Shiela Lahr's Story

Oonagh and I dress ourselves. My sister had been reading a Billy Bunter book when the detectives come for us, and now she places it under her pillow, in the belief that it will remain there until our return. The cases packed, my mother runs upstairs to speak to our tenants, a young couple named Rowley who have occupied the upstairs flat for weeks only. For while I was at Preston Park, the Dawsons, whose name had been on the Council list for fifteen years had been rehoused and now lived in a self-contained maisonette in Alexandra Road. These Rowleys, husband and wife, are ex-pupils of our local Grammar School, Tollington (known as Tolly) and have pretensions. He, a tall well-built ruddy-faced man - later to join the Grenadier Guards - she, almost the twin sister of her husband. Now, my mother dependent upon her nearest neighbour, rouses the Rowleys to give them the keys to the bookshop and addresses of people to contact. The rent to be paid into my father?s bank account.

While my mother is so occupied, I scribble a note to Colleen to say "my mother is being interned and I, and Oonagh, are going to stay with people in Gloucestershire. I?ll write you." Then, murmuring to the detectives that I am going to the outside lavatory, I duck down past the kitchen window and run out of the side door and into the street, up to Colney Hatch Lane, along to Greenham Road, up to the top and push the note through the letter-box of No. 91 and dash home again. One of the detectives and my mother are out in Wilton Road searching for me. "Where have you been!" my mother cries as I come into view and I mumble that I went to put a note through Colleen?s door. The detective says nothing, but it must have been this fear that given a chance I, and perhaps Oonagh and my mother, will abscond, that results in a detective shadowing all three of us at the police station whenever the cell door opens in answer to our ring, and we make our way to the WC.

However, at last we are ready to leave the house and it is only when we are in the police car and half-way up the road that my mother remembers that she has left her hand-bag on the kitchen table. A bag holding money and keys to the house. But the detectives refuse to return. Neither gas nor electricity have been disconnected and the flat is wide open.

Unknown to me, at about the same time on 27 May, 1940 Renate Scholem, seventeen years old and dressed in school uniform, opens the front door of her lodgings to find standing on the step a policeman and policewoman. She must pack a suitcase and go with them. Renate, who has been in England since the age of eleven, is confused. Why are they taking her? And the reply given is that she has been reading left-wing literature - The New Statesman and the Left Book Club. Renate Scholem is the daughter of Werner Scholem, one of the founders of a breakaway socialist party, the USPD, and was among the revolutionaries who formed the Spartakus League. He had edited the Communist Party paper Die Rote Kapelle and at one time sat in the Reichstag. However, he had returned disillusioned from a visit to Moscow in 1925, which had turned him away from active politics. Instead, he had put his energies into private living and into studying to become a lawyer. Of course, Werner?s past political history and the fact that he was Jewish made him ?an enemy of the Reich?. Therefore, barely a week after the burning of the Reichstag, a gang of men in brown shirts burst into the Berlin apartment and took both Renate?s parents away. Renate, who had been largely brought up by her non-Jewish grandparents in Hanover, once again lived with them until her mother was released. Eventually, both she and her mother escaped to England to join an older sister in north London. On leaving the Convent, where Renate passed by me briefly, she went to live at Carmel Court with Naomi Bentwich, the sister of Norman Bentwich, a leading figure of the Jewish refugee and welfare movement. Renate?s mother remaining in north London and disappearing for a time to fight with the International Brigade in Spain. On the outbreak of war, Naomi Bentwich decides to move to Devon, but Renate, intent upon finishing her schooling, stays in Kent and lodges with a local family. Now Renate, dressed in green school uniform, is taken to the local police station and then by car to Holloway prison in London:

..."Cotton waste littered the entrance and the floor was slippery with oil and grease. The mill was lit only through the glass roof; as many of its panes were broken or missing, it also let in the rain which collected in large puddles below. There were eighteen cold water taps for each 500 men and the lavatories were filthy...the food was sparse: the evening meal consisted of a lump of bread, a small piece of cheese and a cup of tea. There were few mattresses at first and most internees slept on boards covered by two or three blankets, some of which proved verminous. At night they could hear rats scuttling among the remnants of the mill machinery. The entire building was surrounded by two fences of barbed wire, with armed guards patrolling in between....The Red Cross (was) performing its traditional neutral role of trying to secure the best conditions for the captives of war...singled out the dilapidated conditions, the absence of lighting, and the poor hygiene, which included the small number of taps, the aabsence of hot water and the dirty lavatories.....the delegate to Britain of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, also criticized the camp?s inadequate sick-bay, with only thirty beds for the 250 internees who required treatment....." Collar the Lot.