... And the Policeman Smiled (36 page)

One of the many who took upon himself the suffering of his parents was Norbert. Often in trouble with the police, he was unable to keep any job for more than a few weeks. He spoke constantly of his feelings of guilt. Eventually he was admitted as a voluntary patient to Napsbury Hospital, where he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. He stayed at the hospital until 1949, when a Bloomsbury House visitor reported: ‘He looks extremely well, but unshaven … he is in an open ward and has quite a lot of freedom … Said he only saw me because he knew I would bring a present.'

Norbert was sent back into the real world, but within weeks he had registered as a disabled person and returned to the hospital. There was talk of performing a lobotomy, a last-resort operation for schizophrenia involving the removal of tissues in the frontal lobes of the brain. But for some reason it was decided not to go ahead. Instead he was put in a hostel where a nurse could keep an eye on him. The final entry on his record card reads: ‘Norbert reports regularly to the Labour Exchange, but has no intention of working. He is not easy at the hostel and it is possible that he will have to return to hospital, but at the moment he is not certifiable.'

The question of a lobotomy was debated in every case where the patient was diagnosed schizophrenic. The uncertain effects of the operation (though some remarkable results had been achieved) ruled out hasty decisions.

On at least two occasions a lobotomy was considered and rejected for Alfred, who became ill in late 1943. As a certified inmate of Friern Hospital, his behaviour stabilised periodically, keeping alive the hope that time would be the healer. But in early 1949:

Alfred was in a very poor condition. He could only talk with the greatest effort, and then it was of an entirely irrational nature … If at all possible, his case should be discussed … to see if the decision on a lobotomy cannot be reviewed.

The operation took place but with little to show for it. Though ‘physically improved, a little fatter … Alfred did not seem to understand what I said to him. Suddenly he tried to make some sexual advances. I had to ask the nurse to take him away …' Alfred remained at Friern Hospital. His file closes with routine entries on gifts of cigarettes and allocations for pocket money.

Norbert and Alfred are representative of the thirty-six young refugees held in mental hospitals in 1945. They were joined by up to a dozen others by the end of the decade but, since the records do not give a clear indication of how far treatment was effective, there can be no precise figure for the number of serious cases at any one time. All we know is that there were success stories, including at least one lobotomy.

Max reacted exceedingly well after his operation and has been reported as good as normal two days after it all. All traces of delusion have disappeared … his memory is very good, he is calm and feeling secure.

More typical is the partial cure where the doctors could say that the treatment was worthwhile but the future uncertain. This is how it was for Regina who from 1942, when she was eighteen, suffered numerous breakdowns. First admitted to Maudsley Hospital with a ‘sudden onset of schizophrenia' and given insulin shock treatment, she was soon sufficiently recovered to consider a return to work. But a factory job was out because she could not stand the noise, and her preference for a more intellectual activity ‘is rather pitiful in view of the girl's lack of general education and the nature of her former illness'.

The Movement came to her aid by sending her on a secretarial
course and finding her a part-time job with a City accountant. In 1947, when she was 23, Regina married. A month later this apparently ‘happy and contented' young lady was back in hospital ‘in a very confused state and confined to bed'. A visitor reported:

At times she was very hysterical, shouting and raving; in her more sober moments she expressed gratitude for my visit and asked me to come again.

Regina was back home and expecting a baby by the end of the year. She was said to be ‘strained and suspicious', but insisted she was well and did not need help. Her file closes with Regina and her family emigrating to Israel.

By the end of the war, Bloomsbury House maintained a small department of welfare workers whose job it was to care for the chronically ill. These included not only the psychiatric cases but also those suffering from tuberculosis (nineteen patients in 1945) and others confined to hospital for long periods. Led by Lola Hahn-Warburg, who herself was an indefatigable hospital visitor, the voluntary workers were supported by an impressive team of medical advisers who gave freely of their expertise. Lola Hahn-Warburg could call on the services of a neurologist ‘who is at our disposal every second Thursday for a whole afternoon', a psychologist and two psychiatric workers. Seven other specialists were available for consultation. There was also a link through to Archie Mclndoe, one of the finest plastic surgeons of his day, who was based at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, where badly burned pilots were sent for treatment. A close friend of Elaine Blond, who was later to found the Blond Mclndoe Centre for Medical Research, it was not too difficult to persuade Mclndoe to help where the removal of a disfigurement, usually facial, could boost a patient's confidence.

As head of the welfare department, Lola Hahn-Warburg had a wide-ranging brief. Some of the more difficult cases turned up at her office, where she had to cope without professional help.

A boy of eighteen or nineteen came to see me. Nobody else at Bloomsbury House wanted him in the building. He was aggressive and undisciplined. I invited him in. When I was behind my desk, he jumped up suddenly, took out a knife and cut the telephone wire. Then he opened the window and started climbing out on the
ledge. I tried to remain very calm. I said to him, ‘I am very unwell. I have bad kidney trouble. It is so cold in here with the window open. Will you please come back into the office?'

And he did. We talked for a long time. Eventually, I persuaded him to go with me to hospital. There was a doctor I knew who would help him get into a special home. He let me drive him in my car and gave no further trouble.

Lola kept track of patients whose personalities were as variable as the weather (‘One minute Paul says he does not want his wife any more and the next he has changed his mind'), she listened to their grievances (‘Josef thinks he is fit to work and look after himself; says he is being kept a prisoner… but he is very confused and deluded') and even mediated between doctors (‘Dr Freymann said … it must be a genuine case of epilepsy … but … Dr Sommers feels that Regina has nothing to lose and a great deal to gain if she follows his advice re support for her floating kidney'). But the highest value was put on just being there, the willingness to sit by a bedside and to do more listening than talking, the patience with inconsistencies and sudden reversals of mood and the readiness to come back, week after week.

Nathan was seventeen and seriously ill with tuberculosis when he was taken in to Highgate Hospital in January 1942. He stayed there until his death ten years on. When his sister emigrated to Israel, the Movement introduced a visitor who called in once or twice every week. They became close friends, sharing an interest in politics and psychology.

The rewards of hospital visiting were not always as apparent:

I saw Edda only for a very short time. Physically, she looked well and very well cared for. She started whimpering when I tried to speak to her. Suddenly she jumped up, screamed hysterically and ran off. Sister said that she is apt to slap people in the face. She thinks that she must have had very bad experience with adult people … She is a schizophrenic, and has deteriorated considerably in spite of the intensive treatment which she has undergone, and at present she is quite inaccessible mentally. The prognosis is unfavourable …

Just how much patience was needed is made clear by a story from Elaine Blond about her friend and close colleague.

Lola once told me about a girl she visited in a mental hospital. Each time Lola appeared she brought a bunch of flowers, which the girl took and held close for an hour or more. In this time she said not a single word. Even when, according to the doctors, she was showing signs of recovery, she and Lola never spoke to each other. But years later the girl, now a young woman, came to see Lola. Her greeting was a revelation. ‘I shall never forget your visits', she said.

Unhappy endings were more familiar to the welfare workers. Moritz, a Polish boy born in Cologne, was a smiling, good-looking child when he arrived in June 1939. Aged thirteen, he spent two years at a Cardiff school, where he learned English, and then trained as an electrician. About the time he started work he became obsessed that he would never see his parents again; he feared that they were already dead. He was probably right. Authority, any authority, was blamed for the tragedy. Moritz antagonised his employer, who promptly sacked him, and refused help from his friends. In 1942 he was persuaded to go into hospital, where he was said to be schizophrenic. A year later he was certified insane. His letters spoke of torture, of being forced to sit alone all day, forbidden to move from his chair. It was not quite like that. Because no one had any idea of how to treat his illness, Moritz was kept in a locked ward for his own and for other patients' safety.

An entry towards the end of his record card describes Moritz as ‘looking very thin and pale'. His visitor tried to talk with him, but ‘discussion is difficult as he keeps repeating whatever I say'. In April 1946, Moritz was critically ill. He retreated into himself or, rather, into the past. ‘He found great difficulty in saying anything, although he evidently tried very hard … He said a few sentences in German towards the end.'

Tuberculosis was diagnosed. Moritz died in November 1949. Elaine Blond observed that he had committed suicide by stages. Suicide in more conventional forms shows up prominently in the later records of the
Kindertransporte
, when the work of the RCM had been merged with that of the Central British Fund (CBF).

One interpretation of mental breakdown is that it is an attempt by a disturbed mind to create a breathing space for reassessment and balance; for conflicts which have been suppressed to emerge
and be dealt with. Salomon, who had left Germany when he was nine, showed few signs of anything like this happening to him – although he was reported as ‘somewhat unsociable' and disappeared at one stage for three days, returning well and happy.

In 1950, the final entry in his file reads:

Mr Day of the Coroner's Court telephoned to report that Salomon … had been found dead by his landlady at midday. It appears that the boy had deliberately electrocuted himself and left a short note which, however, gave no indication of the whereabouts of his family in London. Advised Mr Day that there were two brothers and two sisters, in addition to the elderly parents living in London, and gave also the name and address of the boy's former foster mother, Mrs Smith.

Perhaps conflict between parents and foster parents, or religious dilemma (coming from an orthodox background, Salomon described himself as ‘only liberal'), contributed – the records give little indication. Salomon was a studious boy, with no friends, who kept himself to himself.

Though leading outwardly normal lives, many from the
Kindertransporte
were still subject to emotional repercussions long into adult life. As Dorothy Hardisty wrote in her journal, ‘… such failures exist where so great an upheaval has taken place, and it was not to be expected that the Movement's records should be free from shadows.'

In 1950, the CBF visited one woman, then aged twenty-three, and her son.

She was very keen to see me… [she] burst out with many different problems, jumping quickly from subject to subject. When I pointed that out to her, she said she was so excited that I came … she has heard that her brother in Australia … is suffering from schizophrenia. She identifies herself with him and … she fears that she might break down as well. She is still suffering from violent tempers over trifling things and wonders why she does it.

She also has terrible fears and gets almost hysterical when her husband is late coming home, which happens periodically … the child wakes up screaming every night and shouts that there is someone there. The other night, her husband really thought so and
took with him his rifle. After a while the child calms down, but as soon as the parents are back in bed he starts off again.

A haunted family. Like this woman's brother, there were many who found the displacement and emotional pain overpowering. From being able to cope (just about) with everyday life they were tipped over the edge into breakdown, from which only a few were able to re-emerge.

‘Miss Mansfield is very upset about arrangements made
for Sigi to attend on Saturday afternoons at Synagogue, for
the boy in no way wants to give up his cubs.'

The RCM prided itself on a broad-minded approach to religion. This suited the collective temperament of the ruling body, which was drawn largely from the liberal branch of Judaism, and made sense in terms of practical politics. From the day of its foundation, the Movement was committed to accepting help from whatever source. If a Christian family was willing to take in a Jewish child, then the offer was gratefully received. To have done otherwise, it was argued, would have meant turning away young refugees because there were no homes for them to go to.

At the beginning, a special effort was made to place orthodox children with orthodox families, or with families prepared to follow strict dietary rules, and to make generous allowance for other religious observances. But resolution faded along with the number of suitable offers. As early as April 1939 there were reports that the orthodox community had reached the limits of its hospitality.

‘What were we then supposed to do?' Fifty years after the events, the rhetorical question was put by Elaine Blond.