Page 6 - My Story (final)

Granny was a constant in my childhood. Probably in her early sixties when I was born, she looked
old and wrinkled and she stayed that way. She had fled pogroms in Lithuania to come to England with
her sisters and a brother in her late teens. She had met my Grandfather in London in the late 1890s. He
was a tailor. They married and raised nine children, living in Fulham, west London. She spoke and
understood English but always had a strong accent and was illiterate. She loved listening to the radio. My
grandfather died in his fifties, before I was born.

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
pronounced healthy and were all set to go but at the last minute my mother decided she could not be
parted from her girls. Jackie was relieved, I was angry – and the ship we were to sail on was torpedoed!

My father, Alec with Jackie and Ruth circa 1935

So, the question was where to go to stay safe. My father had been drafted into the air force. At
thirty-six or -seven he was too old to fly so always had a safe job, on land, usually as storekeeper. He was

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