Casgliadau Arlein

Oral history recording with Doris Moritz collected as part of The Hineni Project, an insight into the life and stories of a Jewish community in all its diversity. Hineni was a collaborative project between Cardiff Reform Synagogue and Butetown History & Arts Centre.

My father was a cattle farmer in Germany near the Dutch border. With the danger of the Hitler regime, my parents wanted to make me be independent. They sent me to a Jewish school in Berlin, where I had to stay with strangers as a boarder. I had not been long in Berlin when the 10th November 1938 Kristallnacht happened. The Nazis destroyed synagogues and rampaged through Jewish homes. My parents made arrangements for my sister and myself to be taken into the home of Miss Rickard in Cambridge. So on 20th April 1939, Hitler’s birthday, my parents saw us off on a Kindertransport at Cologne station. We carried a suitcase, a packed lunch and had a label round our necks. I recollect little of the journey through Holland, apart from the fact that there was a tremendous relief when we reached the Dutch border. We had seen the sea, as we had spent many splendid holidays at the seaside in Holland, but we had never been on a boat. I remember little of the crossing or the train journey to London Liverpool Street station. Eventually, Mrs Burkill, who was very active working for refugees in Cambridge, found us and took us to our destination. Miss Rickard, just ten years older than I, lived with her friend Miss Viveash, who was her housekeeper in a very large house. It had a huge garden with a tennis court and an orchard. In fact, she ran the show, shopped, cooked and was in charge of all domestic activities. We were very fortunate to be able to attend The Perse School, a very academic school. This meant that we had to be fitted out with school uniforms. When it came to shoe size, mine being 39, that caused some amusement. The beginning of school was far from easy – no parents, no English and a totally strange environment. Miss Rickard was a regular churchgoer and saw to it that we attended synagogue in Thompson Lane every Shabbat. We also enrolled as Girl Guides and that helped us to learn of another part of English life. Two days before the outbreak of war my parents arrived, very much to our relief and great delight. After a while my parents, with a friend, bought a house and we were then able to move in with our parents. I did my School Certificate, followed by a secretarial course, followed by my war service in the National Fire Service. At the end of the war, I applied to be admitted to a teacher’s training course. I taught in a school in Barnet but returned to Cambridge frequently. There I met Alfred, whose aunt and family had immigrated to Cambridge. We married in Cambridge in August 1949 and moved to Oxford, where we were able to rent a flat. Alfred commuted to London to teach classics at Bedford College, London and I taught at a primary school in Oxford. In 1953 Alfred was appointed as lecturer in Latin at University College, Cardiff. We arrived in Cardiff between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and joined Cardiff Reform Synagogue.