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From Anschluss to Albion - Memoirs of a Refugee Girl, 1938-40 (Paperback)
Loot Price: R488
Discovery Miles 4 880
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From Anschluss to Albion - Memoirs of a Refugee Girl, 1938-40 (Paperback)
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Loot Price R488
Discovery Miles 4 880
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Elisabeth Orsten grew up in a comfortable Viennese middle class
milieu, together with her wealthy parents, her younger brother
George and her nanny. Educated as a Roman Catholic, she was
nevertheless Jewish according to Nazi criteria, and it rapidly
became clear to her parents that if she was to survive the Nazi
occupation she would have to leave her native country. Her settled
and secure childhood changed abruptly in January 1939, when she and
her brother George were transported to England by the Jewish
Refugee Children's Movement in an operation parallel to the English
Quakers; 'kindertransport'. In England she was lodged with a friend
of her family and her three daughters, but they were unable to
accommodate George, who was found a lodging by the Quakers in a
different part of the country. Feeling very much alone, Elisabeth
immediately had to start learning an entirely new language and to
accommodate herself to a quite different culture from the one she
was used to. The struggle shows in her narrative of those times
and, particularly, in the extracts from the diary she had been
given by her nanny as a last present before she left Austria and
which she began writing in to maintain her German. When at last she
managed to begin feeling at home in England, there was yet more
disruption in her life. At the age of twelve, not knowing where
George was, she was put on a ship to America. Confusion on
disembarkation, and the renewed difficulties of fitting in with yet
another family and culture, were exacerbated by the frightening
news of the sinking of later transatlantic transports which might
have been carrying others of her family to safety. Only when she
was finally reunited with her parents and her brother, in September
1940, did the terror abate; and there her diary entries cease.
Fifty years later, now a university professor, Elisabeth Orsten
picked up that diary and reread it. As the memories flooded back,
she knew that she had to share the story with others, and she began
writing these memoirs. Full of personal feelings and private
incident, they constitute an intimate account of the problems a
refugee child faces when it is suddenly plucked from its usual
environment and placed unceremoniously into a different world. Many
contemporary refugee children have to deal with harsher conditions
than the author endured. Yet their stories have things in common
with these memoirs. From Anschluss to Albion can give us all an
understanding of the feelings and the turmoil undergone by a
refugee child struggling to understand what has occurred and why,
while at the same time having to cope with different language,
culture, and carers.
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