... And the Policeman Smiled (29 page)

Young refugees, however, were not eligible for state scholarships or state bursaries. This effectively cut them out from higher education. Their only hope was a university scholarship or exhibition and, though a small number of refugees did find their way into university by this route, it was more common for those who wanted to continue their studies to attend evening classes or sign on for correspondence courses. Even so, cleverness and dogged determination were not always appreciated.

Klaus was a boy with a good school certificate who wanted to join ICI to work in chemical engineering. His RCM contact could not resist a snide comment: ‘It is extraordinary that a boy of fifteen should have such a very high opinion of his capabilities.'

A happier story is that of Edward. Born in 1936, he came to England three years later, followed shortly afterwards by his mother. In 1944 he was awarded a free place as a weekly boarder at Rowan House School. By the time he returned to Germany in 1948, his progress was such that his teachers were inspired to
proclaim: ‘He is a brilliant pupil … An example to us all.'

Among those who campaigned tirelessly for gifted youngsters, knowing full well that there was more at stake than mere survival, was Greta Burkill. As chairman of the Cambridgeshire Committee – in effect, covering the whole of East Anglia – some 800 youngsters came within her province, although at the height of the evacuation this figure increased to 2000.

German born, her father a left-wing journalist, Greta went to school and university in Britain and married a Cambridge don, Charles Burkill, in 1928. Always the true internationalist, Hitler's advent was her signal to pitch into refugee work.

The Cambridge Refugee Committee started life in the Quaker home of Hilda Sturge. In 1935 the Committee moved to 35 Hills Road and then was given the large house next door – number 55 – by Jesus College. Hilda Sturge took on responsibility for the adult refugees, while the Committee, with Greta acting as honorary secretary, looked after the children. The Cambridge Committee brought over at least seventy guaranteed children from Germany, mostly teenagers, who were all given a decent education. Private schools in the area were persuaded to offer places at reduced fees.

With two daughters of her own, Greta expanded her family by taking in the son of a German socialist who had been sent to a concentration camp, and a Viennese boy who adopted her name by deed poll. She helped a succession of youngsters to take part-time degrees by getting them jobs as kitchen porters or trainee cooks. In one year alone she was overseeing twelve undergraduates, of whom eleven emerged with first-class degrees. One of her helpers was Nina Liebermann:

I learned many things from Greta Burkill, not the least of them never to give up on your original goal … Many a physicist, mathematician or legal scholar owe their career opportunities to the tenacity of Greta Burkill. Indeed, when thwarted by bureaucrats, she could be like a tigress fighting for her cubs.

The early months of the war and the threat of an air attack on London brought a number of educational establishments to Cambridge – the London School of Economics, Guy's Hospital, St Bartholomew's and Bedford College among them. It was difficult to imagine a more stimulating environment for bright children
who might otherwise have lost out on their education. But life was never easy for the young refugee, as Greta Burkill later recorded:

The refugee child on the whole was ambitious and eager for knowledge. Having missed schooling in the home country, so many of them, after a day's work, went to night school and worked for Matriculation and for Higher School Certificate and so gained qualifications to enter university and polytechnics. Today these children would be called especially gifted and everything would be done to help them overcome their frustration, but then life was too hard and the country was under great pressure.

To combine a daytime job (however carefully it was chosen) and to work for examinations as well was very strenuous, though one must not forget that some British children also had to fight to reach university status, though not in such lonely circumstances, for grammar school education had to be paid for and there were plenty of parents who were not prepared to do this. It was only after the 1944 Education Act, with its 11-plus examination, that grammar schools became more open, but even then it was only ten per cent of elementary schoolchildren who were successful.

Friedrich Bettelheim was one of the young people who benefited from Greta Burkill's efforts. He came to England aged ten years old and at seventeen was taking his higher school certificate in physics and hoping to study medicine as a Major scholar at King's College. He was young to be going up to Cambridge, but was taken on there and gained a first in Preliminary Natural Sciences. Greta Burkill did not confine herself to looking after his education, but fought for him to spend a summer with his parents in Venezuela – a country not keen to grant visitors' visas to Jews at that time.

Despite such success stories, Greta Burkill's persistent correspondence with universities, the Education Ministry, the Home Office and the International Student Service (ISS) suggests a frightening lack of imagination in high places.

As the secretary of the ISS wrote to her in November 1943:

I may be too cautious in my attitude for, although I entirely agree with you that exceptionally brilliant refugee children should be given the same chahces of higher education as an English boy or girl, I am rather doubtful whether the population of England at
large has advanced sufficiently far in this direction to agree to open the chances of state scholarships to refugees. My feeling and that of my own Relief Committee is that we should, where possible, urge the county education authorities to exercise their discretion sympathetically where consideration was being given to refugee applications. Some counties have been giving Major scholarships of £60 or so to refugees, and these grants, in conjunction with University scholarships and School Leaving scholarships, are about as much as a British child would be able to get. If there are any children which you would like to refer to me, I should be glad to do what I can in the way of getting them funds from other sources, although, as you know, our own grants are intended primarily for older students.

George Alexander Gruen was accepted by Winchester School and was about to sit for his Cambridge entrance when he was interned and shipped off to Canada in 1940. Greta fought for his rehabilitation. Returning in 1941, he was given lodgings by the Vicar of Trumpington, a grant by his school and £52 by the Movement. He achieved a First in his preliminary examination at Trinity College, Cambridge and went on to also get a First in the History Tripos Part 1. His studies were again interrupted, this time by a spell in the Intelligence Corps, from which he returned to Cambridge to complete Part 2 of the History Tripos.

D. K. Haymann gained a scholarship to St John's College from Gordonstoun, the school founded by Kurt Hahn, the brother-inlaw of Lola Hahn-Warburg. But the scholarship was worth only £100 and, though his school plundered its scarce resources to add £20, it was not enough for the boy to support himself at Cambridge. Hearing of his difficulties from Greta Burkill, the College contributed a further £50 and the Self-Aid Society for Refugees another £50. His tutor raised what more was needed for financial security.

The constant battle for funds is echoed in the case of Fritz Buchwitz, a talented young mathematician. He gained a £120 scholarship to Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge in 1943, but had no other financial help. He was told to go up to Cambridge, despite a shortfall of £60 in his funds, and that his college would do its utmost to ensure that he could carry on with his studies.

Georg Kreisel gained a Major scholarship to Trinity College from Dudley Grammar School in 1941. No other money was
available. His housemaster wrote to Lord Baldwin asking for help, which led to an extra £150 per annum towards Georg's keep. Lord Baldwin's generosity was well rewarded as Georg gained a double First in Mathematics in 1942 and went into research for the Admiralty.

Wolfgang Graetzer was another gifted pupil. He went to Bedford Modern School in 1939 and, after only four terms, gained four distinctions and five credits in his School Certificate. He was then sent out to work, first at a toy factory in the East End of London and then at an estate agents. The International Student Service came to the rescue with a place at the Northern Polytechnic, with lodgings in a hostel guaranteed by the RCM. There he gained an Intermediate BS, and then worked washing up plates and studying in the evening so that he gained a scholarship to Imperial College, where the ISS agreed to support him. But the strain proved too much and Wolfgang became ill. This was put down to his experiences in Vienna and the intense strain of his life after leaving school.

Eighty-one refugee children went to Bunce Court, the school Anna Essinger had brought over from the Schwäbische Alb mountains of the Danube to Otterden, a large manor house standing in twenty-five acres of Kent countryside. Bunce Court was a progressive school. The emphasis was on self-reliance, with the children free to work out their own solutions without a close-knit family environment. Staff and pupils were on first name terms, so that Miss Clifton was Cliffy to her face, and Anna Essinger, who had been dubbed
Tante Anna
in German, was known simply as TA. The children contributed to the maintenance of their school, to the extent of making furniture and cleaning and repairing the building. But, unlike other progressive schools, classroom teaching was firmly rooted in the German tradition with the highest priority given to academic excellence.

Clever, imaginative children like Leslie Brent did well at Bunce Court.

At first I shared a bedroom with five or six boys in the main part of the school building on the top floor. The school had very beautiful grounds, a lovely garden and a small wood; a large playing field, an open-air amphitheatre, which had been built by the children themselves in earlier years, in which plays were performed … The
children did a lot of the work that needed to be done and it was an important part of the philosophy of Anna Essinger that children should be involved on a practical basis … My duties tended to gravitate from doing kitchen work (through that I got to know the non-Jewish German cook, Gretel Heidi, extremely well and we became lifelong friends – she was a sort of mother to me), to working in the workshop and in the garden. In the afternoon there were sporting activities – we unfortunately did not play cricket; that came very much later. We played hockey and football in the main and, of course, had athletics. We didn't play other schools as we didn't have much contact with them – we were geographically quite isolated. In the mornings we started off with gymnastics before breakfast, which some children found hateful, and once a week we organised a relay race. I enjoyed the physical side very much indeed.

I was one of many children who were very happy at Bunce Court. To me it was a safe haven where I was treated with affection and respect; where I was taught well and made friends … It provided me with a very secure environment and a very good springboard for life, despite a total lack of teaching in the physical sciences. Although I was only there from early 1939 to the end of 1942, the influence it has had on me was out of all proportion to the time I spent there.

The eldest of a family of nine, Anna Essinger was a dominant personality with the physique to match. A former teacher at Bunce Court, remembers her as:

Very tall – massive almost. Not a beauty at all. She had very poor eyesight – all the Essingers did – so she had to wear thick glasses. She always wore dark clothes. She had straight brown hair – with not a single grey hair to be seen … there was a certain lack of warmth, although there was always a strong feeling for the good of the children. She did not teach because she was always too busy with the administration. She would walk around the school twice a day inspecting everything, including the kitchen and the garden which she was very keen on (the biology teacher, who was a graduate from Reading, not only had to teach biology but was also in charge of the garden), and that garden kept the whole school in vegetables.

Bunce Court took a broadminded approach to religion. According to Leslie Brent, Anna Essinger was:

… quite anti-religious; at the very least agnostic. We were taught scripture and our teacher made the Bible come alive in an extraordinary way. There were some children from an orthodox background and they formed a little group that celebrated the Sabbath on Friday evenings and had services on Saturdays, but this was highly improvised.

Nor was Anna Essinger much interested in Jewish nationalism. But she did have an acute social conscience which Lucie Kaye, a former colleague, describes as ‘a Quaker mentality'. And she was, without question, a very courageous woman.

While still in Germany, the Nazis told her to put up a swastika flag and she said she would not do that. They said she had to and they would be back to see if she had obeyed them. On the day, they returned and there was no flag. She told them: ‘The children have gone on a hike for the whole day; there's not much point in showing a flag when there is nobody in the house.' After that, they left her alone.

Those who found difficulty in settling at Bunce Court had to sort out their own problems. There was no time for laggards. Pupils and staff were under enormous pressure.

Everybody had to work like hell. The teachers had no free time at all, our days were about twelve hours long, and she didn't care, because the less overheads to pay, the more children we could bring over from Germany.

From the earliest days in England, Bunce Court was open to children whose families were victims of Nazi persecution. At least a dozen pupils were educated free of charge on a promise that fees would be paid when the parents' situation improved. (Some, who got to America, conveniently forgot their pledge.) When the
Kindertransporte
began to arrive, Anna Essinger led a party of teachers and older pupils in trying to inject a semblance of education into the chaos that was Dovercourt. But she soon fell out with those who dictated RCM policy. She disapproved of the haphazard selection of foster parents (she would have much preferred the children to go to hostels run on the lines of Bunce Court) and, when the Movement pressed ahead anyway, she concentrated on plucking out from the crowd the children she identified as especially
gifted and on salvaging those who had been packed off to unsuitable foster homes. A former pupil at the school remembers: