Talk on Renée Morton at Finchley Reform Synagogue on 8th September 2018
Shabbat Shalom. Dobre Den (that’s Czech for Good Morning).
My mother, Renée Morton, was born in Plsen in the Sudetenland in the west of the Czech Republic, or what was then Czechoslovakia, in 1919. She lived in Finchley from 1954 until her death in 2006 at the age of 87. You may have seen her in Victoria Park with her green anorak and her backpack on her way to a lecture, a concert or an art exhibition or in her later years just sitting and enjoying the park. She generally looked happy and would readily engage in conversation and you would have been hard pressed to guess her story and the life journey that she had travelled.
A few years before her death she downsized to a flat in Etchingham Court and, while assisting her move, I came across an old shoe box, stuffed full of letters (mostly handwritten and in German). My eye was caught by a telegram which read:
MARTA CHARLES ILSA PETER 15.10.1944 DEPORTED FROM TEREZIN TO OSWIECIM SINCE TO NOW MISSED STOP
When I enquired about the letters, she refused to talk about them, but removed the box (although I made sure to see where it was placed). After her death I retrieved the letters and over a couple of years (once I had ceased full-time work) had the letters translated into English as most of these were in handwritten German and half of the rest in Czech. Altogether, there were about 500 letters from a range of family members and friends, mostly written between September 1938 and October 1945.
I’d like now to provide some family background. I grew up in North London in the 1950’s with only a nuclear family. My father, mother and brother were the only family I had, unlike most (but not all) of the people I knew. As a result, I felt that history began when I was born, with almost no-one to talk about earlier times, what things were like when they were young, and so on. Most of my friends had grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and other family and I remember asking my mother why we had no relatives at all. Her response then was just to say that they died in the War. Later the explanation was “they were killed by the Germans”. As an adult, when I asked my mother why she never talked about the Holocaust, she would say “I was focused on moving on, not looking back”. I imagine that she also felt some guilt that she had survived when almost all of the rest of her family had perished. In fact, I also recall that wider interest in the Shoah really only seemed to have grown in the 1970’s or 80’s, before which it was treated more as a private matter for individual survivors to deal with.
Anyway, these letters opened up a completely new picture of my mother’s family, rather than the silence and absence of family previously, although I was of course now unable to ask for further details from her.
Renée (she always insisted on the French pronunciation) grew up in a German-speaking middle-class Jewish family in Prague, living with her parents (Karl/Charles & Marta), her older sister, Ilse, and her widowed grandmother, Klara. They weren’t religious, although Klara lit candles every Friday night and, as far as I can tell, most of their friends were Jewish. Their interests were cultural, appreciating music, art, books, while they spoke a variety of languages (German, Czech, English and French, all fluently).
Renée survived because her father, Karl, found her a position as a domestic with a family living in Cambridge. The timing was fortuitous. She left Prague, aged 18, a fortnight before the signing of the Munich agreement. Two days after the Munich signing, she received a letter from her mother which said:
“History has never seen such treason and cowardly retreat from brutal violence before”.
while Ilse asked:
“What do the English say about Chamberlain? In Paris he is called ‘J’aime Berlin’”
From the time of her arrival in England, the letters from Prague were a mixture of advice to a young woman who’d never left home and who was now living in a ‘faraway country of which we know nothing’ (as Neville Chamberlain might have said) and concern about the deteriorating situation in Prague. Renée’s work as a domestic was a new experience for her as she’d been brought up in an environment with a cook and a live-in maid and I doubt that she was really competent to provide what was needed. Clearly there were tensions and differences of opinion about what was a reasonable workload as her mother writes:
“It amazes me that they (the Wishart family in Cambridge where Renée was staying) demand so much work from you. I could not do it, to abuse somebody so much, but the English are renowned for that.”
At the same time in Czechoslovakia people who had been displaced from the west of the country by the occupation of the Sudetenland were flocking to Prague and struggling to live there:
“So much misery for those people who have had to leave their homes and work and don't know which way to turn now. The government wants to send them back, but people are refusing to go. Many would face concentration camps there and misery here.”
In the letters there were repeated references to friends and acquaintances fleeing to Uruguay, Ecuador, Brazil and elsewhere. But for those unable to escape, there was mounting despair. In June 1939 Marta wrote:
“Do you remember little overweight Hanns, who followed Bessie and Edna? Imagine, his mother tried to kill herself and the boy with gas, in a moment of desperation. The child is dead but she now has to face the burden of living on, thanks to the wonders of medicine. Isn’t that terrible?”
Meanwhile her 82 year-old grandmother, Klara, simply expressed her deep affection for her:
“Many kisses, don't worry too much about us. Remember that everything is in God's hands , my dear, good child
Your grandmother”
and no-one could fail to empathise with her mother, Marta, when she wrote:
“It is 3 o’clock in the morning, dawn is near and I can’t sleep. It’s only me, thinking of you with all my heart, my sweetheart. I would give anything to see you for a couple of hours, to embrace you and listen to your dear voice.”
Once Germany was at war with Britain, communication became harder, although her uncle Robert’s girlfriend in Switzerland was able (given Switzerland’s neutrality) to forward letters in both directions.
The family was evicted from their Prague flat in 1940 to make way for German officers and had to find a smaller place. Then on 25th July 1942 a final letter was sent to Renée from her parents and aunt Erna the day before they were transported to Terezin (Theresienstadt). Marta wrote only the following:
“I want to send you our fondest wishes before we depart. We are leaving to meet your grandmother and Ilse in the countryside. Our beloved one, all our heart is with you and your letters were always our greatest joy. Remain healthy so that we will all be reunited in joy and health one day.”
After that, nothing was heard directly from any of them regarding their life in Terezin or their subsequent transport to Auschwitz and there was no firm news of their fate (whether they had lived or not) until that definitive telegram that I mentioned earlier. As my father (whose escape from occupied Czechoslovakia is another story) said to me shortly before he died in 1999: “We knew that life would be bad under the Nazis, but no-one could imagine in their wildest dreams how bad it would be!”. That is reflected in the letters to my mother and, even when he was taken in October 1944 to the cattle car that would transport him to Auschwitz, my grandfather said to his sister (who survived): “I will try to survive; I don’t know if they will let me.” Even so, by then he must have had some idea of what might await them at the other end of that last train journey.
None of the family lived.
One more thing that you may like to know is that I am now a Czech citizen – in which case you are doubtless impressed with the quality of my English. Well, it’s just as well that I’m not speaking in Czech as I have virtually no knowledge of the language. However, the wheel has come full circle which is why this occasion has a particular resonance for me.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my old friend, Katka Kessler, who very kindly translated those letters that were originally written in Czech (about 60 in total) and who has taken the trouble to come along today.
Thank you. Francis Morton
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