Re: [Cz-L] My father's story - how he escaped the Nazis

Hello Hardy, and others on the List

I'm sorry, I should have introduced myself properly. My name is Mike
Fuhr, and I live in Reading, about 40 miles from London, England. I am
a civil servant, and have been all my career - that's part of repaying
the debt that I owe to this country. I have a wife and two daughters,
whom my father saw born before he died. He was very proud of them. And
I am very proud of him.

I am glad if you liked the story. My dad was a very modest man who
didn't talk much about the war. He worked hard to create a new life in
England, after leaving Vienna with nothing. He and my mother gave my
sister and me an enlightened Jewish upbringing, though he never really
lost his fear that the Nazis might rise again. His father was one of 8
children and his mother one of 13. But of the over 50 people in those
two families by the time war came, only 6 or 7 o survived the war. My
dad reckoned that he lost over 40 cousins in the camps.

When he came to England, the first thing that he had to do was to find
his family. The plan was that they would go a pre-arranged cheap,
lodging house in London, the name of which had given to them by someone
who had earlier done business in London. But when my father got
there, he could not find his father, mother or sister. He was too
scared to go to the police but found a landsman somewhere who went on
his behalf.

It turned out that his father had been interned on arrival in England as
a "potential enemy alien". My grandfather, you see, had fought for the
Kaiser in the First War, and been decorated for his efforts. His rank
in WW1 was shown in one of the travel documents, so he was assumed to be
a loyal Austrian, and therefore a threat, given that war had broken
out. So he was taken, with his wife and daughter, to Ramsey on the
Isle of man, just off England's NW coast, where many famous Jews whiled
away their time trying to persuade the British that they were not spies
for Hitler (as if!). My father went there as a a voluntary internee to
look after his family until the authorities were satisfied that my
grandfather posed no threat.

My father was then put to work at a fruit farm in SE England (remember
that his entry visa said he was a farm technician) where the supervisor
quickly realised that he was hopeless as a farmer, but was both adept
with numbers and a good sportsman. So they moved him to the accounts
department and put him in the village cricket team (that was my dad's
only ever cricket match).

My parents married in 1941 moving around first London then Glasgow in an
effort to avoid the bombings. My sister arrived in 1944 and I saw the
light of day in 1949.

My mother was the daughter of a well known, wealthy Viennese fashion
designer (Mor Neumann) but the family lost everything after Kristalnacht
(and "legally" too. Their corrupt lawyer got them to sign over
everything they owned to a trust that the Nazis would not be able to
touch. But unknown to anyone, he made himself sole controller of the
trust and disappeared, along with a fortune). But that's another story.

Regards

Mike

HARDY BREIER wrote:

> Who is the writer of this fascinating story ?
> Hardy
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "e-mail mike.office"
> <mike.office_at_ntlworld.com>
> To: <Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 7:48 PM
> Subject: [Cz-L] My father's story - how he escaped the Nazis
>
>

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Received on 2010-08-04 16:33:55