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Dr. Michael Lasserson
The Writer, London, England

It was the worst of times; a nation at the very heart of European culture—embodying so much of what was great and noble—turning on itself to eat out its own intellectual and artistic heart. It was the worst of times, as a civic structure was established demonstrating appalling social cruelty.  It was the worst of times, as that nation’s preoccupation with eugenics and social and racial purification allowed its medical profession to race ahead with a program which evolved into the Holocaust.

Those who could leave did so. Many artists, musicians and writers exiled themselves, speaking loudly and clearly about what was happening. Many stayed, some hoping that things would revert to normal, while others took advantage of opportunities for self-advancement. But as the regime tightened its grip, more and more tried to leave, desperately seeking safety anywhere in the world other than their homeland.  Many did manage to leave, and many arrived in England. Many had to leave some family members behind due to age and illness plus, all too often, a stubborn refusal to recognize the evolving horror as permanent.

One of the very few organized attempts to help was the Kindertransport, a rescuing of German and Austrian Jewish children. They were brought to England just before the war with the fervent cooperation of their parents, who were left to survive with the obscene spectre of deportation and death as they coped with the almost certain knowledge that they would never see their children again. The parents of one child managed to get their daughter on one of the last Kindertransports out of Berlin. They stood on the platform, trying to encourage the child to be excited about her new life with promises that they would all be together soon. Suddenly, before the train began to move, her father broke down. Unable to bear this parting, he dragged his daughter out of the window, back on to the platform, away from her chance of safety, and reunited them in the hell that was their life.

As war and the threat of invasion became probable rather than possible, many families tried to get their children out of Europe—to America, Canada, or Australia. Distant relatives, who might not have been seen or spoken with for years, were contacted urgently. Passages were arranged, tickets were booked, and applications were made for passports, a word that many children were hearing for the first time.

1941 was not a good time as the U-Boat wolf-packs seemed to be patrolling the Atlantic with impunity. Even though more were torpedoed, there were still ships setting out across the Atlantic, taking huge risks to carry English children to safety in the USA with their parents taking—on their behalf—an equally huge leap of faith, hoping that the children would be welcomed by people they had never met and who, in so many cases, their parents barely knew. The terror of torpedo attacks made for unimaginable stress, for more than one such ship had been torpedoed soon after leaving Liverpool, with the loss of hundreds of children.

My father was working in a hospital in the north of England, so my mother and I did our best to dodge the bombs. Our criss-crossing of the country found us in Southport, where we stayed with a widowed uncle who, together with his sister, was looking after his two young sons. We were too young to have any idea of what the war meant and of the unspoken terror that must have permeated the lives of our parents. They were very careful in their use of words so that, to us, there seemed to be some normality of life. There was family fun; we were never allowed to go short of food; we still got our weekly comics, but more and more did we begin to hear the words “affidavit” and “visa.” I remember my mother sitting at a table with piles of documents, talking endlessly with my uncle as they threw those words around. I remember going with my mother on the electric train from Southport to Liverpool, where we traipsed in and out of huge buildings with marble floors. I waited while my mother stood in line for hours outside various offices, looking out of the window at the funnels of the huge ships which were part of the city’s skyline.   Then we went back to our normal life in Southport, until she and my uncle began trying their best to explain the situation and why they wanted to send us away.

One morning, several weeks later, we were bundled into best clothes and overcoats and made to sit on our suitcases while my mother went to find the travel documents. She searched with increasing desperation for hours while the time for our departure to Liverpool ticked by, as did the time of our ship’s departure.  We had lost our turn, our chance of safety. Soon after that, we left Southport and headed to a corner of North Wales; there we stayed for almost two years.

I neither heard nor thought any more about this episode until many years later, when my cousins and I—by now all married with families of our own—met. We recalled family events, and that time in particular. They had done some research.  The ship on which we were due to sail had been torpedoed a few hours into the voyage, so my mother’s failure to find those documents had been our saving.  But was it? We could not have known then that the immediacy of Nazi invasion had receded as Hitler attacked Russia; it remained a terrible threat, and our parents were under no illusion as to what would happen to us when invasion took place. There was this urgency to get the children out of the country despite the awful risk of death by torpedo, and there was the risk that the parents ran by remaining in the country. My cousins put forward the idea that my mother was to some degree psychic; she must have had this sixth sense that ours could well be another boat which would be sunk, and needed to ensure that we were not on it—hence the pantomime of the missing travel documents. None of them could believe that someone so organized could misplace things so important. She could not bear to send us into those awful risks of the journey itself, and of the social circumstances in which we might find ourselves at the end of that journey.  So our family stayed together, but for how long? We had, after all, been brought back into the arena of an equally horrifying risk.

I thought of that German family and of the resonance between our story and theirs. That father, driven by grief at the loss of his daughter, dragged her away from her only chance of survival even though he knew what was almost certainly in store for them. What could he have thought as he did that? “Perhaps things will improve,” when everything pointed to an escalation of what was already unimaginable social horror.

My mother did the same thing; she dragged us away from what might have been our only chance of survival. It brought us together as that little German family was brought together, while the risks remained. However, we were different by far from the other family’s situation, where danger was replaced by certainty.  We were, after all, part of a beleaguered nation while they were part of a community, ostracized and made instantly and cruelly identifiable.  We had an option; to stay or to go. That family had none for they were beginning a gradually-accelerating journey to deportation and death. But what had my mother been thinking when she made her decision? “Perhaps things will improve.  Perhaps we will win this war. Perhaps we will survive.  Perhaps.”

As I look back, I realize the continual unvoiced terror under which our parents lived; I appreciate the huge emotional strength which allowed them to preserve normality for us, their children. I ask myself, what would I have done? How would I have weighed up the risks? Would I have let the children go, hoping against hope?  Would I have kept them with me, hoping against hope?  I do not know.  All I do know is that we had all the luck, while that German family had none.

DR. MICHAEL LASSERSON was born in 1932, in Manchester, England.  He graduated originally in dental surgery, in 1958, but returned to university to study medicine eight years later. He qualified in 1969 and, after several hospital posts, entered general practice in South London.  He retired from practice after 32 years.  In 2004 he co-founded the European Doctors Orchestra, in which he plays double-bass. He is editor of The Writer, the journal of the Society of Medical Writers, a group of health professionals united by a love of literature and arts.  He can be reached at mlasserson@hotmail.com