hans a second look, even though he was not a prepossessing sight. He had been working at tar processing and the fumes had given him an unpleasant skin complaint. He also seemed to be rather boastful and above himself. But his appearance was misleading. In an interview with the Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office, he showed great promise as an interpreter. He joined the Civilian Branch of the Army of Occupation in Germany and in 1945, at the age of twenty-two, became an interpreter with the US Air Force. The final comment on his report card reads: ‘Still the same old boaster …'

Howard Franks interrogated German POWs in England and Norway:

Some of the naval and airforce P O Ws had studied in Oxford and their English was as fluent as, if not better than, mine and they asked me how I spoke German so well. And there I used to lie. The lie was carefully made up. I said I had studied in Innsbruch because I knew these people were quite clever enough to detect a Viennese
accent in my English. But I think the clever ones guessed my background.

Clive Milton, too, worked as an interpreter:

I was sent to Oslo with a 28-strong unit to take over the raw materials the Germans had left. We employed those Germans who were left – this was my first contact with
Wehrmacht
personnel.

Later he returned to England to work in a POW camp:

In the camp the English workers were mainly in the Pioneer Corps – not refugees, but mostly people of below average intelligence level. They were a fairly mean lot, especially at non-commissioned officer level. They would not think twice of kicking a German or forcing him to do unpleasant tasks. Fortunately, they were acting under orders of officers of exemplary character. Left on their own they could have committed atrocities.

I felt … not hatred, as such – I have never been able to hate individuals, as such – so I could interrogate quite dispassionately. I am sure they knew I was from a Jewish background, but I would never discuss this with a prisoner. It was a business relationship. They would give me presents and stuff – there was nothing for them to do so they would make little things. Also, my office was staffed by Germans.

Some of those who served with the Forces on the continent were brought close to areas where their families had lived, or where friends and relatives had last been heard of Sometimes the compulsion to try and trace them was irresistible, as Alfred Cooper found:

I went with the Pioneer Corps (this was around D-Day) to France, where we were attached to a Canadian Forestry Corps. They were cutting timber down to make huts. Then we went to Belgium and I went absent there for two weeks because I tried to trace my brother who escaped to Belgium. He had hidden in the coal mines as a miner. I went to the Jewish Committee, but a fellow told me not to deal with them as he thought they cooperated with the Germans. So I went to the Palace of Justice and in the end, after I created hell, they gave me the information. So I virtually walked from Brussels – along the railway line (I did have lifts too, but you had to be careful about taking lifts because of army intelligence), and I found him. I hadn't seen him since
Kristallnacht
. He had escaped from a
camp in France – he speaks fluent French – and he had gone back to the camps (which was where you were sent before going to Auschwitz) and brought out his wife and daughter.

Towards the end of the war, Alfred joined the Jewish Brigade. Recruitment was mainly in Israel, but the Brigade was part of the British Army and was stationed in Italy, Holland and Western Germany.

Alfred went to Germany with the Brigade after the war and was stationed at Bielefeld, a German army camp taken over by the British:

I asked the Sgt Major for two weeks leave to see my sister. But the leave wasn't granted. So the Sgt Major asked me how long I had been in the army and, when I said six years, he said: ‘Don't you know what to do?' So I went over the fence. I was A WOL for two weeks and when I came back I had to paint the barrack railings. I found my sister in Hamburg. She had had a hard time. My brother-in-law was not Jewish and they had to hide in the fields. She gave birth to her second child in a forest. They had no ration cards, nothing.

The Jewish Brigade was composed of ardent Zionists who carried their missionary zeal through the displaced persons camps of Europe. It seemed like home to Henry Schwartz, though it came as a surprise to find that he was not immediately accepted.

… I was an Austrian and they didn't want me, I became an Englishman and they didn't trust me, so what was left? I had to become a Jew! So when the Jewish Brigade came up I was just about the first volunteer. When we went out to Italy in the Brigade I discovered that anybody who wanted promotion had to be born in Palestine. I thought, ‘I can't win.'

After VE day:

You couldn't get any parcels sent to you from home. All the parcels went to the displaced persons camp – where there were only Jewish people. It was the only time there was no anti-Semitism. We used to pick up boys who were illegal immigrants, put them in British uniform, issue them with a paybook and send them off to Palestine. It was fantastic.

We were near Antwerp and the Flemish were a very anti-Semitic group. They showed a newsreel in a cinema of American troops going into a displaced persons' camp and attending Jewish religious service, and the audience started laughing. Well, they didn't laugh any more because we broke the cinema up – nobody laughed at the Jews when the Jewish Brigade was there.

There was another incident I remember. We used to have a group of seven (they were real thugs – one of them was a Spaniard who used to appear in the music-hall as a tough guy. I think people used to stand on his chest), and we were at a dance (this was in Holland) and one of our boys went up to a girl and asked her to dance. She was sitting with a Polish soldier and she said she couldn't dance. When asked why not, she said her boyfriend told her not to dance with Jews. There were thirteen in hospital that night.

We were absolutely feared. It was a different type of Jew from what I had ever met before.

Discipline in the Jewish Brigade was of a sort unknown in any conventional army:

A colonel found one of his junior officers, a major, cleaning shoes while his batman sat talking to him. The colonel was outraged. He threatened the junior officer with a court martial. The major said: ‘Do you know what happened to your predecessor? Let me tell you. One day he went into the storeroom and there were no reserve arms, so he asked where they were. When he couldn't get any answer, he lost his temper and shouted that all Jews were liars and crooks. So a deputation went to the brigadier and said, ‘Remove him in two hours or we will bring him back in a coffin – what is it to be?' So he was removed. The major cleaning the shoes said: ‘This is the Jewish Brigade.' – forget your discipline. We are both from the kibbutz and we have decided that one day I am the batman and the next day he is. Don't interfere. When we are on duty fighting, I am the major and he is the batman, but when it comes to cleaning shoes, we are both in the kibbutz. So either you accept it or do what the other bloke did and leave, because this is the Jewish Brigade.

Soldiers serving elsewhere in the British Forces were liable to encounter problems with their Jewish identity. Clive Milton:

When the Germans capitulated I worked as an interpreter and was promoted to a staff sergeant. There was a lot of anti-Semitism
amongst British soldiers. Many were regulars, having served in Palestine, and hated anyone who was not British. When two British sergeants were hanged in retaliation for the hanging of Jewish terrorists, there was a fight in our sergeants' mess. We were fighting each other with knives.

Herman Rothman found that his religion and the army were ill matched.

It was difficult for me to live in a kosher way. Although I received the chief rabbi's food parcel, it took two months to arrive. I had to work on
Shabbat
. I suppose I had a sort of compulsion neurosis in the army. People admired me. In the morning I put on my
Tefillin
and said my prayers. I did this even when I was in the front line.

Lothar, one of the RCM's more difficult cases, had troubles of a different kind during his time in the forces. While working at Lyons Corner House in April 1942, he came out in spots. This was diagnosed as impetigo, an unpleasant and contagious affliction. At the end of 1942, out of work, he was advised to apply for the Pioneer Corps and was accepted.

However, the Pioneer Corps sent him straight back, insisting he was suffering from VD. Lothar replied that he simply had a skin complaint that could be cleared up in a few days. Then Bernard (now Major) Davidson was informed that Lothar was suffering from scabies. The recruiting officer stuck by this diagnosis, although Lothar's specialist at the Charing Cross Hospital passed him A1. Eventually he enlisted.

In February 1943, the RCM received several desperate letters from Lothar, who was in hospital, but would not say what was wrong with him. Two months later:

Major Davidson's secretary showed Mr Ruppin a letter which Major Davidson had received from his friend at the camp. It is to the effect that Lothar has been in the VD ward of the military hospital since he arrived in Bradford Training Camp, and that his state of health is such that he will be discharged from the army soon. The writer warns Major Davidson not to waste his sympathy on such an undeserving case.

The truth was never revealed, though it seems likely that Lothar suffered an injustice. In any event, he left hospital to resume
training on 15 April and later in the year was planning on getting married.

Young refugee women enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service. (The RCM annual report for 1940–1941 lists eighty of their girls with the ATS.) Lady Cohen, wife of Lord Justice Cohen, was appointed senior commander in that Force, with the responsibility of recruiting alien women and looking after their welfare. Other girls joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force Service (WAAFS), the Land Army and the National Fire Service. Many more, of course, were helping the war effort in the nursing profession.

Ya'acov Friedler, interned with his sister on the Isle of Man, remembers the first signs of the change of heart towards enemy aliens:

… we were informed that any young woman among the internees was welcome to join the Forces. Indeed, Princess Elizabeth joined the ATS as an example to the girls of Britain, and photographs of her doing her duty were widely circulated …

Our ranks thinned out as the young women who had been accepted left the island for military camps on the mainland … One of the girls in our hotel who joined the ATS sent letters describing her experiences, and the women were tickled by the information that everything she wore was khaki, from panties to bra to greatcoat. She happened to have been a particularly good-looking girl and sent us a photo of herself in uniform, with a wink in her eye and the caption, ‘A Girl With a Will to Win', which she had purloined from a recruiting poster. I do not know how much her contribution to the war effort added up to, but the mere sight of her must have done a lot to raise the morale of the fighting men.

Lore Selo, working her fingers to the bone as a maid-cum-housekeeper in Finchley, was thrilled to meet a cousin of hers in uniform:

She said how about me joining the Army, and my father, although he was very attached to me, said it would be the ideal solution for me to get away from the drudgery of being in domestic employment.

So I applied, feeling very patriotic and wanting to do my bit for England. In 1942, at the age of eighteen, I was accepted for the ATS … At the time I was not a British subject and aliens were only offered menial jobs – preferably cooks or mess orderlies. I
plumped for the latter – although they tried their hardest to persuade me to go for cooking. I had quite a giggle to myself when the interviewer said that my continental cookery skills would probably go down well with the men. I did my initial training in Lancaster and still remember the first day in the huge dormitory after we all had our vaccinations. The after-effects were most depressing …

Lore was shocked by the general standard of hygiene:

Many girls had to be deloused for nits and other vermin. I noticed this with the male intake too, and I also observed that many of the men were illiterate and could only put a cross by their names.

Starting as a mess orderly, Lore was eventually transferred to North Wales.

As mess orderlies, we had to deal with two sittings each mealtime – either early or late duty. Running around with piles of plates and jugs and so forth. Once, in the rush, I slipped in a sea of gravy and fell down hard on the stone floor. Two soldiers jumped up and helped me to a table, where I sat for another half-hour with my head whirring. I felt such a fool, especially when they asked me to give a repeat performance. I think it must have been my thick hair that saved me …

After a while the army authorities realised that many people were in the wrong jobs and they conducted intelligence tests. Although I had never been to school in England, I passed my spelling test 100%. However, I did not do that well in maths. But they apparently felt I should be more usefully employed in an office.

Lore went as a receptionist to an army hospital in Abergele and then was posted to Canterbury, where she worked for Personnel Selection.

… A most interesting job. While in Canterbury, which I loved, I did many other jobs. I had a few boyfriends, but I kept my wits about me. Many nice girls got themselves involved with soldiers who turned out to be married. Some were expecting babies and, of course, were left in the lurch. I was careful and in that sense came out as green as I went in.