I stood on the platform all by myself in a London railway station. What now? I thought: I can’t use my £3, I can’t go to a hotel. In that split second a huge policeman came & looked at me: ‘Woher kommst du?’ He was Jewish! He said ‘I’ll take you to the shelter.’ There was a shelter in the East End. He said: ‘I’ll put you into a taxi. Du gebst den ganef sixpence, no more.’
At the shelter another yiddlech came & said: ‘Lie on the bed if you want, sleep if you want, don’t get undressed. If you get undressed you won’t find your things tomorrow morning. They are all ganovim.’ So for the first hour I sat on my bed, looking. Then somebody said ‘Go to sleep, we will watch you. Nothing will happen.’ Nothing did but I had nothing to eat for 30 hours. It was terrible.”
The next day Frank went to “the Jewish Agency” (Woburn House): “‘Ya, come in, sit down. Do you come from Vienna?’ She questioned me. Suddenly next to her was a big trolley & on the trolley was a box stacked with £1 notes, there must have been £10,000. The telephone rings. She gets up & walks away. I said ‘Just a minute, oh no,’ I said, ‘That we don’t do.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I am not being left alone by myself,’ I said, ‘No way! I won’t be left alone with all that money here.’
‘As long as you don’t take it, what are you worried about?’
So finally she came back & said ‘What is all the shouting about?’
I said ‘How can you leave me alone with all the money?’
‘Well, why not? Did you take any?’
I said ‘No I didn’t.’
“There you are. Here is £1, good luck to you. Now what was it you want?’
I said ‘What can I do?’
She said ‘I have given you £1, go back to where you have come from & come back tomorrow morning.’ So I walked a bit here & there, I had a bit of something to eat & drink & by 8 o’clock the day was gone. The next day she said ‘Do you want to go to the Kitchener Camp?’
‘I will go anywhere you want.’
‘Well there is a transport going to the Kitchener Camp in Sandwich.’
So I went there.