World War II Remembered

The Early War

217 It was a beautiful September morning in 1939. Living in England , we were vacationing in Toller Porcorum, a little village in Dorset . My sister, Hanna, and I had gone for a morning stroll and then secretly played with the house cats: Mother, phobic about cats, might become ill just hearing the word. We returned to the old farmhouse, the smell of Sunday’s roasting mutton wafting out. Mother and Father were already at the house radio , ready for the eleven o’clock news. After the familiar chimes of Big Ben, the BBC announcer intoned: “This is London.” Then Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain solemnly read his declaration of war with Germany. I looked around; Father’s face was ashen, Mother was crying, Hanna seemed confused. Fighting back tears, I knew I must be strong. On Monday morning I slipped out to the store and bought two forbidden items, a pale pink lipstick and some clear nail polish. I would wear both for many years, like an invisible shield. I was almost eighteen. My father, Adolph Lowe, again had reason to worry. If Germany The Early War • Rachel Lowe Aubrey 218 World War II Remembered were to invade England, as was widely feared, he and his family would be deported back to Germany and probably killed. Frankfurt Earlier, in 1933, when my father was a tenured professor of economics at Frankfurt University, and a known liberal, he had been placed on Hitler’s first list of academics to be “dismissed as dangerous to the Third Reich.” Close friends—Paul Tillich, the theologian, and Karl Mannheim, the sociologist—were on the same list. Immediately after that list was drawn up, my father, realizing that our Frankfurt apartment was being watched, had us sleep in a hotel. A few nights later, Hanna and I were told we were going on vacation. We crept through the dark streets to the station and found an empty compartment on the train. There was a tense moment when the conductor came, the morning paper in his back pocket. Had he already read that all Jewish passports would be recalled today? He looked us over a long time, shook his head, punched the tickets, and then quietly closed the door. Geneva We got off in Geneva, each of us with one small suitcase. Since we could not afford a hotel, Mother, Hanna, and I were taken in by the Salvation Army, to stay in their Home for Troubled Girls, while Father left to look for a job, anywhere in Europe. The officers were very caring; at night I heard them pray for us. Hanna and I were enrolled in a strict French school, where relapsing even briefly into German would bring the slap of a ruler. After a few months, our French became quite good and we could keep up in class. Then Father phoned from England: “Stop speaking French, learn English, we are moving to Manchester,” where he had just found a lowlevel academic job. Mother hired a teacher; I hated the sound of English vowels and tried to boycott the lessons, to no avail. We had been in Geneva eight months; I was eleven, Hanna was eight. Manchester We arrived in Manchester on Christmas Day 1933, soon to be enrolled in a Girls’ Day School. Speaking either German or French was forbid- The Early War: Rachel Lowe Aubrey 219 den; even at home we now spoke only English, once our parents’ secret language. Wearing the school uniform helped us fit in, but for Mother and Father adapting to English life was more difficult. In 1938 they managed to bring out Father’s elderly parents, to live with us. Some food items—sugar, meat, and butter—were already rationed. We were urged to “dig for victory” and to eat parsnips from the garden. The grandparents would not touch margarine, so we gave them all our butter rations. My first after-school job was as taste-tester for a large margarine company; most of the samples tasted rancid. Grandmother, a gourmet cook, once burned our entire meat ration, straining an already difficult relationship with Mother. The political situation was tense. Chamberlain’s appeasement policy had failed to create “Peace in our time.” At night there were frequent air-raid alarms, during which we were supposed to put on our gas masks and go to the designated shelter. My grandparents hated the shelter and would not wear...