Gestapo arrest, Auschwitz and Kindertransport

My grandparents Rudolph and Ida Kormes had a thriving auction and furrier business in Leipzig until February 5 1938 when the Law on the Profession of Auctioneer excluded Jews from the profession and on October 3 the Decree on the Confiscation of Jewish Property regulated the transfer of assets from Jews to non-Jews in Germany. They were therefore not permitted to have an income or property and were forced to move to a so called Jew House which they shared with other Jews. Just before the war broke out Rudolph and Ida managed to obtain visas to send their two daughters Ruth (my mother) and Inge to England on the Kindertransport scheme. They arrived on 23 June 1939.They worked for a short while as domestics in Bournemouth but when the war broke out in September they were interned on the Isle of Man in a requisitioned hotel. Their two brothers Hans and Julius followed later joining the Allies to fight the Nazis. Their parents were hoping to escape from the Jew House and make their way to England via Switzerland in October but the restrictions imposed on them in the Jew House prevented them from doing so. We know from a friend of theirs that they managed to escape to a safe house in early 1943 missing a transportation order to Auschwitz in February. They travelled towards the Swiss border sometime after this but on 20 July 1943 they were arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the Nuremberg Police Station. They had a suitcase each and one rucksack. The next day on 21 July 1943 they were sent to Auschwitz never to be seen or heard of again. My mother and her siblings knew their parents had somehow ended their days in Auschwitz but never knew of their arrest by the Gestapo in their lifetime. Our family only recently discovered this.

Meanwhile in Britain, Jewish businessmen had set up businesses in Britain in the early 1930s and, assisted by Lord Nuffield, a great Philanthropist of the time, were able to allocate workplaces for Jewish internees at their factories in depressed areas of Britain. As a result of this Ruth and her sister Inge were given employment at a handbag factory in West Auckland in Durham, owned by the Schmidt family who also took Ruth and Inga into their home in Darlington until lodgings could be found. Ruth worked measuring out lengths of leather, ready for stencilling into handbag shapes whilst Inge was supplying all the machinists with the cut leather pieces ready for sewing together. While there Ruth and Inge met Nellie who worked in Accounts at the factory. Nellie's uncle knew a farmer who had a remote one bedroomed cottage in the middle of a field in Evenwood, just outside West Auckland and negotiated for Ruth and Inge to take up residency there. The cottage was very basic with no gas or electricity, and cooking had to be done over an open fire. The locals were very friendly and the sisters would regularly find rabbits, pheasants, vegetables and firewood on their doorstep each morning. Everything was going well until the arrival of Mitzi 'Deutsche', another internee who had been sent to live in the cottage. This made it a bit of a squeeze.

Every week they all had to attend the local Police Station to sign the Aliens Register.

As time progressed Ruth left the cottage and went to live in a Bed & Breakfast in West Auckland before eventually heading to Sunderland to train as a nurse. She didn't complete her training as she got married and started a family.

Ruth met Peter, my father, in Sunderland. Peter was a Merchant Navy Radio Officer who was recuperating from the sinking of his ship MV Wandby in 1940. They moved to the South of England and later married.

Ruth, Inge and her two brothers came to England with no personal possessions to remind them of their parents or their past, apart from a few photos of their parents. Their story is therefore told through photos and documents rather than photos of mementos.

Ruth told her story in many ways. She was interviewed by the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) and they published her poem 'Did You Close the Door Softly?' which was about her parents leaving their home for the last time. This poem is on display at the Leipzig Museum in Germany so two copies are provided here. Ruth also typed up the story of her parents taking her and her sister to Hamburg by train from Leipzig to get the ship to Southampton and how she loved the station at Leipzig and how she was embarrassed by her father crying upon their departure. Sadly only page one of the story survives. Later in life, on the Isle of Wight, she told her story to school children and was awarded a community prize presented by Ester Ranzen. Ruth's parents sent letters to their children until they disappeared in 1943. One is included here in the original old German with a transliterated copy in modern German and a translated copy into English. Ruth was also interviewed by the BBC Radio 4 Home Truths programme on 5 September 2005 (Ruth's Story). The recording was at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hometruths/20050905_ruth.shtml.