Page 6 - My Story

My paternal grandparents

So, we lived at Auntie Fannie’s for a while during the “phoney war”- this was a very quiet eight-
month period at the beginning of the war before Germany started hostilities - and perhaps we were still
there when the Blitz started. We had all been prepared for this, everyone carried a gas mask around with
them and we had frequent drills at school so that we could get them on very quickly and we also had
identity cards – I still remember my identity number which I use today as a password.

St. Kilda’s was a three storey house, with a beautiful garden which my uncle Sam Kreitman kept
weed free and full of flowers. I remember sitting out there on fine summer days, playing draughts with
Harold, who teased me unmercifully, or shelling peas.

My aunt and uncle had had one huge room in the basement reinforced as an air raid shelter. It
was equipped with bunk beds and paraffin heaters and probably canned food. The smell of slightly damp
concrete and or a paraffin heater will bring back memories of that basement to this day. During the blitz
we children were put to bed in the basement along with our cousins and the two children from next door,
Lenny and Irene Kaye. There was an older sister, too, but maybe Doris was considered too old to be put
to bed with us. We talked and giggled and played endless games until the adults came to bed, when I fell
asleep to the drone of their voices.

London was bombed unmercifully. The siren would sound at the same time every evening and
we could hear the thud of bombs throughout the night until the “all clear” sounded. In those early years
my father was a member, probably a compulsive member of the ARP (air raid precaution) and he would
cycle off every night to do his stint of fire watching from the roof tops. Those ARP watchers must also
have been very aware that Hitler was just about 23 miles from our shore across the Channel.

During this time my parents decided that Jackie and I should be sent to Canada, out of harm’s
way. Many city children had been shipped off to the countryside to live with foster parents and apparently
Canada (then part of the British Empire) had offered us shelter, too. I remember having a physical exam
in a big, empty London school, moving from room to room, doctor to doctor. Obviously, we were both

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