... And the Policeman Smiled (35 page)

Karl called, unkempt as usual, pale and highly nervous. He had received this morning a summons to appear before the Hampstead Police Court … on a charge of having failed to notify his intended move … In view of a previous conviction he is very worried and asked to be given legal help.

Subsequently the boy was held in Brixton Prison for several weeks under a deportation order while Dorothy Hardisty lobbied the Home Office. Eventually Karl was released and the deportation order lifted on a promise by the RCM that accommodation and a job were waiting for him.

The punishment for trivial offences could go well beyond the magistrate's ticking-off or the nominal fine. When Charlotte, ‘a delicate and capable young person', was caught travelling on the Underground without a ticket, it was not the 3 s 6d fine that bothered her so much as the magistrate's warning that, in consequence, her application for naturalisation might be rejected.

Once more Bloomsbury House made a timely intervention, as often happened when the Movement could be persuaded that the offender was basically good at heart. Judging by the records a full confession accompanied by a fair amount of grovelling was the surest way to create a favourable impression. Thus, Kurt got away with receiving stolen goods to the value of £3 10s by pleading an unselfish motivation to help his girlfriend and her three-month-old baby, while Nissi, whose bearing ‘was very humble and apologetic', was discharged after being caught red-handed taking cigarettes from a bombed-out tobacconist's.

Less fortunate was twenty-year-old Leo who, in early 1944, set up as a freelance photographer without first obtaining formal documentation from the Home Office. The Movement took against him, not so much because he had neglected the bureaucratic niceties, but more because he was ‘a weedy, conceited, unattractive young man' who did not respond to exhortations to join the war effort (presumably by swapping his camera for a pick and shovel). When he applied to the court for permission to marry, as he was required to do since he was under twenty-one and did not have a recognised guardian, the magistrate at Bow Street refused ‘as he was not in favour of a British girl marrying an alien'. The RCM expressed itself powerless to intercede. Thereafter, Leo's relationship
with his adopted country dipped to the point where he was charged with stealing a car, sentenced to six months and recommended for deportation. By now he was of an age to make his own decisions, the first of which was to marry the English girl to whom he had been engaged for two years. This did not prevent his deportation. In July 1947 he returned illegally and appealed for help to the RCM, whose representative advised him to give himself up. On his record card appears a brief, dismissive comment: ‘It is pointless for the committee to intervene.' Leo was sent back to Germany.

When boys tried for easy money they generally sold what belonged to others; when girls were similarly tempted they were more inclined to sell themselves.

A policewoman rang to say that Anita had been noticed loitering in Piccadilly at times during a whole week, both in the evenings and on three afternoons. The police had spoken to the girl and asked us to add our warnings … Anita came in and, as was to be expected, stated that it was all a mistake and that she had been waiting for a girl friend, etc. She begged that I would not mention the matter to Mrs Brodowitz as it would cause gossip at the hostel … I did warn the girl most seriously.

The warning had no effect. Within days sixteen-year-old Anita was again in a police report. The accusation of soliciting was avoided, but she did appear to be on friendly terms with rather too many American and Canadian soldiers. It was time for a straight talk from Dorothy Hardisty.

A long discussion ensued, during which Mrs Hardisty impressed upon Anita the serious obligations and responsibilities which she had towards herself and her men companions, and the necessity for leading a decent and moral lifer It was also impressed upon her that it was undignified continually to accept presents from men, and that no man would continue to give a girl presents without eventually demanding something in return.

It was wasted effort. Less than a fortnight later a panic call from Mrs Brodowitz revealed that Anita was engaged to a man she had known for only two days – ‘a real Cockney, who appears to have a lot of money'. The story went that he was a dealer in jewels and furs who had been discharged from the army after Dunkirk.

There was barely time for Dorothy Hardisty to draw breath before Mrs Brodowitz, now, understandably, ‘in a state of nerves', came back with more news. Anita's fiance was not as he described. For one thing he had discharged himself from the army and was listed as a deserter; for another, he had a wife and two children ‘somewhere in Norfolk'. The only consolation and the reason why Mrs Brodowitz was so well informed was that the man had been spotted by the military police and was now in prison.

Anita took all this in her stride. Back at Bloomsbury House for another chat with Dorothy Hardisty, she gave a dramatic rendering of ‘a blazing row' with the other woman. ‘It was very apparent that she had thoroughly enjoyed acting the lady', noted Mrs Hardisty. But while Anita ‘maintained an indifferent and callous manner' towards the affair, the RCM could do no more than appeal to her better instincts. Dorothy Hardisty had no doubt that she was wasting her time.

Anita has now decided to finish her relations with all men; in fact, she is tired of them and wishes only to be left alone … She is fully aware that she can do exactly as she pleases and that the Movement has no legal power over her at all.

Shortly afterwards, Anita left the hostel and took a room of her own. Thereafter for three years, her RCM file records without comment a succession of job and address changes. In 1946, Anita married an American army lieutenant and left for the States. Her file was closed.

There were girls who persistently stayed out late, girls who kept bad company and girls who drank too much. No doubt many more boys were up to the same tricks, but convention ruled that they were better able to look after themselves. Hence, their files give little indication of misdemeanours, which take up whole pages when girls were involved. This was bad luck on Helga, who got drunk with an American soldier and was not allowed to forget it, and on Hildegard, who was taken in by the police when she was seen talking to an ex-convict, but worked in favour of Martin, who made quite a business out of playing cards for money but who was judged ‘on the whole to be doing no worse than any other boy of his age in his particular position'. This opinion had soon to be revised. Martin was arrested in possession of an unloaded
revolver. He had planned to hold up the cash desk of an Oxford Street store.

Getting caught before the crime designated Martin as an amateur. He might have learned a thing or two from twin brothers Walter and Theo who began, successfully, to take what they wanted in 1944 when they were eighteen. Walter made quite a business from stealing rationed food from the grocer he worked for and selling it on the black market, while Theo dealt mostly in men's clothes which he shifted on to a second-hand dealer who paid ready cash. The partnership came to an end in 1947 when Walter got away to the United States. Theo took a shorter journey – to Wormwood Scrubs, where he did four months' hard labour. Curiously, he was not deported, a sentence which in the two years immediately after the war was handed down to at least fifty young people who had come over on the
Kindertransporte
. Once a recommendation for deportation had been made it was rare for the Movement to try to reverse the order, though the irony of sending youngsters back to the source of their unhappiest memories was not lost on refugee workers. They seem to have taken the view that deportation was justified as a last resort when the victim had persistently ignored warnings, and when nothing further could be done to achieve his rehabilitation. But deportation was also an option for shifting a problem to another authority. The temptation to take the easy way out was well-nigh irresistible with youngsters who had failed to make their way (probably through no fault of their own) and who showed their resentment.

We told Joseph that we wished to settle the matter amicably but, if he was not prepared to tell the truth and confess (to stealing from gas meters), we would place the matter in the hands of the police. The boy stated that this would not worry him. His whole attitude was anti-British, in that this country had failed to bring his parents over, and anti-Movement, in that he charged us with having turned him adrift on 35 shillings a week which was insufficient for his needs.

Joseph was a prime candidate for deportation. It would have needed a later generation of social workers, free from the prejudices of war, to detect the frustration behind the mask of ingratitude and disloyalty. In 1945 the superficial judgement invariably carried the day. Joseph had to go.

By far the greater part of the RCM's counselling work was with youngsters who suffered physical and mental breakdown. This was wholly predictable. Being on a
Kindertransport
was, in itself, a traumatic experience that left its mark on otherwise balanced and healthy children. But other shocks to the system followed in quick succession: a new language and culture; the insensitivity, not always unintentional, of foster parents, teachers and hostel administrators; the cruelty of other children (and some adults) who equated all things German with Nazism; the coming-to-terms with the long-term or permanent loss of family and friends who had been left behind, and the awareness that refugees could not expect to be treated other than as second-class citizens – to mention only the common causes of illness and depression.

The refugee workers at Bloomsbury House, led in this context by Lola Hahn-Warburg, did their best. All of them volunteers with nothing but a rudimentary knowledge of psychology and, possibly, their own experience as parents to help them, they grappled with problems that challenged the skills of the best doctors and psychiatrists.

At twenty-one Renate did not have the most exciting job in the world, but with her German friends on a radio assembly line she seemed happy and settled. She was an active trade unionist and had lately been elected a shop steward. Then, in February 1944, her face became disfigured by red blotches and her skin started peeling. Her doctor told her she had dermatitis and recommended treatment which had no effect. When she called in at Bloomsbury House for a routine chat, her adviser noted that she ‘looks very dirty and neglected and is taking no pride at all in her personal appearance'. Within a month Renate had lost her job ('the complaint was that the girl was too slow') and had suffered a sharp decline in health, having contracted chronic catarrh, nervous debility and eczema of the scalp ‘which made her unable to summon up the courage to get a haircut after a hairdresser had been very rude to her on the subject'.

It took over a year of counselling and treatment to restore Renate to a semblance of ordinary life. By then she could just about face up to the knowledge she had been trying to resist since February 1944; that every last member of her family had died in the concentration camps.

Histories of debilitating ailments and depression such as Renate's
occur over and over again in the RCM records. In nine cases out of ten, it did not take a professional analyst to detect the cause of the problem. It was the cure that was so elusive. What was to be done for Liselotte, who showed signs of severe mental stress from the age of five? By late 1943, when Liselotte was approaching her seventh birthday, she had taken to banging her head, a symptom which worried her foster mother more than her doctor, who ‘could not be persuaded to view the matter very seriously'. What was then judged professionally to be a passing phase continued for over four years. It was not until 1946 that a psychiatrist was called in. His entry on Liselotte's file portrays her as ‘a lively child but mentally backward'. After detailing her mental history he added, ‘Lotte has vivid fantasies and has built a whole world of dreams. Her head banging suggests a kind of infantile masturbation. She is a discouraged child who needs love.'

It was a remedy frequently recommended but less often applied. Foster parents were not always equipped to cope with the vagaries of their own children, let alone the problems of outsiders. It was one thing to offer hospitality, quite another to extend the boundaries of tolerant understanding to dark moods and sudden rages, even when these could be attributed to horrific experiences in earlier childhood.

While children were very young it was possible to muddle through. The boy who deliberately confused English and German to create a language all to himself, the girl who pulled off her toenails, the boy who refused to speak for days on end, the girl who hid all her possessions and swore that others had stolen them – all these and many more were classed as difficult but just about manageable. It was when they grew up that the problems really started.

There was, for instance, Max who, as an early teenager, complained that he was without friends.

He has had several introductions to various youth clubs, but he has always left them after a short time as he feels completely out of the picture.

Max was said to be in the grip of some form of neurosis, but it was assumed that he would grow out of it. A year after his first interview at Bloomsbury House, he was still saying that ‘he really
wanted some particular friend who would take a close interest in him'. Now, however, he wanted a girlfriend. He must have tried hard because soon afterwards there was a report of an engagement. But it was soon broken off which ‘left him feeling rather lonely'. And that was it until December 1946, when Max was arrested in Hyde Park. He was charged with assault on a woman. Suddenly, his inability to attract friends took on a new significance. A psychiatrist was called in and Max was given the treatment he needed, but only after serving a month in Brixton.

The tendency for psychiatric disorders to show up more dramatically as the victims emerged from childhood helped to shift the focus of RCM counselling. As the war progressed, there was greater emphasis on professional advice, a trend which accelerated sharply after Germany's defeat when the nightmare of the holocaust made its full impact on those who had been saved from the gas chambers.