First Impressions: great aunt Barbara on green asparagus, cricket and Englishmen

May 1939. England, and walking in a busy street having the traffic on the left hand side! Seeing double-decker trams! Playing tennis on grass courts! Listening to films in a foreign language! Recognizing the freedom of the boys in a big English Public School! These were the first things I saw and every day something new and different.

When Germans think of an Englishman they usually think of somebody in a very dirty mackintosh and a felt hat, smoking a pipe and of course carrying an umbrella. This idea I had too when I first came to England. In Harwich as in London, I saw hardly any "real" Englishmen at all. They all looked very much like Germans. On my first day in Bath I saw two gentlemen dressed as I thought all Englishmen were dressed. But when they came nearer I hardly believed my ears when I heard them talking German! I was so very disappointed that I gave up looking out for "real" Englishmen. Once I heard somebody saying that the Englishman's home is his castle. Well, I can quite understand that he likes being at home when there is a nice cup of tea for him, and a fire in the drawing room. At first I laughed when I saw people drinking tea five times a day. Now I have got quite used to a cup of tea in the morning and afternoon, but I still can't understand people who drink more than that. Food was very difficult too at first. I was very surprised when I had to eat green asparagus! And certainly I missed and miss the hundred kinds of German sausages.

Quite a new idea was that so many houses had a garden. Everybody I met boasted how many roses were blooming in his garden just now, how many had to come yet and what kind they were.

And then cricket!! In May the season was just beginning. Wherever I went I heard people discussing cricket. After about a week of being in England I had to go and watch a match of this wonderful game of cricket. I must confess that I thought it was terribly boring and everybody was shocked about it. There are some people who say that cricket shows the Englishman's character, and who doesn't understand cricket doesn't understand an Englishman. So next year I will have to study cricket very carefully, and till then I won't be able to understand any Englishman.

My great-aunt Barbara (Bärbel) was 16 when she wrote this piece and would have recently begun her studies at Stamford High School, following her escape from Nazi Germany via Kindertransport in May 1939.

Her and my 14-year-old grandfather arrived at Harwich on 18 May 1939, having travelled from Breslau, presumably via Berlin and the Hook of Holland. They stayed a few days at the Butlin's holiday camp at Dovercourt Bay before being separated, against their parents' wishes. My grandfather went on to Bath and Barbara to Uppingham in Leicestershire, where she lived with the Reverend Rupert Davies and his wife Margaret.

Barbara was baptised in 1940, aged 17. Her parents, Georg and Else, were still alive at this time and living precariously in Breslau.

Since learning she was baptised soon after arriving in England, I've often wondered whether she was pressured to convert, and whether she felt she could write to her parents to let them know.

My father describes my grandfather as having been a devout atheist.

Their half-brother Peter attended a Hachshara at Werkdorp Wieringermeer, Netherlands. He underwent Ha'apala in 1939, reaching Palestine on the notorious “Death Ship” Dora.