Jewish refugees and the British nursing profession
Jane Brooks looks at her research into Jewish refugees and the British nursing profession.
About ten years ago, I interviewed several nurses who had worked during the Second World War for a book on nursing in that conflict. One of the interviewees recalled a young Jewish refugee who started at her hospital and who was, by her own estimation, quite isolated. This incident, seemingly remembered quite arbitrarily, started me on a course which has culminated in my monograph that has just been accepted for publication by Manchester University Press, Jewish Refugees and the British Nursing Profession: A Gendered Opportunity.
I started the oral history interviews for this project in 2017 and was searching the archives for documentary evidence from about the same time. In August 2018, I contacted the Board of Deputies of British Jews to request permission to access their files at the LMA. They very kindly agreed, enabling me to view some fascinating primary material for the book. My research for this project, like all my work to date, is based very much in personal testimony, both oral and written. However, documentary evidence from professional, Governmental and official organisations such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews, have always played a critical part.
Escape and safety in Britain
In 1938 the British Government established three escape routes for Jewish women and children fleeing Nazi persecution. The Kindertransport is probably the most famous evacuation story of the last century, imbued as it has been with a celebration of the saving of 10,000 children. Of course, the reality was rather different. Many of the Kinder ended up in hostile and uncaring homes and most of their parents eventually perished in the Holocaust. There was also a scheme to bring over young Jewish women to work as domestic servants in the homes of the British middle-classes. Finally, some women were able to come on nursing visas. These two latter schemes, whilst undoubtedly saving the lives of up to 20,000 women were hardly altruistic. The women of Britain wanted servants and the middle-class matrons of the nation’s hospitals needed more nurses as the country faced imminent war.
It has been a fascinating journey reviewing the disparities between the narratives of the personal testimony and organisational and Government rhetoric. The LMA archives were central in helping me understand the contradictions.
Disparities in the narratives
On 19 May 1939, the Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Domestic Bureau demonstrate that the matter of girls’ employment was discussed at length:
Letters were read from the Council for German Jewry and the Christian Council for Refugees, accepting the ultimate responsibility for these girls…. The Chairman [sic] reported that she was in touch with the Children’s Committee concerning the domestic permits for girls originally brought over under the children’s scheme, who wished to enter domestic employment on reaching the age of 16.
[Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Domestic Bureau of the Central Office for Refugees (19 May 1939), 2. Domestic Bureau Executive Minutes, 11 January 1939-17 January 1941 & Correspondence 1939-1941. ACC/2793/01/01/07 London Metropolitan Archives (LMA]
The narratives from the young girls themselves reveal a very different story. I did not find one personal testimony from a child refugee stating that she was glad to be offered domestic service work. They took the positions because they had no alternative. Lee Fischer and her younger brother arrived in Britain in July 1939 with the Kindertransport. Tragically, soon after the commencement of war, her brother died of rheumatic fever, leaving Lee, aged fifteen on her own. She was sent to work as a domestic servant in Manchester: ‘I stayed there for two years being mother’s helper. And I did a lot of things like cleaning vegetables and stuff and doing laundry.
[Lee Fischer (Liesl Einstein), oral history interview by Jane Brooks on 12 October 2017. Personal archive.]
Gertrude Roberts recalled that the Refugee Committee sent her to one household, clearly without checking the family’s credentials: ‘I remember once [my employer] threatened me with a carving knife.
[Gertrude Roberts, oral history interview by Alan Dein on 23 January 1982. Interview 184. Oral History Collection, Jewish Museum, London]
The question remains, why did the organisation whose responsibility was saving the lives of their co-religionists escaping Nazi atrocities, disregard the needs of these children? The LMA archives provide the answer: ‘In March 1933, an undertaking was given to His Majesty’s Government that Jewish refugees admitted to this country would, under no circumstances, become a charge on the country.
[Unknown author on behalf of the Executive Council for German Jewry to E.N. Cooper, Home Office, 14 September 1938. ACC/ 2793/04/05/01 LMA.]
The Committee of the Central Office for Refugees could not afford to finance all those fleeing Nazi Europe, on leaving school all refugees were required to find work. My research has specifically focused on their work as nurses, but as they needed to be at least 18 years old before they could enter training, the period between 14 to 18 needed to be filled somehow. Domestic service was the prima facia option. Lee Fischer trained as a nurse at Booth Hall Children’s Hospital in north Manchester: ‘And I started nursing in March 1943… and that was the same year my parents were deported to Auschwitz. So basically, I was on my own. I was never a teenager. I grew up very fast.’
[Lee Fischer (Liesel Einstein), oral history interview by Jane Brooks on 12 October 2017. Personal archive.]