War breaks out in Europe

Henry Lowenstein

Henry Lowenstein

After around six weeks in the camp at Westgate Henry is sent back to London, where he is enrolled in Hampstead Garden Parochial School. At this point, he still does not speak English, but he begins to learn quickly while immersed in a British school.

He does not have much of a chance to settle in before Nazi Germany invades Poland on September 1, 1939 sparking World War II. Within days, Great Britain enters the war against Germany. The British government orders that all children be sent out of the city to protect them from the anticipated Nazi bombing attacks on London.

Henry’s school is relocated to Whipsnade, a villlage in the countryside north of London. Henry finds himself living on a farm next to the Whipsnade zoo, the largest zoo in Europe at the time. He attends school, continues to learn English, and explores the zoo and the farm. He eventually gets a work permit and starts to work at the zoo and, later, on a local farm.

Transcript

Henry Lowenstein: Yeah! Well, I mean, if you’re in a country and you don’t speak the language, you learn fast. So obviously, we learned. And then, within about two weeks, it became obvious that the war was imminent. And the British government decided to evacuate all of London’s children. So we were evacuated, and by evacuated I mean we were told to report–this was done through the school, British kids, it just so happened, were there with us. We reported to the school, we walked from the school to a London tube–you know, the subway station, were taken to another location where we got on a bus and were then taken by bus to where we were to be evacuated to.

In my case, in the case of my school, we were evacuated to a little village called Whipsnade. Which, as it turned out, at that time, had the largest zoo in Europe affiliated with it. Whipsnade was there before, and the zoo was built on to it. We arrived, there were I think about six of us who were refugees. Six–seven or eight, maybe. Anyway, it was an interesting procedure because the zoo superintendent, who had been a captain in the British army–a veterinary captain, sat on one side of the room, the villagers sat behind him and here were all the kids to be distributed. And so we sat in this village hall, and he would say–he would call out the name of the villager, you know, the people who lived there, and he would point to a couple of kids and say, you go with them. And you, with this one. And so we were simply apportioned out, and to live with these folks.

And we–in fact there were three of us–were sent to this one place, which was a farmhouse. Lovely people. And the British government paid the equivalent I think of about a dollar and a half per week per kid for these people to feed us. Which wasn’t much. But it was the first real decent food I’d had in quite a long time, and I loved it. It was a wonderful life, we were on a farm. I’d never been on a farm before in my life. Never seen a chicken up close, and cows or anything. Not only that, but we were right adjacent to the zoo so we had full run of the zoo, with all its animals.

"I’d never been on a farm before in my life. Never seen a chicken up close, and cows or anything."

USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Interview 11470

Henry on a farm in Whipsnade, c. 1940

Courtesy of John Moore, Denver Center for the Performing Arts [Permission pending]

Now that Britain is at war with Germany, Jewish refugees in England are legally considered enemy aliens, although they clearly have no allegiance to Nazi Germany. As Nazis advance into western Europe in May 1940, forcing Allied troops to evacuate from Dunkirk in France to Britain, a German invasion of England seems imminent. Henry—now 15 years old—trains with local defense efforts and the Home Guard in preparation for a German landing. Despite his desire to enlist and fight the Nazis, his alien enemy status and his essential role as a farm worker keep him from actively contributing to the war effort.

Transcript

Henry Lowenstein: We had to register as “enemy aliens.” Because we had come from Germany, technically we were enemy aliens. Now, the British knew very well that the last thing we wanted was to have anything to do with Germany. That those were our sworn enemies. But the law was, we were enemy aliens. And I was issued an alien card. I got a work permit, so I was allowed to go to work. And stayed and worked there.

And then, by this time I was 15, and very soon–now, the danger was that the Germans invade. Because of course Dunkirk had happened and the British army was kaputt, and quite frankly, I and my fellows, we trained with them, with the British, in anticipation of a German landing. And nobody had any weapons, I mean the first weapons that arrived were weapons that people in the United States sent–like sporting rifles and so on, but a great mixture, nobody had the right ammunition, and people even had lances, you know and they were going to fight with lances, which looked pretty pathetic, against a tank. But we learned how to deal with Molotov cocktails and stuff like that and dug tank traps on the intersections of the highways, and stuff like that. And I stayed with–that was first called the Local Defense Volunteers LDV, then it became the Home Guard, and I trained with them right up until the end of the war.

[...]

I actually attempted to enlist in the British Army a couple of times, but because I was working on a farm I was considered more valuable on the farm than in the fighting part, and they were, you know, I served with the Home Guard, I did my – I did what I could, but I obviously could have done more in retrospect, but I didn’t. It was the way it was.

"Because we had come from Germany, technically we were enemy aliens."

USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Interview 11470

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