Casgliadau Arlein

Oral history recording with Frances Waldek 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.

I was born in 1922 in Vienna where I grew up, and left for Britain in a children’s transport when I was sixteen. I initially came without my parents but they followed very soon after. My father made artificial flowers in Vienna, and was asked to come over to Britain by somebody who had a factory making artificial flowers in Porth, South Wales. I worked in the factory, too, until I joined the army. During the war I was a cook in the Auxiliary Territorial Service and was considered an enemy alien when I joined. My sister and I had to have police permission and take an intelligence test. We didn’t want to be cooks but because we were enemy aliens we had to be either cooks or orderlies. I was based in a military hospital in Rhyl, North Wales for many years, where I worked mainly with British women of many different backgrounds. I worked very hard and one time I was so tired I dropped a whole tray of meat and burned both my legs. I was in hospital for a long time, and next to me was a Roman Catholic, and when the Father came to give this woman Holy Mass he came to me and I said, “I’m Jewish.” So the next time he came he had a prayer, not in Hebrew, but he found a prayer in the Bible to say over me, which was wonderful. There are a lot of good human beings in the world. It doesn’t matter what religion they are. I met my husband when I was twenty-three. He was in the army in the Jewish Brigade and I met him when he was on leave in Cardiff. After we were demobbed, we came to live in Cardiff and he joined my father’s factory. We joined the Reform soon after, when our son was born, and he was bar mitzvah and married there. Rose Bogod was a wonderful woman and she got us all involved in the Ladies’ Guild, baking cakes, and we had children’s services as there were lots of children. My son is very actively Jewish and has a Jewish wife, but my daughter, who also goes to a synagogue in London, has a Muslim husband, and my granddaughter is married to a Christian and they have a daughter so I don’t know what they’ll do with regards to her. But I’ve been to them on a Friday night and my daughter lights the candles and my son-in-law says the b’racha over the wine and the bread. I’ve always been brought up to be Jewish – that was my parents’ identity. I’ve not been brought up to be Austrian but I can’t say I’m British. I mean, wherever I go people will say, “Where do you come from?” So I tell them I’m born in Vienna. “Do you ever go home?” So I say, “Well, this is my home.” So other people do not consider me British. I am a European Jew with a British passport. I swore to myself I will always stand up to be Jewish and that’s what I’ve done, not because I’m religious; it’s my identity. I don’t believe in God but I am Jewish. Six million people died because they were Jewish so I’ve got to stand up for the six million Jews. It’s very simple to me.