My Story

Dina LeBoutillier

“When my brother and I started to talk in German, we were stopped immediately and told we would be sent back to Austria if we didn’t speak in English. We tried to whisper instead, but that was also forbidden. Ralph got the buckle end of the belt and I got the other end. We soon lost all ability to speak in our mother tongue.”

These are Dina’s words. This is her story.

‘My Story’ is an initiative of The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR).
www.ajrmystory.org.uk www.ajr.org.uk

Dina LeBoutillier spoke to AJR volunteer Laura Gold. Thanks also to AJR volunteers Alix Lee and and Muireann Grealy. This book was produced during the Covid-19 pandemic.

©The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) May 2023

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licencing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR).

First published May 2023

Designed by Berenice Smith, MA

Produced by Naomi Kaye

Printed in Great Britain by BookPrintingUK

The authors, editor and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce any copyright material in this book. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

A difficult start in life

I was born Leopoldine Rosa Blach on 13 July 1929. My brother, Ralph, was a year older. We lived in Vienna with our mother, who had exactly the same name as me, and our father, Matthias Kurzer, at 16 Hasenleitengasse, Vienna 6, Austria.

Our home was in an old army barracks. It was a one-bedroom apartment with a stove that sat in the corner of the main room under a big chimney. We would all sleep in the smaller room, sharing a bed together: my brother and I slept at the bottom of the bed and our parents would sleep at the top. We never had enough to eat. We would queue for food at soup kitchens. Ralph would often go to school without shoes and his socks had holes in. He would bring wood home from the railway line for us to burn in the stove. ■

Family history

My mother was born in Vienna on 19 August 1905. She was Roman Catholic. My father was Jewish, but he was not a religious man. He was born on 21 December 1906 in the ghettos in Poland. They never married. Apparently, they weren’t allowed to marry, maybe because of their different religions. Both Ralph and I were baptised, but we never went to church.

My father’s mother died in childbirth, and he was brought up by foster parents. He moved to Vienna to make a better life for himself. In his younger days, he played football for one of the big clubs in Vienna. He later found work at the cattle market in Landstrasse, the third district, but he couldn’t have been paid much for this as we were so poor. He then worked in a slaughterhouse as a kosher butcher.

My maternal grandfather Florian was very talented with his hands. My brother remembered him visiting us and bringing me a doll’s house filled with furniture he had made out of papier mâché. I have some memories of my maternal grandmother, Maria Blach, but I don’t remember Florian at all. ■

Losing my mother

I was very young when my mother moved into a convent nursing home. I don’t know what she suffered with. I remember she came back home twice for a short while, but I barely have any memories of her.

We didn’t see an awful lot of my father either, as he was rarely at home. I didn’t know this at the time, but my brother told me later that our father was involved in the resistance against the Nazis. He would often take us to our maternal grandmother’s house at the end of our street. We spent many nights hiding under her bed during the loud shootings outside. It was very frightening.

In 1935, when I was about six years old, my mother died. I remember going to the convent where she was being cared for and they told me she had died peacefully. I don’t remember her, though: I can’t visualise her at all.

After this, we moved in with our maternal grandmother and then, in 1937, we moved in with Rosa Tomann. Rosa lived in the apartment above the flat we had lived in with our parents. When my mother was unwell, she often came down to look after us. She was very kind and we got on well with her. I’m uncertain what the arrangement was between her and my father for her to have us live with her. ■

My brother Ralph

Ralph was originally named Adolf, but in later life he found this detestable – for obvious reasons – and changed it to Ralph. Growing up in Vienna, although he didn’t know he was Jewish, he witnessed antisemitism against other Jewish children in school. The teachers were very prejudiced against the Jewish children, and did nothing to stop the other children tearing up the Jewish children’s school books. They would also break the windows of their houses on the way home and scrawl the word Jude on their belongings.

My brother remembered Kristallnacht (the night of the broken glass, 9/10 November 1938). When he was walking past the synagogue, he saw the brown shirts (SA) and the (SS) black shirts stopping people getting close to the barriers. Then, all of a sudden, there was a huge explosion and the whole thing blew up with everyone still inside.

My father leaves Austria

Around the time the Nazis were rising to power, my father bumped into an old school friend with whom he had played football in his youth. This man told my father: ‘Get yourself and your family out of Austria. There’s going to be a war and Jews need to leave now.’ This man was Adolf Eichmann, a senior Nazi and one of the architects of the Holocaust.

There wasn’t much time to spare, and it was impossible for my father to apply for a passport. He was very friendly with Rosa’s brother-in-law, who was Jewish and had a plan to escape. He offered to pay the fare for my father to go with him.

Our father sat us down to tell us he was leaving. Up until this time, we had no idea that he was Jewish. He told us we must not tell anybody and if anyone were to ask where he was, we should say he was working out of town. He said we must not do anything that could draw attention to ourselves, and that he had made arrangements for us to leave for safety very soon.

He left us in the care of Rosa. She was a gentile, so she had nothing to worry about. He also contacted the Quakers, who arranged places for my brother and me on the Kindertransport. ■

My Kindertransport journey

It was mid-May in 1939 when we were taken to the train station. I don’t remember who took us, but my brother has since said that it was Rosa, along with our maternal Uncle Nicol and Auntie Annie. We joined a group of about 50 other children. I was nine and Ralph had just turned 10. I don’t have any memories of this myself: I can’t remember if I felt sorrow or fear on leaving Austria, though Ralph told me later that I did cry when we got on the train.

We just had one little attaché bag each. I had a couple of dresses, a dirndl skirt and some handmade stockings in mine. We wore number tags that hung on strings around our necks.

On the boat, we didn’t have a cabin to sleep in. The children spent most of the time out on deck looking to see where we were going. For breakfast we were given white bread, which Ralph apparently refused to eat – it was very different to the bread we had been used to in Austria.

I do remember the journey being long. It took about two and a half days. On 15 May 1939, we arrived in Harwich, where we were met by a man called Peter Freeman from the Children’s Refugee Committee. He spoke some German and travelled with us by train to Sheffield where our new ‘family’, Mr Hubert and Mrs Amy Glossop, met us at the station. ■

A cruel new start

Ralph and I were very pleased to be kept together. But when we arrived at the Glossops’ house, 243 Crookesmoor Road, I was frightened: I had no words to say, I couldn’t understand the language. Ralph had some basic English, having been at secondary school for a year before we left, but he only knew a few words and I didn’t know anything.

At six feet tall, Mr Glossop was a very big man and he liked to show his authority; nobody dared to cross him. He was a master builder and was well known locally. He was friends with the Lord Mayor and local councillors. Mrs Glossop didn’t work and was under the thumb of her husband. If she didn’t do as she was told, she would get a backhander, and it wasn’t long before Mr Glossop was telling us off, too.

When Ralph and I started to converse in German, we were stopped immediately and told we would be sent back to Austria if we didn’t speak in English. We tried to whisper instead, but that was also forbidden. Ralph got the buckle end of the belt and I got the other end. We soon lost all ability to speak in our mother tongue, and this cut us off from all our memories. We were constantly threatened with being sent back to Austria. If we did so much as place a fork down in the wrong way, Mr Glossop would beat us with his belt or stick. They weren’t kind people.

It quickly became clear that our hosts, who had no children of their own, had no idea how to look after us; even worse, it was obvious they didn’t care. They were only after the weekly income that two refugee children would bring them. They had a maid, Vera, who was lovely. She did all the cleaning and cooking, and took charge of everything. ■

School days

A couple of weeks after our arrival, a place was found for us at the local school, Crookesmoor Road Primary, which was only 100 yards away. Each morning before school, Ralph and I had chores to carry out: I had to help Vera cook, clean, and make all the beds, and Ralph had to clean all the shoes and clean up after the two big Alsatian dogs in the yard.

We didn’t have any clothes, only what we stood up in. So, I wore my dirndl skirt and thick, white knee-length socks to school, and Ralph wore his lederhosen. This was what we had worn in Austria, but in Sheffield we stood out from all the other children. We were a laughing stock; it was so embarrassing. The children made fun of me because of the clothes I wore and because I couldn’t speak English. I remember Ralph coming home crying because the children made him feel so bad.

From time to time, we would receive a visit from Peter Freeman, checking to see if we were happy and comfortable in our new home. Whenever he visited, the Glossops would be in the room with us, probably to make sure we didn’t say anything out of turn and tell Peter how we were really having to live.

The Glossops’ house was enormous. It stood well back off the main road and overlooked a recreation ground. You could see the whole city from their balcony. When war broke out, I remember seeing the city in flames from there. It was terrible. We would sleep in the coal cellar at night during bombing raids.

It wasn’t long before our school was bombed. The Glossops were approached to see if they would open up their house for the school: they had so many rooms that could be turned into classrooms. ■

Religious friction

Many years later, I learned that an argument had broken out between the Glossops and a Catholic priest who visited Ralph and me in 1940. After learning that we had been baptised, this priest wanted us to move in with a Catholic family, but the Glossops wouldn’t let us go. Solicitors were involved and the case lasted for about a year until eventually the Catholics backed down and the Glossops secured us as their property. All the while, neither Ralph nor I had any idea this was going on.

As part of the Glossop household, we were made to attend the local Methodist church at the top of our street every morning, and then onto the Unitarian church which was further along. We also often attended the Quaker, Christadelphian, and Anglican churches. The Glossops expected us to attend the Methodist church three times every Sunday. ■

I start work

I found school difficult as I had to learn everything from scratch and struggled with the language. But at 14 years old, in July 1943, I managed to gain my school leaver’s certificate. Mr Glossop had a friend who ran a business training school called Wragg’s on Campo Lane in the town centre and in August 1943, I started learning typing and shorthand there.

After morning church, I would set off on my long walk to college as I had no money to take the tram into town. I was always late home. Mr Glossop was always on the phone to my teacher, asking if I had been in trouble that day; if he thought I had, he would beat me with his walking stick.

After almost a year, in June 1944, the college sent half a dozen of us for job interviews. I managed to get a job at Turton Brothers and Matthews, spring bolt manufacturers in the Sheffield 6 area. It was a two-mile walk to the offices, and I started on five shillings a week. After a few months, I received a pay increase, but I didn’t see any of this, as I was made to give the Glossops my earnings. In return, I received half a crown in pocket money. When I complained, they dropped it down to sixpence and I had to use this to pay for everything I needed for college.

I had thick, long hair that I wore in a plait tied in a big bow. I really didn’t like it. One lunchtime, a few friends from college encouraged me to have my hair cut. I didn’t think anything of it, but when I arrived home, Mr Glossop asked: ‘Where’s all the hair?’ I told him it was on the barber’s shop floor. He said: ‘I could have made a lot of money from that all that hair.’ He gave me a good whipping for that.

I attended an evening class in shorthand, typing and book-keeping, but I wasn’t allowed to go out and socialise. When I got home, Mr Glossop was always waiting on the doorstep for me. ■

Ralph leaves

In 1931 at the age of 15, Ralph joined the Christadelphian religious movement. He loved their ideas, and it was one of them who asked him why he put up with all the abuse from the Glossops. He started to question it himself, and decided to get away. He packed a suitcase, took the £15 he had saved up and moved to Leeds. As refugees, we weren’t allowed to leave the local area without permission, so I have no idea how he managed to do this.

He contacted the refugee committee in Leeds, and they found him a hostel that charged 28 shillings. The job he found as an apprentice tool fitter only paid 22 shillings, so the refugee committee wrote to Mr Glossop to ask him to make up the difference. He refused and said if Ralph would do what he
was told, there was a place for him back in Sheffield, but if he didn’t want that then he could starve.
So the refugee committee made up the difference until Ralph’s 18th birthday, when he became
self-sufficient. ■

Moving to Whitby

In November 1945, I was told that we were moving to Whitby. Mr Glossop was retiring from the building trade due to ill health and wanted to go into catering. He bought a guesthouse, a three-storey corner property facing the famous Abbey. It had been requisitioned and was currently dilapidated after soldiers had been staying there. Mr Glossop decided to build it back up and run it as a hotel called ‘Cloisters’.

Mr Glossop wanted it up and running as soon as possible. It took about five months for two rooms to be ready for Easter. By the following Easter, we could open four rooms to guests. In the end, we could take in 25 guests. There was a lounge and dining room on the ground floor. The kitchen was in the basement along with an enormous front room. The concrete flooring made it very cold, and I would often sleep down there on a camp bed if I had to give up my room upstairs to a travelling salesman. ■

O brother, where art thou?

Many years passed without me knowing where my brother Ralph was. The Glossops refused to let me have anything to do with him. He eventually turned up one day at the guesthouse we ran in Whitby, but the Glossops refused to let him in.

I was in the basement at the time and could hear what was going on. Ralph was on the doorstep but I daren’t knock on the window to get his attention. As he stood back to leave, I waved and he saw me! We didn’t speak – he just waved back and left.

I didn’t know that Ralph came back again to try and find me after I had left to get married, but the Glossops refused to give him my new address. It wasn’t until years later that we finally met up again, and we never lost touch again. ■

My life gets smaller

I had to leave my job at Turton Brothers and Matthews when we moved, but I really wanted to continue to work as a shorthand typist. I got to know about a job at Sewell & Son Ltd, a wholesale grocer by the harbour. The owner offered me a job and I said I would love to take him up on the offer, but when I told the Glossops, there was trouble. They said if I worked elsewhere, I would have to hand over my wages to them and still be expected to carry out all my jobs at the guesthouse. So, that’s what I did.

I finished my duties before I left for work and would pick up where I left off when I returned home.
I was their cook, cleaner and general dogsbody. I would wake up early to serve cups of tea to the guests in their rooms. I would then cook breakfast and carry it upstairs to serve it to guests in the dining room. While the guests ate their breakfast, I would make the beds. When they left for the day, I would vacuum the rooms, clean the windows, things like that. When the Glossops found out I could bake,
I was expected to bake every day. I would cook breakfast, lunch, high tea and then supper. This was every day of the year, all year round. We even opened on Christmas Day and would host Christmas parties.

After a few years, Mr Glossop started to go blind and spent some time down south to learn how to cope with his changing eyesight. So, because he could no longer do certain things, I was given additional jobs to do on his behalf. ■

My new name

In October 1947, I was invited for my naturalisation interview at the Home Office. I didn’t know what to expect and I was frightened. Since our arrival, I had been constantly told by the Glossops that if I didn’t say the right thing, I would be sent back to Vienna.

It was usual back then for refugees to anglicise their surnames, but Mr Glossop had other ideas. Once I received my naturalisation, the Glossops applied to legally change my name from Leopoldine Blach to Leopoldina Glossop. I had no say in the matter. ■

Meeting Ralph II

I was never allowed to socialise. I became friendly with the neighbours living opposite, who were Quakers, and Mr Glossop allowed me to attend church on Sundays. I made a few friends that way. I was also allowed to accompany Mrs Glossop to choir on Thursday evenings. That was the only night I was allowed to go out.

Many visitors would return to Cloisters year after year. It would have been usual to make friends this way, but I was forbidden to speak to guests. If they spoke to me, I had to pretend I didn’t understand them and would race back to the kitchen to carry on with my duties.

One guest had the same name as my brother, Ralph. He lived in Hull, and one year when he had been on his way to Whitby after watching the cricket in Scarborough, he had asked the taxi driver to take him somewhere to stay. He was brought to our guesthouse. This man would become my husband.

Ralph was born in England. His ancestors came over with the Huguenots (Protestants expelled from France) in the 18th century. His grandfather was a sea captain sailing out of Jersey harbour, his father and various brothers were also at sea, except one who was in the army. Ralph had been in the navy towards the end of the war, but when I met him, he worked as a shipping clerk with Ellerman and Wilsons in Hull.

He was one of our returning guests, coming back for a week year after year. We both liked one another, but he had a girlfriend at first. Then, when he finished with her, I was seeing a boy I had met at church. The following year when he returned for his week’s holiday, we were both single, and he offered to take me to the theatre. When I asked Mr Glossop permission to go, his answer was: ‘You’ll have to finish all your jobs when you come back then.’

The next time Ralph visited, he offered to take me to a dance. We were back a little later than anticipated and I got into trouble for that. Mr Glossop insisted we were to stay in public areas, so Ralph and I would go to the theatre and spend some time together during the week. At the end of each holiday, he would leave and I wouldn’t hear from him until the following year. We didn’t keep in touch, Mr Glossop wouldn’t have allowed it. After a few years like this, instead of Ralph leaving me for another year, he asked me to marry him. ■

Our wedding

Mr and Mrs Glossop liked Ralph, but when he proposed they weren’t happy. Ralph wanted us to settle near to his job, but the Glossops wanted me to stay in Whitby and carry on with the guesthouse – they didn’t want to give me up.

I was in my mid-30s when I married Ralph on 19 November 1960 at Wesley Hall, Whitby. We had the reception at the Beach Villa Hotel. I had asked Ralph’s niece to be bridesmaid, but Mr Glossop didn’t like her father and said he wouldn’t allow it. I was determined for her to be my bridesmaid and told him so. She was my bridesmaid on the day. This was the only time I ever stood up to Mr Glossop, and it felt wonderful. ■

A family of my own

My life changed hugely when I left Whitby. I was glad to leave the horrible times behind me. I had worked every day for the past 15 years at the Glossops’ boarding house. I could now do things because I wanted to do them, not because I was told I had to.

Ralph and I moved to Hull straight after our wedding and stayed with his parents until we found a house of our own. After a few weeks, we moved into a small two-up, two-down on Sherwood Avenue.

Shortly after we married, we had a daughter, Karen. Unfortunately, she was born with spina bifida and died after only a few weeks. The doctors then discovered that I had cancer and I had to have a big operation which meant I couldn’t have any more children. One of the nurses said: ‘Don’t despair, in this country you can adopt.’ I really wanted children, so two or three years after we lost Karen, we decided to adopt. We brought Ian home at the beginning of 1966.

I loved being a mother. I had started working as a shorthand typist at a ship’s chandler in town, and thought I’d have to leave as I wouldn’t be able to work with a baby to look after. But everyone at work said: ‘Bring the baby down with you, we’ll look after him.’ So I did. I would walk to town with Ian in a big pram and all the men in the office would keep him occupied all day long while I worked. This lasted for about six months but then I felt it was too much. Soon after, in the summer of 1968, we adopted Ann when she was about six weeks old. I really loved the time I spent with the children. ■

Finding our forever home

I became good friends with a German lady, Hannalore, who lived near us and had adopted children too. She tried to help me regain my German language skills, but after being banned from speaking the language for so long by the Glossops it just didn’t stick. I still can’t understand the language now.

Ann had just turned one when Hannalore told me about a house that had come up for sale on her road. We had started to outgrow our house and wanted to find somewhere bigger. We went to view this house on Faraday Street and it was perfect. We bought it and have lived in it ever since.

We had many happy times, bringing up the children and making happy memories. It turned out that there were quite a few families on the same street who had adopted children, so our children were never made to feel different because of their disrupted start in life. All the families would spend lots of time together and when we went to Bridlington for two weeks every summer, we would meet up with them there, too.

Ralph drove a Mini and the four of us couldn’t all fit in it alongside all our luggage, so he would drop us off at our holiday flat and leave me to get the dinner started while he drove back home to get our suitcases.

Once the children were settled in school, I worked for a short time as a lunchtime assistant at Ann’s school. ■

Supporting our disabled son

As Ian started to grow, it became clear that he had some learning difficulties. He attended mainstream school until he was six and then went to a special school. Life was challenging for him, but he went on to learn gardening at college. Music, though, is his real passion: he plays the piano and loves putting on performances in his drama group. As well as autism and learning difficulties, Ian lives with severe arthritis and had to have hip replacements in his thirties.

Ralph and I worried about his future: would he ever be able to live independently? At the time, there was no provision to help adults like Ian in the area, although I knew there were many others in our position. In 1985, a few other local mothers in a similar situation and I got together and decided on a plan to help young people develop their skills and independence once they finished their schooling, so they could make a positive contribution to society.

Ralph and I are recognised as two of the founders of Charter House Association for Supported Employment. What started off in a small room in Hull town has since grown into an established charity, now called CASE, with about 130 clients, 17 staff and many volunteers supporting the needs of learning disabled adults. ■

The final insult from the Glossops

My foster father, Mr Glossop, died before I had the children, but we would visit Mrs Glossop weekly at Cloisters and they knew her as Grandma. We spent a lot of time there with the children on holidays in Whitby. By then, the property was closed off, apart from the downstairs area, where Mrs Glossop lived. The children found the big, empty building quite scary. When she couldn’t manage on her own any longer, she moved into a care home in Scarborough where we continued to visit her weekly.

Throughout my childhood and teenage years, Mr and Mrs Glossop had told me: ‘If anything were to happen to us, this property will be yours,’ but when Mrs Glossop died, I was told that they had left it to a dogs’ home. That was very hurtful: I never received any payment for the work I did for them over all those years. ■

My daughter Ann

Ann went to Southcoates School in Hull and then worked in an office for a few years until she fell pregnant with my first grandchild, Steven. She married Keith and they had their second son, Daniel. Her marriage ended in 1991 when Steven was only three and Daniel just eight months old. Ralph and I did all we could to help her with the children.

She had our third grandson, Joshua, after meeting her second husband, Ian, in the mid-90s, but unfortunately that didn’t work out and Ann was left on her own again.

She had started to become unwell, but it was so gradual that she didn’t notice until she collapsed at work in 2004. It was discovered that she had kidney failure and she started on dialysis. Had it been known that she was born with just one kidney half-working, she would have been advised not to have children. But she had lived 36 years unaware of this, and thankfully she survived having three healthy children.

For the first couple of months, I accompanied Ann for her treatment, which took about four hours, three times per week. This continued for nine years, until she had a kidney transplant in 2012. Ann was quite unwell after this and was at St James’s Hospital for six weeks. She came to stay with me for a few weeks to recuperate after she was discharged and thankfully, she is now doing well. ■

Finding my father again

I lost all contact with my father after he left Austria. The Glossops never encouraged me to keep in touch with him and any letters my father wrote were not shown to me.

Ralph received a card once a year from him, but once he left the Glossops, I had no way of knowing my father’s whereabouts. He was restricted to 10 words - that was all the Red Cross would allow during the war.

He had tried to go to Switzerland, but at that time the borders were closed. He and Rosa Tomann’s brother-in-law then travelled onward to Australia, but it had closed its borders too. He heard that Shanghai was allowing entry without a passport, and so he went there, where he met and married Esther Silverman.

I found out much later that both my father and Esther had written to the Glossops to ask them to sponsor my father so he could come to England. Unsurprisingly, they refused. He then moved to Israel, first living in Jerusalem and then Tel Aviv, where he set up a butcher’s shop. After some years, he applied for an American visa and was successful. He settled in New York with Esther.

After I married and moved to Hull, my father wrote to the Red Cross asking if they could help find me. He was given the Glossops’ new contact details in Whitby. He telephoned them and they said: ‘Oh, you won’t know where she is now – she’s married and changed her name.’ My father was not so easily put off. He called the telephone exchange and asked them what my name had been changed to. They told him it was ‘LeBoutillier’. He was then able to track me down.

Thirty-two years after we last saw each other, my father came to visit me in the early 1970s. We met at Hull train station. We hadn’t seen one another since I was six, but when I caught sight of him, we just knew one another – he knew me and I knew him. It was lovely. He had left Esther in London where he had been on business and went back after a few days to collect her, and we all spent some time together before they returned to America.

From then on, we were in regular contact, and we would go over to visit him when we could afford it. He showed us around New York and we spent some nice times there. He spent his retirement playing dominoes at social clubs. In 1979, after arriving home from a family visit, we heard that my father had taken ill and died. He was 73. ■

Catching up with my brother Ralph

Ralph had spent a lot of his early adulthood travelling the world, preaching for the Christadelphians. At 17, he joined the army and on one leave, he met Jean. They married in 1952 and settled in Whitley Bay, where their son, Michael, was born the following year. Ralph changed his surname to Black, the anglicised version of our mother’s name, Blach. In 1955, they moved to Wilsden in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and Ralph continued work as a toolmaker while Jean worked at Woolworths in Bingley.

It was after a visit from our father in 1961 that Ralph decided to move his family to New York for a few years. They went to and from the UK and the USA for some time, living in Dayton, Ohio for a while before finally settling back in New York. He became foreman at a tool and die manufacturer. He then began painting and making stained glass in his spare time, before becoming a teacher of Tiffany-style lamp-making and window murals. In 1983, at the age of 55, he took early retirement and returned to Yorkshire, teaching stained glass in Shipley while Jean looked after a neighbour’s little boy.

Ralph and Jean both loved travelling and would often go to the Canary Islands. They continued to visit America every year, staying in New York with Michael, his wife Helen and their two children, Jason and Samantha, as well as friends in Florida.

We all spent a lot of time together and would keep in regular touch. ■

Opening up about my past

Since arriving in England, I was encouraged to go to church, so that’s what I did. I had never shared my childhood story with anyone, and never met anyone else with the same background as me. A few people over the years knew I had come from another country, but I never went into detail about it. My husband didn’t even know I was a refugee from Vienna. It wasn’t until I married that I started to look into my Jewish identity.

By chance, I was reading the newspaper and saw an advert asking for people to come forward if they had been on the Kindertransport. I got in touch and that’s how I met and got to know other refugees in the Yorkshire area.

It took me a long time to feel comfortable enough to think about returning to Vienna. The Glossops had instilled a real fear into me, saying: ‘If you go back there, you’ll probably be interned,’ so I never dared take the risk. Ralph and I finally decided to take a trip to Vienna in November 1985, for our silver wedding anniversary. I didn’t tell anyone why we were going there; we just told our daughter Ann we were going on holiday and left her at home with a friend.

When we arrived, it was a wonderful feeling. We went back to the area I’d lived in with my parents, but it had been pulled down and various things had been built in its place. We wandered around for hours just gazing at everything.

We met up with Rosa Tomann, who had looked after Ralph and me when our mother died. It was really lovely to see her, and I went back to visit her a few times. On one occasion, I even took a friend to meet her. In 1991, Ralph and I returned to Austria again as guests of the Government. In between visits, I would keep in touch with Rosa by way of letter, birthday and Christmas cards until she sadly died. I still keep in touch with her daughter, Rosavitta. ■

My husband, my joy

My husband was known as ‘Big Ralph’ while my brother was ‘Little Ralph’. Big Ralph was a quiet, unassuming man with old-fashioned values, he always wore a shirt and tie. He gave me a wonderful life. He certainly made up for my early years and I wouldn’t have swapped him for anybody.

He was always on hand to help me. I would leave him to look after the children when I attended choir practice twice a week and went to meetings at the Women’s Guild. He took Ann horse riding and spent lots of time with us all as a family. He loved cricket – whenever that was on the television, he would be glued to it. I could never get any sense out of him when he was engrossed with that!

Ralph spent his career working hard as a shipping clerk, based mainly at King George Dock, East Hull. But when he retired, we started travelling the world. We went to India, China, Russia and Australia, to name a few. Life was good.

In 2003, when we had been married 42 years, I noticed that he kept having to sit down after exerting the slightest bit of effort. It really wasn’t like him, he was always so fit and healthy. We started to worry about him. Tests showed he had a very aggressive cancer and he died less than a week later, on Wednesday 27 August. The bottom dropped out of my world. ■

Siblings reunited

Jean passed away in 2005 and, both left without our other halves, my brother Ralph and I became travel partners to carry on our shared passion for travel. We went to so many different places: African safaris, countless cruises. We visited New York every year to see Ralph’s son, Michael, and his family. In 2013, we attended Ralph’s grandson Jason’s wedding to Milena, and then in 2014 we went back after the birth of his great-grandson, Benjamin. I carried on with my travels right up until my mid-80s, even after having a pacemaker fitted. The onset of dementia didn’t stop me but in 2015, I decided my travelling days were over.

Ralph passed away at the end of 2020. The thing with Ralph was he never wished he had done something. He was never afraid to take a risk: he just did it. ■

Family fun

Over the years I also joined Ann and my grandson, Joshua, on lots of coach holidays around the UK. One time, we were heading to a safari park in the Midlands when Ann fell ill and ended up in hospital. When we tried another time to go at a later date, Joshua fell off a slide there and broke his wrist. I didn’t fancy going back there again!

We still all get together for a family holiday every year at Centre Parcs. It’s so lovely to spend time with my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

My three grandsons have all settled down and I now have five great-grandchildren. Steven is a Matalan store manager and lives in Hull and is married to Becky. They have a son, Harley, and are expecting another, Samuel, in December. Daniel is a painter and decorator and lives in Castleford with Katie and their children. TJ, Lochlan and Daisey. Joshua still lives at home but has a long-term girlfriend, Ellis, and, as well as working in a pet shop, he is the lead singer in a band.

I always like to keep busy. I’ve helped organise many coffee mornings over the years to raise money for charity. Now, despite ill health, I try go to church and keep-fit classes regularly. I have remained a member of two choirs and also attend weekly Women’s Guild meetings and the lunch club. And of course, I love spending time with my family, they bring me so much joy.

I had a difficult start in life. When I met my husband, that’s when my life really started. I could start living life to the full and I’m very grateful for that. ■

Postscript

Sadly, Dina passed away on 2 April 2022, aged 92, before this book could be completed. After keeping her story private for much of her life, she was finally ready to share her experiences. Her daughter, Ann, has asked to have this message included:

I was an adult when my mum told me she had been sent over from Austria as a young girl. When she met her father for the first time after 32 years, she initially introduced him to me as Uncle Morris. It wasn’t until a while later that I learned he was my grandad. Looking back, she must have been unsure how to explain this part of her life.

She found the past too painful to talk about. It wasn’t until she joined AJR and met others with similar experiences that she started to open up a little. A few years ago, when talking about Mr Glossop, she told me: ‘He abused me in every way,’ but she wouldn’t say anything else about that. She couldn’t express the pain of losing her first daughter, Karen, but one year she just came out with: ‘It’s Karen’s birthday today.’

She was such a stoic lady. She never complained and didn’t want to dwell on the past. It saddens me greatly to think of how much she suffered in her early life, but this also gave her the determination to live life to the fullest. She had never experienced a happy, stable family until she met my father, and the happiness this gave her was well deserved. I am very proud of my mum. ■

About the AJR

Founded in 1941 by Jewish refugees from Central Europe, The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) is the national charity representing and supporting Holocaust refugees and survivors living in Great Britain. Primarily delivering social, welfare and care services, the AJR has a nationwide network of regional groups offering members a unique opportunity to socialise in their local area. Members receive support from volunteers and can obtain advice and assistance on welfare rights as well as on Holocaust reparations.

The AJR is committed to the education of future generations about the Holocaust and is now the UK’s largest benefactor of education and memorialisation programmes and projects which promote teaching and learning about the Holocaust.

About 70,000 refugees, including approximately 10,000 children on the Kindertransport, arrived in Great Britain from Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1930s. The AJR extends membership to anyone who fled a Nazi-occupied country as a Jewish refugee or who arrived in Great Britain as a Holocaust survivor. We also welcome the descendants and spouses of the refugees as members.