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From
Hamburg
by Kindertransport
Ruth
Hughes
Edited
transcript of a talk given in
Chester
,
May 2002
I
was born in
Hamburg
,
I’m a Hamburger! I was brought up as just an ordinary German child. I wasn’t
aware that I was different from anyone else until the age of eight, when I was
playing out with my friends. We had a little quarrel, and an irate woman came up
and called me “a dirty little Jew”. I didn’t know what she meant. Not only
was my home known to be very clean, but I didn’t know what a Jew was. Now I
realised I was different from the other children.
I went to an ordinary German school, but in 1933, when Hitler came in,
they were singing Nazi songs in the playground, and I couldn’t join in. Very
soon I was an outcast in the school, and children were not allowed to play with
me. Soon, I had to go to a Jewish school, so we moved house. Kristelnacht
was on the 9 November; I was 13 at the time, and I slept through it!
The next day I heard about Jews being dragged off and beaten up, shops
being plundered, the windows broken, and everything thrown out. I heard about
synagogues being burnt, including one that I used to go to with my friends (my
parents did not go to synagogue). My father decided it was time to get out of
the country; we had tried once before, but the other countries wouldn’t let us
in, and Hitler wouldn’t let us out. My father put our name down to go to
Israel
,
but my mother refused to go because of the unrest there - a decision which cost
them their lives. Meanwhile, we had to endure insults and were often evicted
from restaurants which were not allowed to serve Jews.
My brother was nearly eighteen, so we got out very quickly after my
father put our names down for the Kindertransport.
I insisted on going to
England
,
though we could have gone to
Holland
.
The Lord certainly sent us to the right country!
We had about a week to sew our names into our clothing, then
my parents took us to the station, and put us on the train. Little did I know
that this was to be the last time I would see them. I settled in
England
,
and because my foster-father wouldn’t let me do so, I stopped speaking German
altogether, and became thoroughly assimilated to the English way of life. I even
wrote to my parents in English, although I knew they would not understand it,
and would have to get the letters translated!
It was a Christian home, and because I had not come from an observant
Jewish home, I became used to going to church and being a ‘Christian’.
One day in September 1939, my foster father told me
Britain
had
declared war on
Germany
. I
replied that when I was old enough I would join the British army to get my own
back on Hitler. I was fourteen, and four years later I did just that!
I lived in
Bath
initially, and wherever else I was, I kept going back. I worked as a
kennel-maid, and lived in
London
,
but when I was eighteen, I joined the British forces. There I met a British soldier,
we got married and had children.
At the age of thirty three, I became aware that I needed something more
in my life than what I had. I started searching, and thought back to Sundays in
the old days, when we would go to church, go home and have a nice lunch, go out
for a walk, then end up in the parlour singing hymns. I thought of this whenever
I was unhappy and in need. Then I heard the Gospel from a friend, and started to
go to church again. I became involved with the Brethren, so I had some good
grounding in Bible teaching. As soon as I gave my heart to the Lord, I became
aware that perhaps a Jewish person shouldn’t be going to church, but I
dismissed that thought. After a couple of years, a group of us left the
Brethren, and began meeting in a house. We had a vision of building a new church
on a housing estate, so we saved up and bought some land, and gradually we built
the church. I taught Sunday school, and was very involved in church life.
At this time, through a friend I met on holiday, I had a very loose
connection with a Jewish mission in
London
,
but for many years that was my only connection. There was no Jewish community
where I lived, but when I was 56, my first husband died suddenly, and I decided
to go to evening classes. I felt led to re-learn German, and it came back very
easily. Little did I know that the Lord was preparing me to go to
Germany
-
the last place I would have wanted to go back to!
After I’d been in this country for fifty years, I suddenly had a
niggling feeling that I should go back to give my testimony in
Hamburg
. I
didn’t want to, but the feeling would not go away. One year, my second husband
and I went on holiday to
Majorca
,
and met two German ladies. I told them quite casually that I was born in
Hamburg
,
and that I wouldn’t mind seeing what the place looked like. I still did not
really want to go, but the feeling was still there that I should, so I bargained
with the Lord, and told Him I would go if I was invited by a German Christian
family who loved Jews - an impossible feat! Three weeks later, a letter with a
Hamburg
post-mark came, inviting me to visit the city. The invitation came from a couple
and we corresponded by letter for a time before I went. My husband was by now
suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, but our hosts
did not mind. We stayed for two weeks and it was a very emotional journey,
seeing all the old haunts, such as the school (now a museum). There was a board
showing the names of teachers and pupils taken away in 1942, never to return,
and I reflected that one of those could have been me. I knew I had to forgive
the Germans –
despite
never having met anyone else who has been able to do this –
and
I knew it could only be done with the Lord’s help.
I was taken to a big church in the middle of
Hamburg
,
where there were about 1,500 people, and I gave my testimony and forgave. The
Holy Spirit was present, many people were touched and
came individually to ask for my forgiveness. It was a special time. I went back
to see where I used to live and met three old ladies sitting on a bench. When I
told them I used to live there fifty years ago, one of the ladies recognised my
maiden name. She had been a neighbour, and she told me a little about my parents
and how she used to try to help my mother by supplying bits of food. I wasn’t
sure whether or not to believe this, since Germans are still largely unable to
face up to what was done to Jews. I saw my father’s work-place, and through it
all I re-discovered my roots and identity. My foster-sister can’t understand
why I want to be a Jew now! I now had Christian friends in
Hamburg
who
met together and prayed for
Israel
.
The Lord called me to start a Prayer for
Israel
group in Oswestry, where I live. We have a large
group there, but at the time I didn’t know how to run it, until the Lord
reminded me that my Jewish friends in
Hamburg
used to invite me for Shabbat, so we started with a little Shabbat service, and
still do.
In 1994, after having been back to
Hamburg
a
couple more times, I felt I had to go to
Auschwitz
even though, again, I didn’t want to. A German friend put my name down for a
Journey of Reconciliation trip, with all expenses paid, so I was clearly meant
to go. We all met up from different parts of
Germany
,
and a German pastor led the group, consisting of about fifty Christians, and two
Jews, including myself. The other one was the pastor of a Messianic Fellowship.
On the way we stopped at various places and had services of reconciliation, but
I never quite knew which side I was on!
The
Holocaust was part of the devil’s fight against God’s plan of salvation.
There were several holocausts before the one in
Germany
.
The first “Final Solution” plan to kill the Jews was devised by Pharaoh at
the time of the Exodus; then there was Haman’s in
the Book of Esther, followed by Herod’s - this was Satan’s direct attempt to
kill Jesus before the Cross. Jesus revealed that he would return to the Jewish
nation (Acts 1). In order to prevent this, the devil tried to destroy the Jewish
nation, and there have been many years of persecution of Jews in every nation,
culminating in the Holocaust in
Germany
.
This repeated attempt to destroy the Jewish nation is an aspect of the spiritual
battle between Satan and God.
It was a very emotional journey to Auschwitz and I went into auto-pilot
when I saw the sign over the gate –
“Arbeit
macht frei”
–
“Work makes you free”, when the Germans wanted to work the Jews to death!
I had tried, like so many others, to blot all this from my mind; for the
first time it had came home to me who I was, and for the first time I cried
about it.
Auschwitz
is
now a museum, and I looked among the suitcases for one with my parents’ name
on it, but there wasn’t one. I saw various personal possessions, and hair
which had been cut off; I saw a wall against which people were put to be shot –
it was horrendous. We had a
memorial service for my parents, at which I had a cry, and felt an emotional
burden fall from my shoulders. My parents had been laid to rest.
When people ask me where God was when the Holocaust was taking place I
tell them that, as we were walking round Auschwitz, God revealed to me that
Jesus had been there, having taken the suffering of the world on to His own
body, and suffering with those people in there. I will never forget the love of
those other visitors –
all German Christians –
and they brought inner healing to my soul.
Early the next morning I felt I heard God tell me
that all the love which had been showered on me was for Him and for His people
Israel
;
it made me feel humbled and privileged to have been allowed to go on that
journey.
I picked up some nails from the railway, and they reminded me of the nails that
Jesus had endured.
I think it is important to tell young people about the Holocaust, so that
it never happens again. I recently attended a Holocaust Memorial Service and
heard Jewish people saying they could never forgive. I wished I had had a chance
to say something, because refusal to forgive hurts only the unforgiving person.
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