Margaret Dewar Archive | ETOL Main Page
The Quiet Revolutionary
LIFE IN BERLIN continued to be monotonous and hazardous. I met the four or five comrades of my particular group clandestinely in a safe flat, saw non-committed but reliable friends to exchange information and opinions, or just to relax. A great deal of my free time I spent at my sister’s house. Her daughter Nora was just about a year old and very lively and entertaining. I got on well with Arnold, but we no longer discussed politics. His political sympathies had not changed, though by then the German National Party no longer existed. So life was relatively untroubled until, one day in early March 1936, the axe fell.
I received a summons from the Gestapo headquarters, ordering me to appear in three days’ time. I read the summons and my heart stopped. I could hardly breathe. It is difficult to describe my feelings. I was scared. Then I began to reason: if they wanted to arrest me, why did they not come, as usual, early in the morning and take me with them. So what do they want? It was strange that I had been summoned to appear at 6 pm, after normal working hours. I had no answer to my questions and decided to use the time left to prepare for my possible arrest on the day of my visit. I contacted the Friedrichs. I straightened out everything in my room. I took some of my most precious and valuable books to Olya’s in the evening after dark, and then settled down with Trotsky’s My Life – in a German translation which I must have got either from Walter’s stock of books in the cellar or from some other comrade. I was determined to finish it over the weekend, just in case.
Then, with enormous trepidation, I made my way to Prinz Albrecht Strasse and the Gestapo building, with its detention cells and torture basements. The huge building was almost deserted. I was taken by a janitor up a wide staircase, through long corridors, which eerily echoed our steps, into a large office room. A middle-aged man in civilian clothes asked me to sit down and began to leaf through a folder.
My heart was pounding, but I tried to look innocent and calm. Then he started talking: about my being deprived of my German citizenship, of the plans to deport me from Germany, the inconvenience of renewing my labour permit and the restrictions on travel. I replied in the manner of a well-brought-up young woman. Things were inconvenient, I said, but there was no sign of the authorities being willing to return my passport. That was not quite the case, he said. I could get back my German citizenship if I wanted to. Of course I wanted it back, I replied.
What else could I have answered without challenging him? He came to the point. He could promise me the return of my passport if I proved worthy of the Fatherland’s trust and rendered it a suitable service. Now I was on my guard, but managed to answer calmly, asking what I, a mere woman, could do. If I were a man I could serve in the armed forces. Well, came the reply, there were other ways of showing gratitude and loyalty – wasn’t I working with the Soviet Trade Delegation? I could help them there. They knew of course, all about the work of the delegation, but perhaps I could supplement their knowledge. Nothing special, just a few figures from time to time.
I was stunned but had to carry on. I could do that, I said, if that would help the German Fatherland. But what was there to report? I was only a small employee and had no access to any important material or information, and to the best of my knowledge there wasn’t any more to know than that it was an organisation to promote trade between the two countries. That was his worry, he said. He would just ask me a few questions from time to time and my answers were all he wanted. I needn’t come to the Prinz Albrecht Strasse again. I could meet him in a cafe, near the Potsdamer Platz, in a week or ten days’ time. In the meantime, I wasn’t to worry, and now I could go.
Not to worry! I walked out of the building as if in a daze, and walked back home through half Berlin to calm down and gather my thoughts. I knew it was the beginning of the end. My turn had come to leave Germany and join the ranks of political refugees. It was now only a question of when and how and where. It was possible I was under close observation by the Gestapo, and may have been for some time. I immediately had to sever all contact with my political friends, but beyond that I did not want to do anything drastic which would arouse the suspicion of the Gestapo.
I did, however, contact the Friedrichs, who were my best friends, told them the whole story and asked them to pass it on to my group. I continued to maintain some contact with them since, after his release from the Brandenburg prison, Walter Friedrich had had to stop being active and was therefore not endangered as the other comrades would have been. I told Olya that I would have to leave Germany, and in the evenings, under cover of darkness, I carried round to her all my remaining political and valued books and belongings, storing them in large cases in her cellar, unbeknown to Arnold. She was very brave and generous in that respect. During the war, when Arnold was an army doctor on the Russian front, and Olya and the children were evacuated to western Germany, only an old aunt of Arnold’s remained in the flat with her daughter and most of the books were used as fuel for the oven in their room. Only a very few survived.
I continued to go to work as usual. I felt it was my duty to inform the administration of the Trade Delegation of the Gestapo’s interest in their activities. Although I no longer approved of the Stalinist policy, at home and abroad, those ‘degenerated’ Communists were still closer to me than the Nazi fascists. Besides they were my employers and had not harmed me personally in any way, and all my German colleagues were socialists (Communist or otherwise); I felt a moral obligation towards them.
My immediate boss, Comrade Guriev, was in Moscow at the time, so I asked to see the head of the financial department, Comrade Stepanov. I was on good terms with him, and when I had to see him to sign some balance sheets or letters, he would ask questions about the situation in Germany. He was a mild man, with soft brown eyes and an attentive expression on his face. He was in his late forties and spent a great deal of time in Moscow. He obviously took me for a member of the German Communist Party and once or twice he had asked me out for a meal (as a high-ranking member of the staff, he could obviously risk such occasional connections). He was a good conversationalist, and quite a well read and interesting person. So when I decided that I had to tell somebody at the Trade Delegation I turned to him. I asked him to arrange for me to see the head of the Trade Delegation himself, normally a totally inaccessible person. The message came back that he was engaged and that I was to speak to Comrade Stepanov, who then sat and listened to my story with a real poker face. I told him I would have to leave Germany and asked if it would be possible for the Trade Delegation to give me a recommendation to their sister organisation in Paris. He would not commit himself and only said he would report the whole thing to the head of the organisation and would let me know.
A day or two before my visit to the Gestapo, Stepanov had asked me whether I would like to accompany him to a West End cinema, to see the much praised film Madame Bovary. I had agreed, but now suggested that he might like to cancel our appointment. He protested and thought there was no reason for that at all. However, having waited in vain at the appointed place for more than half an hour, I rang the Trade Delegation – to be told that he was in conference and could not come to the phone. It was clear to me that after his talk with the head he had obviously got cold feet. I felt rather bitter about it. Not because of the missed film – and probably a meal at a restaurant – but because of the way it was done. He sort of apologised the following day but did not suggest another date. It was really rather pathetic.
The following day I was referred to the personnel manager, a tall and very serious chap whom I hardly knew. Once more I had to tell the whole story, including the precise questions the Gestapo man had put to me and the suggestions he had made. The personnel manager’s response was that the conversation was quite harmless, there was nothing to the questions, and surely I could not leave the country anyway without a passport. Why not wait and see whether I might get it back? In other words, the Trade Delegation wanted to use me as a counter-spy. I was to report to the personnel manager after every meeting with the Gestapo. That was like walking on thin ice. I could not even be sure whether, in the circumstances, there might not have been a link somewhere between the Gestapo and the Trade Delegation itself – nothing was impossible at that time. But since nobody other than myself was endangered as yet, I wanted to choose my time for quitting, all the while watching my steps very carefully.
Yet the Russians were obviously alarmed. All sorts of measures were taken by the administration, the meaning of which I could only guess. The German employees no longer had access to the duty-free shop; in the canteen, the Russians avoided sitting at tables with the Germans. These measures were quite incomprehensible to the German staff. In fact they were rather indignant that with the Nazi pressure bearing down outside, the Russian Communists themselves should now turn away from their German colleagues. Any personal contacts, occasional and fleeting as they had always been, were stopped. And all the while the Russians were reducing the trade activity and cutting down both the Russian and German staff.
I met the man from the Gestapo twice more over a brief cup of coffee, and each time reported in detail to the personnel manager. The Gestapo were obviously proceeding cautiously: the questions were mostly about the organisation itself, for example the so-called Special Department. The existence of these in all Russian organisations was common knowledge to everybody who had close dealings with them. Only some of the specially accredited Russian employees had access to them. To my knowledge these departments dealt with highly confidential matters about the business dealings of the respective organisation. (Only years later did we realise that they were also staffed by KGB men, or by genuine members of the staff who were trusted by the KGB.) So in all honesty I could assure the Gestapo representative that there was nothing special about those departments.
I think I was also asked whether there was a branch of the German Communist Party at the delegation, of which, officially, I did not know anything. I was also shown photographs of some Germans and asked whether I knew them. I replied that I had heard their names mentioned but that they were no longer working there. (I don’t know whether I was still being tested as to my reliability and willingness to collaborate, but as all new employees had for a long time been agreed with the Nazi authorities, I thought that the dismissals would also have been known to them even better than to me.) He was satisfied with my answers, but for me it was the sign! In future I would no doubt be asked to report on the existing German staff. The time had come to quit.
I put this to the personnel manager, who tried hard to remonstrate with me – how could I leave without a passport, an exit visa, or any valid documents? Why was I in such a hurry? He was sure that in time they could find me some work in Paris. But hundreds if not thousands of Germans had left the country over the previous three years without exit visas, and I would do the same. All I wanted from him was a recommendation for the sister organisation in Paris and my last salary paid in a foreign currency, not in German marks. This was illegal, but I thought they might do that much for me. But, no fear, I did not get either the recommendation or the foreign currency, just a month’s salary in lieu of notice. Officially I was pronounced redundant, much to the surprise of my German colleagues, who expected me to be one of the last to have to go on the strength of my knowledge of the Russian language and shorthand.
On my last day at work, I asked Bruno, whom I had always taken to be the Communist Party representative, to walk me home. On the way, in the street, where we could not be overheard by anybody, I told him the whole story about the Gestapo’s interest in the Trade Delegation and the German staff. I thought that was the least I could do for my German colleagues: to warn them about any possible danger from the Nazi authorities, and also explain to them the changed behaviour of the Russians. They could expect no help from that quarter. Bruno was speechless; he was grateful and wished me good luck.
The Trade Delegation’s refusal to pay my salary in foreign currency was in a way understandable. It was illegal, at any rate, for private individuals to possess any foreign currency. And it was also illegal to take any quantity of German marks out of the country without permission. One of my friends nevertheless managed to change a hundred marks into assorted foreign currencies for me. And Liesel Friedrich, who was working for a small firm of gold and silversmiths, still run by two Jewish brothers, managed to persuade them to separate the handle from the blade of one of my silver-plated table knives, stuff the rolled up bank notes into the empty handle, and solder the two parts together again. It was impossible to detect anything by looking at or using the knife. And no suspicion would be aroused by my carrying it on the ‘trip’ that I had planned. As a parting gift Liesel also gave me a silver clip, much in fashion at that time, which I still wear occasionally.
There was well-intentioned help from another source. My colleague who used to meet her husband somewhere near the Czech-German border had once asked me whether I knew anybody in Prague. She gave me an address in case I ever found myself there. I memorised the address and then she tore the slip of paper in half, giving me one piece and keeping the other. It was a method of identification that was often used in those days: when the two parts were put together. I was grateful, because I did not know a soul in Prague. But this address was to lead me into great trouble.
I made my last preparations at home and fixed a date for my departure: Saturday 6 April 1936, a suitable day for a skiing weekend.
On Thursday night I said goodbye to the Friedrichs. Liesel was in bed complaining about stomach cramps, which seemed to be getting worse. Walter rang the hospital from the nearest telephone booth and was told to rush her to hospital. We hurriedly said goodbye and went our separate ways. Their daughter Vera was born during the night, named after the Russian revolutionary Vera Zasulich. A year or so later they too escaped to Prague. They eventually settled in Sweden, where they gradually succumbed to the lure of Swedish Social Democracy.
Having been lucky with all my preparations so far I did not want to risk failure on the last night. I packed my rucksack with a few necessities – a spare dress, a jumper, some underwear – and having got my skiing gear ready, I left the flat as if I was going to my sister’s for the evening, without saying anything to my young lodgers. They would have to face the music after my departure, as I told Olya not to go to the flat any more, and they did not know her address. Olya took me by car to the home of my old friend Lore, from our days at the eurhythmic school. There I spent the last night. Arnold by then knew that I was leaving Germany, though we had not told him the whole story. He was sympathetic and did not stop Olya from accompanying me. It was a long journey, all through the town to the West End, and I kept looking back to see whether we were being followed. So we spent the last evening together, Olya and me, Lore and Gertrud, the painter friend with whom she shared the studio.
Early next morning I set off for the railway station, where I met Elfriede and Hans Kaufmann, who knew about my impending departure and had decided to join me. Elfriede’s husband, Julius Hollos, was already in Prague and though they were not yet in danger they thought it was time to leave while the going was good and they had me as a guide. They had got themselves some skiing equipment – though I don’t think they could actually ski. We arrived safely at the farmer’s house where I had previously been with Jan Bur and the Langes, and they welcomed us in their friendly way as always. I told them that ‘Walter’ would join us for the Easter holidays, but that we now had longer holidays and had therefore come earlier. I don’t know whether they believed us or what they thought. It was already rather late in the year and the snow conditions not really suitable for proper skiing. So we told them we might go higher up the mountains.
They in turn told us, unasked, of the various changes that had taken place in the area. Their house was only a couple of hundred yards from the shallow river that formed the border between Germany and Czechoslovakia and which one had previously been able to cross unhindered. Now they told us there was barbed wire all along the banks and a constant guard on the bridge. We feigned indifference, but realised that we had a problem. Not only would there be the barbed wire, but in winter the river would have been frozen and one could ski over it. Now we would have to wade through it or balance across over the large stones. There was nothing for it. We simply had to get across. So for the next few days we went out for walks or short skiing trips, exploring. Then one morning, leaving behind everything we could spare, plus some money for the farmer, we took the plunge – and managed, without mishap of any kind, to scale the barbed wire, cross the shallow river and make our way up the mountain – on the Czech side!
The relief was indescribable. Sixteen years earlier I had entered Germany reluctantly and in great sorrow, with my family, as refugees from hunger and disease. I was now leaving it with relief and only limited regret, again as a refugee, this time from Nazi oppression and persecution.
The danger was not quite over. We stopped at an inn on the Czech side of the mountain, had some hot soup and made enquiries about trains to Prague. There we were advised not to go to the nearest railway station, but to make our way further down the valley and on to the next one. There was every chance that if the border police found us so close to the border without adequate papers they would dispatch us back to Germany without further ado. This was the Sudetenland, which had never been fully assimilated into the new Czechoslovak state created after the First World War. The predominantly German population hankered after re-unification with Germany, or at least self-rule, and so was to a large extent pro-Hitler. The Czechs in that area, on the other hand, were understandably suspicious of strangers and especially Germans, as they feared Nazi infiltrators.
So we hurried on as quickly as we could. When we reached the station we parted company. Elfriede and Hans were making straight for Prague, while I was going to stop over in Reichenberg, a small town not far from the frontier. I wanted to meet Julik and Käthe Kozlecki, a young Trotskyist couple who were the all-important link between the German groups and the Trotskyists abroad – they distributed the illegal literature and maintained contact with the couriers from Germany. They knew me well, and Jan Bur too, from our clandestine correspondence.
They were very hospitable. I think they received some financial help from the Trotskyist organisation, and perhaps occasionally from the German-Czech group, which enabled them to live extremely frugally in two attic rooms, devoting all their time and energy to the movement and to political study. Käthe was a devoted wife and pupil – Julik’s words were gospel to her. He once remarked with slight irritation that she slavishly repeated whatever he said, without ever thinking and reasoning for herself.
For me the fortnight with them was very restful and relaxing. I read a lot, discussed a lot, went for walks in the countryside, and generally recovered from the oppressive atmosphere in Germany and the stress of the past few weeks. I also met the local German-Czech Trotskyist group – whose members were Germans living in the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia – although I do not recollect much about them. Then it was time to make my way to Prague, to learn to live the hazardous life of a refugee.
Käthe and Julik managed to escape when Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia in 1938. I think it was then that they split up: Julik went to Mexico, where he started a carpentry business, and Käthe somehow found her way to England, where she slavishly continued to argue the orthodox Trotskyist line.
I hardly remember my arrival in Prague. I had arrived with nothing more than my rucksack, my last salary, part of which was in foreign currency, and that half scrap of paper with an address in Prague – those ‘friends’ of my colleague Fanny, who ‘would be able to help me’. I had never asked who they were or how they might help me – one did not ask too many questions in Germany – but was glad to have this contact. I also had Elfriede’s address and one for Berta, an old non-political friend from my days at the eurhythmics school. She was Jewish and had left Germany because of the growing anti-semitism.
I called on Berta first. Together with her friend Lipschitz, also a Jewish emigré from Germany, she lived in a very pleasant studio flat and put me up without any fuss until I could find my feet again. They were a funny couple, Berta shorter than me and Lipschitz exceptionally tall. He forever had a pot of coffee simmering, and their friends made it their habit, much to Berta’s annoyance, to call at any time, not so much to see them as to drink a cup of good coffee. Berta had a pleasant voice and played the accordion, and occasionally worked in a club singing folk songs. She had to practise, which was difficult with people milling around. So before long I decided to look for a room of my own.
I went to see Fanny’s friends. I found the house, in a street just off the Vaclavski Namesti, a large square right in the centre of Prague. I began to wonder: it did not look like a residential house. Nevertheless I climbed up the stairs higher and higher until I had reached the top floor. I was shown in and, when I showed my scrap of paper, was greeted with exclamations of surprise and relief. I had stepped right into a hornets’ nest: this was the Association for the Support of German Emigrés, the refugee committee of the German Communist Party!
I was flabbergasted. Having broken with the party in Germany, I was not anxious to have anything to do with it in Prague. But there I was, and there was no retreating. Information about my intended escape had reached them from Germany three weeks before – which showed their efficiency in such matters – and they had given me a week to reach Prague. They were about to make discreet enquiries through their frontier contacts to find out if I had been arrested. They were relieved that I was safe and sound, but greatly agitated, and kept asking me where I had spent the past fortnight. I could not tell them I had been staying with my Trotskyist contacts, so I simply explained that I had personal friends in Reichenberg, whom I had visited on my way to Prague. They seemed to accept my explanation and recognised me as a bona fide refugee from Nazi Germany. They also told me that without recognition by one of the various refugee committees (there was one run by the Social Democrats, another called the Democratic Committee for Non-aligned Refugees, and probably also a Jewish one), the Czech police were not inclined to grant political asylum. They were too nervous about Nazi infiltration.
There was also the matter of financial support, of which I was unaware. When it was offered, I could not refuse without rousing suspicion. The Communist committee at that time paid a small amount each week, not enough to live on, but better than nothing for many. Some refugees lived together to save on the rent, most did occasional menial work. The non-socialist intellectuals seemed on the whole to be better off than the Communists and the small group of Trotskyists. So I collected my allowance, and for a few months that was my only contact with the committee and the Communist Party. I don’t remember whether I was assigned to a branch – at any rate I never went to a meeting. For the time being all seemed well, and I set out to organise my life.
First of all I found a furnished room, which seemed most romantic: it was in the attractive old part of Prague, parallel to the Waldstynska – with its famous palace and other beautiful old houses and gardens. What attracted me to my room was that it was in a timber house built around a small courtyard with a gallery running round its four sides. Swallows nested under the roof and flitted here and there. I was captivated by the atmosphere. It was also cheap, but it had drawbacks: one was the big gate which was locked at ten every evening. After that I had to knock up the grumpy old caretaker.
The other drawback was that to reach my room I had to pass through the kitchen, where another lodger slept, and through the landlady’s room. She, too, was mostly grumpy. She was getting on, probably not in very good health, certainly not well off, and rather lonely, but on the whole her bark was worse than her bite and she never bothered about me. She told me once that she used to live with a very dear friend who had died some years before, an ardent Social Democrat and the first woman deputy in the new Czech parliament, established after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918 – when it had been split up into its constituent parts, including Hungary and Czechoslovakia. I managed to learn some Czech while there, because the landlady’s radio was usually on at full blast, which was useful if at times disturbing.
I felt quite happy in that room. I had a small methylated spirit burner, and Berta had given me a tiny saucepan, sufficient to boil water for tea, or an egg. I had a couple of plates and cups, knives and forks, probably sent to me by my sister, and some clothes. The house was only five minutes’ walk from the Vltava, the river that flows through Prague. This is crossed by some beautiful bridges, including a suspension bridge identical to the Chelsea Bridge in London and built by the same architect. There was the famous Karlov Most (Charles Bridge) erected in the mid-14th century, with its baroque statues, and the tall tower with its big gates which led to the old part of Prague. Here the Hradcin, a former castle and now the seat of government, towered over the city on a high hill.
In the evening the lights from the lamps on the bridges and along the embankments were reflected in the water and in a light breeze sparkled like champagne in a glass. In daytime the river was pretty dirty, and I always marvelled how people could bathe in it in the summer. Then, when it got unbearably hot, I too took the plunge and swam every morning from one bridge to the other and back, having a good wash when I got back to my room (there was no running water, only a washstand with a bowl and a jug, and a cold water tap in the kitchen) before sitting down to my breakfast.
In Prague I read a great deal, and studied political literature. And I spent a good deal of time meeting friends. We met mostly at Julich’s, a huge cafe on two or three floors at the upper end of Vaclavski Namesti. There I learned to drink small cups of black coffee, the mala cava, the cheapest one could get, which were served with a glass of water. We sat there for hours, discussing, arguing and reading the newspapers supplied by the cafe and fixed to a pole so that the pages would not become disarranged. We were not the only ones to occupy those tables. Impecunious Czech and German journalists and Czech students also made use of the facilities, the students writing their theses and rehearsing each other. Only at lunchtime did the waiters ask them to move on to make room for more affluent clients. It was quite usual to make use of a cafe for more than a rest and some refreshment. Later I gave French conversation lessons to a businessman studying French, and we used to meet in a park when it was fine or in a cafe when it was cold or wet.
Occasionally I went to the Koruna, a small cafe also on the Vaclavski Namesti, for a cheap, self-service stand-up lunch of a bowl of thick soup, or a dish of knedliki a zeli – sauerkraut and dumplings. Cheap as these meals were, there were always people, Czechs, who could not afford even that expense. If somebody left a bowl or plate unfinished, there was always someone who would immediately finish it off before the plates were cleared away. I found this distressing, and so at variance with the official propaganda of Czechoslovakia as a modem, successful democratic country. From my occasional conversations in shops I gathered that there was quite a disparity between wages and the cost of living. Only the relatively new Czech bourgeoisie did not seem to do too badly. There were other features that did not go with the notion of democracy, so boasted of at that time. Letters for abroad, at any rate to Germany, had to be handed in at the Post Office unsealed. But of course, compared with Germany it was almost paradise for us.
Almost, but not quite. We were not allowed to take up any work without a labour permit, and we could not get that without a knowledge of the language, and the necessary skills or training. So most refugees lived rather precariously.
I was better off than many. Even when my foreign currency ran out, I regularly received ten Deutschmarks each month from Olya, the maximum she was allowed to send out of Germany without special permission. It wasn’t much, but for a refugee and for Czechoslovakia it was a sizeable sum. And besides, I did not have to pay rent for my next room. I had had to move out of the room with the swallows flying around the courtyard and the Czech radio blaring. Some time towards the end of the summer, my friend Lore had come to visit me. My landlady was kind enough to let Lore share the room – and the large bed – with me. To her horror, Lore discovered that the bed, and no doubt the whole room, was full of bugs! Out of friendship she braved this plague and lasted out through her holidays. But although the bugs had never taken the slightest notice of me, the very knowledge of them sharing my bed made my further stay in that room impossible.
I soon found a room in a respectable residential area, not far from the city centre, in exchange for German and French conversation lessons with a sister and brother. They had grown up in the Sudetenland but after their parents had died they were cared for by relatives in Prague and had forgotten both German and their school French. He was a bookkeeper or accountant and Sonia worked in a government ministry, but she was also a pianist and I much enjoyed her playing. Unfortunately they always kept their rooms locked so I never got a chance to play the piano myself. They were both very pleasant, only he was usually so tired in the evening that he often excused himself from our lessons, which made me feel rather awkward, not ‘paying' my full share of the bargain. Sonia was apparently also a very good cook, to judge by the occasional tantalising aromas emanating from the kitchen. But apart from the conversation lessons, we had little personal contact.
A free room and money from Olya and the committee were still not enough for me to live on even remotely comfortably. So I scanned the advertising pages of the Prager Mittag, a German-language newspaper. There were columns and columns of classified advertisements and I was sure to find something. But some ads turned out not to be what they seemed. One sounded very attractive: for a masseuse and assistant for physiotherapy treatment. I sent an application with the requested photograph and discovered that it was some sort of bath establishment, which even to me, with all my ignorance, sounded somewhat suspicious. It was, moreover, in the Sudetenland, where I would not have gone for any job. But I could not get rid of that advertiser, who kept pestering me to accept. Afterwards I was told by more astute friends that all such advertisements – for French lessons, massage and the like – were dubious.
Then I was offered a summer job as a kind of governess or companion to some children, staying up in the High Tatra, a most beautiful mountainous part of Czechoslovakia. I was very tempted, but in the end could not tear myself away from the circle of fellow refugees in Prague, and from our political discussions. Eventually I did find a congenial job as companion for a 15-year-old girl, daughter of a wealthy Czech widow who, after her husband’s death, was running their garage and petrol station. They lived in a large house with a large garden in the northern suburbs of Prague, had a housekeeper, and a tutor for her younger son every afternoon. But there was nobody to look after the children after school.
My duties were simple: I had to keep Blanka company while she was doing her homework, accompany her to the hairdresser and dressmaker in town, and above all practise German and French conversation with her. Sometimes, work over, we all had a game of ball in the garden, or Blanka and I would read a German or French book for pleasure. In the afternoon we had tea together with a young aunt of theirs, who spoke only Czech, so that I felt rather out of place. But they were all very pleasant.
Blanka seemed to like me and talking with her was sometimes very interesting. Once she was in a dilemma: the Catholic church considered Jan Hus to have been a heretic and burnt him at the stake, whereas in Czech history he is a national hero. Who should one believe? I knew the family were strict Catholics and very patriotic (as the Czech bourgeoisie was after they had gained independence). I could not upset her feelings one way or the other and was not familiar enough with that particular religious dispute – which took place the end of the 14th century. So I carefully tried to explain to her the conflict between different interests within a state or a nation, and said that one day she would have to find the answer to this and similar contradictions herself. I often wondered what happened to her and her family when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia.
I also gave lessons to the young businessman, who admired my good knowledge of French. Little did he know that I kept one step ahead of him, carefully preparing my vocabulary on each day’s topic from a useful little book.
With all this I could afford a mala cava at Julich’s or a simple meal at the Koruna. Most important of all, I could afford an occasional concert, of which there were so many in Prague. I was especially drawn to the concerts of 17th and 18th century music given in one of the palatial renaissance buildings in the Old Town. It was always fascinating and somewhat eerie to come out of that beautiful palace, with the sound of music still in my ears, into the dark, narrow, old streets, passing the dark houses with their huge doorways and courtyards, with hardly a light glimmering in the windows. Any minute one expected to see a mysterious figure in black coat and wide-brimmed, high hat furtively crossing the cobbled street.
Never having been to any medieval town in Germany, I was simply fascinated by Prague. Walking back to my room along the wide, well-lit and tree-lined Fochova, it was a delight to watch the play of light and shade in the foliage of the trees. Only once before had I felt such a delight – when I walked in the Tiergarten with Vladimir. But then I was in love. Now it was the sheer relief of no longer living in the oppressive atmosphere of Hitler’s Germany and of having escaped from the clutches of the Gestapo.
The mornings, too, were very pleasant. I now lived quite near a beautiful park overlooking the lower part of Prague. On sunny mornings I used to go there to have my breakfast in a milk bar: sour milk (similar to yoghurt) and a white roll. Then I would sit in the park, reading or writing, and watching. Back in my room, I would cook myself some simple lunch in that tiny saucepan. Then I would go to Julich’s to meet some of my friends. There were some interesting people among them, some of whom had been Communists or fellow travellers in Germany, mainly Berlin, and who had worked for the left-wing theatres, such as the Piscator.
My Trotskyist comrades from Berlin and those that I met in Prague were not the types to sit around in cafes. They usually came round to me, as I seem to have had the most convenient room, probably the largest and with no landlady in during the day. We used to read the Left Opposition material and try to write for it too. There was Heinrich, lower middle-class, with no training or qualifications, but a very successful street trader in Berlin. He had been an active member of the German Communist Party and of the Berlin Trotskyist group. He tried hard to write and study but had no training or self-discipline: his room was either too large, or too small; too quiet or too noisy. He eventually lived in London, where he had a small business making electrical equipment. There was also Gerhard from Saxony, quite intelligent but extremely tense, with a sort of crabbed and fanatical expression on his face. He had a very pleasant young wife, Edith, who, though not political herself, devotedly followed him when he had to leave Germany and worked in Prague as a cleaning lady to supplement their meagre subsidy from one of the committees. Gerhard took a fancy to me, though he was some fourteen years younger. He was probably attracted by my interest in politics and tried hard to persuade me to go with him to one of the South American countries. It was really quite pathetic. Edith eventually accepted a job in domestic service in England, near London, hoping he would be able to join her there. Instead she joined him in Belgium, where he somehow or other found refuge and where they survived the war and Nazi occupation. Edith apparently died early, and he occasionally came to London, on business, I was told. But I never heard from him again.
In the spring of 1937 my old friends Liesel and Walter Friedrich left Berlin. Though not particularly active since his release from jail, it nevertheless became too risky for them to remain in Germany. They arrived in Prague with their one-year-old daughter Vera and no means of subsistence. But like other wives, Liesel found some work or other, and they too survived. It was easier for women then for men to find some menial work, though some of the men did find odd jobs to do, such as decorating or moving furniture.
Elfriede, Julius Hollos and Hans Kaufman were on the fringes now. Julius had never joined the Left Opposition while Elfriede and Hans did. In Berlin both were active to a certain degree and were never afraid to take risks; in Prague, all three of them were more of the cafe set, where they would spend hours on end. Nor did they have the same financial worries as most of our crowd. Julius worked for a German newspaper in Prague, and Hans wrote occasional articles and possibly got money from his father.
Elfriede and Julius managed to escape to London just before the war broke out and Hans eventually left for Hungary, where, as a blond-haired Jew, he survived the German occupation and the war playing in a jazz band in a cafe. He returned to Germany after the war and then became the first German correspondent in London, on a temporary assignment. He often came to see me. He had this phrase: ‘I don’t know whether I have betrayed the revolution, or the revolution has betrayed me’. Disillusioned and jilted by a singer he was in love with back in Germany, he literally drank himself to death at an early age.
Julius Hollos, after the war, was appointed by the Allies to run Die Welt under their supervision, the first post-war German newspaper to be published. Later he worked for the reactionary Spitzer newspaper group, mainly in Israel, and he became rather reactionary and extremely anti-Soviet.
For a while our small circle in Prague was enlivened by the arrival of Georg, a young student from Vienna, tall, lanky, intelligent, and an enthusiastic revolutionary. Later, when I was already in London, he entrusted to me his sister Rose, who had been sent to England by their parents. They were to perish in the gas chambers. Rose was only seventeen when she arrived in London, shortly before the war, very determined and courageous. She began by getting herself a job with an English family; later she worked part-time for a small firm, surviving on very little, and at the same time studying for her A-level examinations and after that for a degree in economics. Eventually she got some research work, and married a fellow student from a Quaker family, who was sent to Berlin after the war with a relief committee. He eventually became a professor and head of German studies at an English university. Now they are grandparents and active supporters of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Georg did not stay long in Prague. He returned to Vienna at the end of 1936, was arrested and condemned to two years in prison. He was released in 1938 under a general political amnesty, and visited Prague once more, unaware of the signing of the Munich Pact in September that same year. Under this agreement between Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, Mussolini, the Italian fascist dictator, and the prime minister of France, the Sudetenland was annexed by Germany. No one was there to represent Czechoslovakia – of which the Sudetenland was of course part. Back in England, Chamberlain declared triumphantly that this agreement was a victory for ‘peace in our time’. Hitler’s troops marched in to occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia just six months later, in March 1939, and the Second World War started when they marched into Poland the following September. Georg managed to catch the last non-stop plane from Prague to Strasbourg and from there to Paris. He eventually became a writer and political journalist, dividing his time between France and Austria. And he is still a socialist.
By and large, our small group in Prague was stewing in its own juice, with nothing very useful to do politically. We concentrated on discussing important events and political developments, such as the effect of the new policy adopted by the Comintern in the summer of 1935, when the United Front of Social Democrats and Communists gave way to the Popular Front – an attempt to stem the advance of fascism in Europe by an alliance with whatever bourgeois forces could be brought together. This policy was accepted by the Communist parties without a murmur, most seeing it as an extension of the united front policy and a means to gain ‘fellow travellers’ (people sympathetic to Communist policy in general). Trotsky argued that the popular front policy would render the working class powerless, and would drive the middle classes into the arms of fascism.
In the summer of 1936 it was the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War that stirred us, when the extreme right-wing General Franco led a military revolt against the Spanish Popular Front government. The civil war found an immediate response on the left in England and France and other countries, seen particularly in the formation of the International Brigade, which fought heroically side by side with Spanish anarchists, communists and the POUM – Partido Obrero da Unificacion. Marxista. For the Hitler government, which supported Franco, the Spanish Civil War was a rehearsal for the Second World War, whilst the Soviet government, through the Comintern, fought against not only Franco, but also persecuted any non-Stalinist communists and Marxists, such as the POUM and their supporters.
Occasionally we had official meetings with Johre and Fischer, two loyal Trotskyist stalwarts of an older generation with whom we had fierce arguments and factional discussions about very little. I am hard pressed to remember what it was all about. Partly, I think, they resented the presence of younger comrades who had minds of their own and who tried to work out new ways to put across the Trotskyist point of view. They were rather rigid and intolerant. There was also old Gryllewicz. But we saw little of him. We resented the fact that although we were the latest refugees from Germany, we had no contact whatever with either the German-Czech Trotskyist group or the Czech group. We were not sure why – though I had an inkling.
I was put in touch with Jan Frankel, leader of the Trotskyist groups in Czechoslovakia, either through the German-Czech group in Reichenberg or by Georg from Austria. Jan introduced me to one or two members of the German-Czech group in Prague. Our separation from them was supposed to be a security measure, and I was not even allowed to mention my brief contact with them to my own group. Socially they were quite different from the majority of our crowd: middle-class professionals and intellectuals, some with business connections, and all apparently quite well off. They were largely responsible for financially supporting the movement and probably Trotsky himself, together with his entourage. That was more or less the explanation for our exclusion, according to Jan Frankel. There were, I believe, six or seven of them, very devoted to Trotsky himself. I was introduced to a few of them, including a woman to whom I gave Russian lessons. She passed on to me a couple of her rather smart and expensive dresses, one of which I continued to wear in England until I was able to buy my own. She was a very pleasant person, but that was about all the contact I had with her or with the group.
With Jan Frankel my contact was different. He was German-Czech by birth, about my age, with short dark hair, well groomed, well dressed, well read, fond of music, witty and amusing – when not plagued by his stomach ulcer. He spoke several languages, including Turkish, and worked part-time for the Turkish Embassy (or Consulate) in Prague. The irony was that Jan Frankel, alias Vérny (the word means loyal or true in both Czech and Russian) had been Trotsky’s secretary on the island of Prinkipo and had left Turkey in 1933 when Trotsky obtained a visa for France. The Embassy in Prague had no knowledge of his previous activity and he was obviously anxious that they should never find out. So he was highly conspiratorial, hiding behind his very respectable bourgeois appearance (which probably suited him anyway). He was totally devoted to Trotsky and the movement. When Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia he left for the USA, as he was in considerable danger. I heard years later that in the States he dropped out of politics, married a wealthy American and went into business, after which all traces of him were lost.
He and I established a very friendly relationship, more personal than political, though based on our common beliefs. He soon confessed to me that he had just emerged, rather battered, from a lengthy and passionate relationship with a married woman, who had decided that she could not after all leave her husband, her child, and her bourgeois way of life. In the circumstances, he said, he could not offer me more than comradeship. I had no inclination to lay any claim on him, but appreciated his company when we were free to meet.
Perhaps because of that void in his personal life he took an interest in me and was a most stimulating guide in our wanderings through the old part of Prague. We would walk up the long steps to the Hradcin and watch the sun set, or stroll in the dark and mysterious streets below on a moonlit night. We walked through the Zlata Ulicka – it means little golden street – where the medieval alchemists had lived and worked in tiny houses built into the wall of the Hradcin hill, trying to convert base metals into gold. He pointed out the splendid baroque churches and the magnificent renaissance palaces. Occasionally we went to a concert, and I particularly remember Mahler’s long eighth symphony, to which we listened standing in the gallery.
Of course we also discussed politics and at some stage or other he asked me whether I would be willing to join Trotsky and his entourage in Norway, as my knowledge of Russian and Russian shorthand would be useful. I was staggered and flattered by such a tempting suggestion. On the other hand I would be sorry to leave Prague and all my old and new friends. Jan also warned me of the difficulties of working for Trotsky. He apparently showed little consideration for the personal needs and interests of his co-workers, being no doubt totally engrossed in politics and the difficulties of his own personal life. He was even, so I was told, unwilling to share his bathroom with his staff, which I found rather shocking for a communist. Today, alas, I have more sympathy for such an attitude. However, it was a preliminary enquiry and not yet an offer, and I did not have to make up my mind straight away. And then ‘fate’ intervened once more.
Since arriving in Prague I had not maintained any contact with the refugee committee, nor attended Communist Party meetings. True, I still received their weekly subsidy, but to renounce that, which I would have been quite willing to do, would have involved explanations and complications in registering with another committee. But it was inevitable that sooner or later somebody who had known me in Berlin would see me in the street or at Julich’s in the company of Trotskyists. And so it was. I was stopped in the street by someone who had known me years before, in Berlin – who did not know me well enough even to get my name right. He bluntly asked me why I never came to meetings. I said I had very little time. But he must have set the ball rolling, until in the end my world fell apart.
In December 1936 I had to ask the committee for its signature on a form, which I wanted to submit to an organisation for German refugees with teachers’ qualifications. Their signature was needed to testify that I had been recognised as an anti-fascist refugee and was being supported by them. The signature was refused. When I objected, the secretary of the committee told me that they no longer recognised me as a refugee and would no longer pay the subsidy. Asked for reasons, he was evasive: being forced by the Gestapo to do intelligence work was no reason to emigrate; I could have refused this kind of work. He referred me to somebody else. Now I was told that I was supporting ‘somebody or something that had to do with the class enemy'; that I had supplied the Gestapo with information to enable them to draw up a plan for a raid on the Trade Delegation, which made me an agent of the Gestapo; and two other weird accusations: that I had contacts with ‘some East Asians’ and something to do with my ‘private affairs’. (I am writing the whole sordid story not from memory but from copies of letters and statements, and the originals of the relevant newspapers, with the names of the people involved, still in my possession.)
I demanded that the secretary either withdraw these accusations and insinuations, or immediately set up an enquiry and produce irrefutable evidence. His reply was that although they could not at that moment give chapter and verse, names and facts, they would be able to produce evidence and photographs. When I insisted that I rejected their accusations and would take appropriate steps, I was openly threatened; ‘You do that and we will do the same. But don’t say afterwards that we have denounced you’.
And a final threat: ‘We shall also testify to your activities here’.
I needed protection and clarification. So I wrote a lengthy letter in mid-December to the head of the Democratic Committee, which looked after all non-Communist refugees, giving him all the details about who I was, where I had come from, where I had worked since before Hitler came to power and afterwards, the Gestapo threats, my emigration and registration with the Communist refugee committee and their accusations, for which they had struck me off their register. I asked for protection and explained I was turning to the Democratic Committee because I had left Germany not because of illegal work for a party, but solely because of my anti-fascist convictions and because I would not have spied for the Gestapo anywhere.
Before the Democratic Committee had time to investigate my case, an article appeared in the national newspaper Lidové Noviny, which in Czechoslovakia was comparable to The Times in London, under the heading Fierce Fight Between Stalinists and Trotskyists – Suspicious Connections of Trotskyists and Nazis. Part of the column was devoted to me, although only my initials were used. This was 16 January 1937. Two days later, on 18 January, the German language Prager Montagsblatt (The Prague Monday Paper) took up the story, remarking that the initials M.W. were easily recognisable to those who knew me, and that so far none of the accused had been arrested. The article expressed surprise that a newspaper claimed to know more than the police. Referring to the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial in Moscow in August 1936, the reporter remarked on the speed, in the struggle of the Stalinists against the Trotskyists, with which a friend of yesterday can become a Nazi-informer today.
On 19 January the Communist paper Rote Fahne replied, denouncing the Prager Montagsblatt and threatening that the support of ‘bourgeois and certain social-democratic Soviet enemies will not stop the unmasking of the Trotskyists before the Courts of the Soviet Union’.
I was told of the article in Lidové Noviny by Julius Hollos. I was horrified. He advised me to get in touch immediately with the chief editor of the paper, Dr Hubert Ripka. I explained the matter to him briefly over the telephone and asked for an interview. After I had put my case he was quite taken aback. If my story was true, he had been made an easy prey of unscrupulous people, which could affect his reputation, apart from the harm done to an innocent victim. He immediately suggested a commission of enquiry, with the participation of a representative of the Com.munist Party committee. They refused to take part. In the meantime, on 26 January, he published a withdrawal of the accusations against me, now giving my full name, and against August Henning, a Trotskyist who had also been mentioned but whom I did not know. On the 27 January Rote Fahne, in its second edition, also published my denial of their accusations. To this they added a statement that they were publishing my declaration in order not to deprive me of the chance to clear myself of the ‘dreadful suspicion ... But we still have to await the outcome of further investigations before we can truly accept her refutation’.
After further submissions and explanations about my interviews with the Gestapo official, the Democratic Committee finally informed me, on 2 February 1937, that after lengthy discussions with the secretary of the Communist committee and four interviews with me, they were prepared to recognise me as a bona fide anti-fascist refugee, though they were not in a position to grant me a subsidy.
On 20 February Lidové Noviny returned to the subject in a long column, no doubt written by Dr Ripka himself, which once more gave details of my ‘contacts’ with the Gestapo, my declarations to the investigating commission, and the false accusations on the part of the German Communist Party. He finished his article with a general observation about the Communists and Trotskyists, saying that the dispute between the Prague German refugees was only a small-scale reflection of the tragic conflict of these two tendencies on a world scale.
A few days later, on 24 February, the lawyer appointed by the commission of enquiry requested Rote Fahne to withdraw their accusations against me or it would go to court. Rote Fahne finally, and rather grudgingly, published a statement on 21 March, referring to the withdrawal of the accusations by the Lidové Noviny and adding that their own statement that I was sent to Prague by the Gestapo was based on a ‘misunderstanding' and that they ‘therefore withdraw the offensive assertions of the article as far as Margarete Watsova was concerned’.
But the damage was done. There is no doubt, I am sure, that the accusations were repeated by other German Communist publications over which I had no control. And these were no doubt read by German refugees from Nazism who were then languishing in Moscow or the concentration camps. As far as I was concerned the matter seemed to be over. But I was mistaken. In fact the Communist press continued to accuse me of associating with the Gestapo. In 1977 Pierre Broué, editor of Léon Trotsky:
Oeuvres, the French collection of Leon Trotsky’s writings, sent me a hand-written copy of a report in a Czechoslovak police file, which had been based on a further article in Rude Pravo (Red Flag), dated 13 November 1937. Titled Portrait of a Trotskyist, it described me as the ‘daughter of a Russian Whitegardist ... who towards the end of 1935 had approached the Gestapo and had supplied them with information, but was at the beginning of 1936 dismissed by the Trade Delegation, and who was therefore ordered to go to the Czechoslovakia, where she was supposed to take up contact with the Czech group, which had been interrupted because of the “revelations” of Gryllewicz’. Had I known about this article at the time, I would have protested. But 40 years later ... there seemed no point any more.
What was irresponsible on Broué’s part was that in an unexpected footnote about me in volume eleven of the Oeuvres he used this incorrect information. He should have known better. He had come to interview my husband, Hugo Dewar, in April 1980. Hugo was ill in hospital at the time and after the interview Pierre Broué and I talked at home over a cup of tea about his researches for the Oeuvres and related matters and people. He asked me how I got to England, without a hint of this being an interview, and without taking any notes. It took me many letters of protest, extending over two or three years, until an erratum finally appeared somewhere at the back of volume fifteen.
The reaction of some people around me to the whole affair drove me near to despair. Of course, my personal friends from among our German Trotskyist circle stuck by me and were indignant at the action of the German Communist Party members. Elfriede and Julius Hollos, though they no longer belonged to any Trotskyist group, stood by me too and advised me throughout. But many of the people on the fringes, left-wing intellectuals, ex-Communist Party members who had dropped out of politics, and with whom I had become acquainted at Julich’s, would no longer greet me, or sit with me at a table in the café. It was unpleasant for me and undignified for them. It was amazing how rigid people could be in their attitudes, yet how easily they could be swayed at the same time. Sometimes I did not know whether to laugh or to weep.
The worst thing of all, to my mind, was Jan Frankel’s attitude. As soon as he got to know about it, he broke off all contact with me. He explained that he could not, for security reasons, expose either himself or the Old Man (as Trotsky was affectionately called) to any contact with somebody who had herself been in contact with the Gestapo, whatever the circumstances. It was not that he did not believe me, or had the slightest suspicion about me. (I must have told him the reason for my having had to leave Germany long before this.) But the very fact that I had had some ‘dealings’ with the Gestapo, and that the German Communist Party had denounced me as a spy, these were sufficient grounds for no longer considering me as a suitable secretary for Trotsky, and for breaking off all relations with me.
This was the greatest blow of all. Not because of losing the chance of working for Trotsky – I had not yet made up my mind whether I wanted to have that unique chance, though I probably could not have refused it – but I had considered Jan Frankel to be not only my comrade, but also my personal friend. I could not understand at the time how this could affect Trotsky, who was anyway hundreds of miles away, or how Jan Frankel could act in such a cold way, guided by nothing but political expediency. I do not remember whether he expressed any indignation at the local Communists’ behaviour, or any regret at having to break off contact with me, though I can see the reasons now and am surprised by my own violent reaction at the time.
I felt shattered. It seemed that everything around me was breaking up and I was going to pieces. It was worse than the weeks before leaving Germany, when I could at least make decisions for myself and recognised the necessity for my actions. But the strain of the Nazi years, the emigration, the uncertainties of life as a refugee, the tension gradually building up in Czechoslovakia, all took their toll. I don’t know how long that state lasted, but I remember days, and especially evenings, when I would pace up and down in my room, void of any clear thought or desire.
Neither I, nor apparently Jan Frankel, nor any of my old comrades, connected the attack against me with the Moscow trials, the second of which had started in January 1937, at exactly the same time as the Communist denunciation of me and the two others. None of us considered me to be an important enough person to be used as a pawn in Stalin’s pursuit of Trotsky and his old comrades, whether of the Left Opposition or not.
I was also worried about my brother. I kept wondering how all this might affect him, whether he still had contact with German anti-fascist refugees, whether he read the German Communist publications. I had no idea how he would interpret the denunciation. I could not write and explain. I could only hope that if he read the later accusations and statements about our father having been a ‘Whiteguardist’, he would realise and not believe the rest of the story either. I would not have liked him to doubt my real political beliefs.
Worst of all was the possibility that since becoming a Soviet citizen he may have been arrested and sent to a concentration camp, without ever knowing anything about the denunciations against me. There had been one ominous incident. We did not often correspond, but some time during that winter of 1936–37 I sent him, upon his request, some ink, talcum powder and other small items. All harmless things, unobtainable in the shops; but my small parcel was returned by the customs officials, marked that these objects were not admitted into the USSR. The parcel was returned to the cover address I had given my brother – the address that turned out to be that of German-Czech Communists, which had been given to me as ‘safe’. Whether or not this had something to do with the return of the parcel I do not know.
After the denunciation articles I wrote once more to my brother, trying to make it clear to him that there are times when it is better not to know each other – by which I meant that he should deny me completely if questioned about me. That was my last ever contact with my brother. I received no reply to that letter, and he never knew that I left Prague for London a few months later. He could not write to Olya in Germany. So we lost contact with him. After the war we sometimes wondered whether to try to trace him, but hesitated after all those years, hardly able to help him in any way. When we did try through the British Red Cross, as advised by the Soviet Embassy in London, the answer came back a year later that there were no traces of him, and no files about him could be found at that late stage. I doubted this, but there was nothing we could do. All that is left of him are a few snapshots, and a tiny teddy-bear, which somebody gave him when he was three years old and I have kept as a kind of mascot. Most of its fur has worn away, but its eyes are still bright.
So I had good reason to be distressed. But everything passes, and this acute state of despair also passed. I picked up the threads of my life and carried on as before. And there were still some enjoyable moments.
Dr Hubert Ripka, for example, kept in touch once the whole affair had been cleared up. Perhaps he felt guilty for having landed me in that mess. Or perhaps, being a journalist, he genuinely enjoyed our lively political and philosophical discussions at his office. I think I expounded Marxism to him in a rather idealistic way and firmly believed that though there were inadequate, unintelligent and downright objectionable people in the world, mankind as such had positive features and abilities and was bound to find the right way to a genuinely socialist society. He was sceptical about ‘mankind’, but had great respect and admiration for outstanding individuals. He thought I should read Francis Bacon and David Hume to broaden my ideas.
Hubert Ripka had started his career as a lecturer on the History of International Politics and a journalist, and eventually became foreign editor of the Lidové Noviny. He was apparently a member of the Czech National Socialist Party, a liberal rather than a nationalist party. After Hitler marched into Prague in 1938 he fled first to Paris and then to London, where he was appointed State Secretary for Foreign Affairs by the Czech government in exile. He returned to Prague in 1945 but left again after the Communist coup in February 1948, again first for Paris and then for London. He played an important political role in exile and died in 1958.
He introduced me to his French wife, a lecturer at the French Institute in Prague and later in London, and his two charming little boys. And once he invited me, together with a friend of his, a Professor of Political Economy at the University in Prague, to a sumptuous dinner at a very smart restaurant overlooking the river Vltava at Baranov, a well-known villa resort on the outskirts of Prague. For me it was a real treat: the dinner no less than the illustrious company and the conversation. The journey to Baranov led through a very beautiful built-up area, with large, well-kept private gardens and villas built in the most modem and attractive styles – the abode of the rich Czech upper classes. Their architects seemed to me very avant-garde, without indulging in architectural excesses.
One really enjoyable event in the summer of 1937 was a visit from Olya and Nora, who was now two and a half. My landlady was kind enough to put a second bed in my room and I managed to borrow a cot. The cooking on a small primus cooker was less convenient, but we managed that too. We often went to the nearby park where there was a special playground for small children. Nora was puzzled. She kept wanting to play with the other children, but always came back to us, evidently wondering why they could not understand each other. She was also used to walking around naked at their little summer house with its large garden, which Olya and Arnold had acquired outside Berlin. So every now and then she would take all her clothes off, and then pull on her playsuit again, seeing the other children wearing them.
These strange surroundings must have bothered her, un-known to us, or at any rate to me. One day she lost her temper and threw my alarm clock on the floor. I could ill afford a new one, or even a repair, so without checking whether the clock was broken, I lost my temper too: I grabbed Nora and dumped her in her cot, where she cried loudly for an hour while I furiously insisted that she would have to stay there until she stopped wailing. Olya never interfered or said a word about my educational methods, though she must have felt strongly for the child. How much Nora must have missed her familiar surroundings was clear from what Olya wrote to me of her reaction when they returned home: ‘There is Nora’s little bed,’ she called out happily when she entered her room. That was quite a lesson for me.
But on the whole it was a happy meeting, and Nora was usually very good. We didn’t meet again until after the war, when I visited them in the summer of 1947. Arnold was then still a prisoner of war in Russia, having been captured on the last but one day of the war, and Olya and the children were nearly starving, like so many people in Germany at that time.
In Prague in the summer of 1937 I somehow felt the noose was tightening again. The growth of Nazism in Austria, the increasing possibility of war – we knew we would be trapped in Czechoslovakia, and more and more thought of the possibilities of seeking refuge somewhere else. Edith, the wife of Gerhard Schild, one of our group in Prague, had a domestic job in England, at Stanmore near London, and she put me in touch with a family that was in need of help and willing to take a refugee from Germany – as many families were. That was the only way for refugees from Nazi Germany to be accepted in England, unless you could prove you had sufficient means to support yourself. I agreed to go and work for them for thirteen shillings a week, with one afternoon a week and every other Sunday off. I was to start on 1 October.
The family, whose name I do not remember, except that their little boy was called Derek, turned out to be rather suburban middle-class – the husband was the local bank manager in Stanmore. But they were quite pleasant. I did not have to overwork: I learned English vocabulary while hoovering, and was free in the evening. But I felt isolated there in that London suburb, which was dead at night. And, my goodness, didn’t I freeze in that small unheated bedroom of mine in winter! It had no plug for an electric fire, and a hot-water bottle (a new idea to me) did not help. The cold seemed to rise from the bed and creep all over me at night.
I had received the visa for England in good time and decided to stop over in Paris, secretly hoping to find a foothold there. I spent my last days in Prague saying goodbye to comrades, friends and acquaintances, and felt sorry to leave, in spite of everything. I was particularly reluctant to go to that unknown country across the Channel, hidden behind its fog, so far off the mainstream of events and revolutionary political life, with its morose and conventional inhabitants. But I remember being in Julich’s with Willy Schramm, a German refugee and a journalist with leftish views, who tried to cheer me up and thought it was a good thing to get away for a time from doing nothing much, and to absorb new ideas and views. It was good advice.
So at the end of August 1937 I took the night train from Prague through Austria and into a new life once more. This time I was laden with two suitcases instead of a rucksack, though one contained little more than my typewriter and my pillow. I was not leaving much behind, but had no idea what to expect ahead. Yet I was considered lucky by many to be able to get out at all.
It was a long and tiring night on those hard benches in the third-class carriage, with the feeling of uncertainty about the outcome of this new adventure. I would have liked to visit Vienna on my way, but could not afford it. So I took the shorter route via Salzburg. I had to change trains there and had two or three hours’ spare time. I went sightseeing, up to the castle on the hill overlooking the town, past the concert hall where all the famous Salzburg festivals are held and Wagner operas performed. I found the whole town rather unnatural, a pretty picture postcard, with all those pretty little houses in the old style. Most preposterous of all were the women: in the streets and the cafes, bank clerks and shop assistants, young and old, slim or fat, all dressed in those pretty Dirndl dresses with gathered, flower-patterned skirts, white blouses with short, puffed sleeves, ridiculous little aprons and some sort of cummerbund. I found it all very folksy and silly. Perhaps it was because I was sleepy, disgruntled and apprehensive. At the station I had struggled with my two cases and refused the help of a porter because, as I explained to him, I had no Austrian money to pay him; he insisted on carrying the case, but was really angry when I offered him my remaining Czech coins. As if I hadn’t warned him!
From Salzburg the train went southwards, skirting the German frontier, then westwards towards Switzerland. That part of the journey was fascinating. I could not take my eyes off those craggy rocks and snow-clad summits as we passed the alps of the Tirol. The train was crowded and next to me sat a very healthy, young German-speaking man, who seemed to have done quite a bit of mountaineering. Where he was going I did not know, perhaps on holidays, perhaps he lived in Austria, but he kept pestering me to break the journey so that he could show me the mountains at close quarters for a few days. Why was I in such a hurry to get to Paris, he wanted to know. I became quite scared, wondering whether he might be a Gestapo agent who suspected I might not be the holidaymaker I pretended to be. But then he got off and I could relax and continue the journey unmolested.
I have no recollection of my arrival in Paris, whether Jan Bur met me at the station or how I spent the first few days. While I was still in Prague, Jan Bur and I had of course corresponded and I already knew that he was now helping Hilde to run her farm just outside Paris and had also assumed the role of husband and stepfather to her two young children. He felt very bad about it but asked me to understand: having arrived in Paris in 1935 with practically no knowledge of the language, he felt very lonely, with no personal contacts, only political ones. The tiny flat where I stayed with him in 1935 had had to be vacated, so there was the question of where to live. And my escape from Germany had also meant a financial setback for him, as I could no longer send him any money. Hilde, on the other hand, found it difficult to run the farm on her own. So she befriended Walter. She was probably a little older than him and though there was probably no particular love between them, there had in fact not been much more than attachment and friendship between him and me either. So although I had been disappointed by his revelation – mainly because it seemed to make the possibility of establishing myself in France more difficult – I had not been shattered by this development and in Paris we met again like good old friends.
I quickly found out how difficult the refugees’ position was in France. If you were lucky enough to find a room or a small flat somewhere, you were constantly watched (like the Parisians themselves) by the concièrge, and there was no question of anybody offering you a bed for a few nights. In Prague you could always have counted on being put up by somebody for a while. In Paris everybody was much too scared. It was equally difficult to find work: there were just no casual or occasional jobs available, either for men or women. If you were lucky enough to find one, it often involved bribing the authorities to get a work permit, or bribing the police to have your visa extended.
I had too little money to go to a decent hotel but eventually found a room in a cheap working-class hotel, near the Porte des Lilas, the sort which poor people make their permanent home. My room was on the ground floor. It was long enough for a bed and washstand, and wide enough for a table and a chair by the side of the bed, and the table was big enough to write a letter on or to have a meal of bread and cheese or a ready-made salad from a charcuterie. There was a small window at the end, opposite the door and high up near the ceiling, like in a prison cell. In daytime it gave just enough light to read a few pages. In the evening the bulb fixed to the ceiling was not sufficient even for that. Access to the room was either through the noisy, smoke-filled bar or through a side door on to a passage full of the stench from the toilets. But I was not unhappy there. I took the whole thing with good humour and, after all, the room was very cheap. I spent most of the days and evenings with friends, either in their rooms or their favourite cafe on the Boulevard St Michel, arguing and talking about the conference of the German Trostskyist organisation, the IKD, which was being held in Paris that August. I also walked around on my own, visited museums and galleries, and enjoyed Paris to the full, in spite of everything.
The atmosphere and morale among the refugees was in general not very good; not half as good as in Prague. Life was much harder in Paris and the factional struggles much sharper. I had come to Paris as a member of the Prague group, originally the old Berlin group that Jan Bur had organised. On the other hand, I was also somehow an outsider: newly arrived and just about to leave again. So I was not quite drawn into the discussions that were going on.
I also spent a few days outside Paris on Hilde’s farm. It was a simple but pleasant house, in pleasing surroundings. Jan Bur had very enterprisingly gone in for sheep breeding and, much to the surprise and indignation of the local farmers, let his imported sheep stay out in the open all night long – quite unheard of! Hilde’s two children went to the local school and spoke fluent German and French. About twice a week Jan Bur used to drive into Paris to meet the comrades, have discussions and organise the publication of the Bulletin.
When the German army invaded France, Jan Bur escaped to the south but was interned in a camp in Montpelier, then caught and imprisoned by the Germans. After Germany’s surrender he made his way back to his home town of Krefeld, near Cologne, and began to organise help for former victims of the Nazi regime. He joined the Social Democrats, got married and eventually became a town councillor and honoured citizen of the town. He died some time in the 1970s. Hilde came to England after the war, where she started an agency for holiday exchanges between European children.
Whilst in Paris I also spent a few days with my old Russian friends the Pruzhans, in Tresnaux, where it was very peaceful. The garden was full of flowers and the orchard full of fruit. Insects hummed in the air. When it was time for me to return to Paris, Margarita Dmitriyevna walked down the footpath with me. She stopped half way. I kept turning round and waving to her, and can still see her in that sunny field with her big apron and kerchief on her head, waving back. When I next saw them, in 1947, they had not quite recovered from the terrible experience of the war, their failed escape to the south and life under German occupation.
I also visited her daughter Lyolya, a painter and writer, in her luxury flat in Paris. Her husband, also a Russian, was some sort of industrial consultant and they both travelled extensively. She greatly cheered me up by telling me how much she liked London and the English, who, contrary to general belief on the Continent, she found very pleasant and not at all morose and formal.
The day of my departure drew closer. One of the last things I did was attend the conference of the German group, or, more correctly I believe, of Jan Bur’s faction. There I met Georg Jungclas, a comrade from Hamburg who had remained active under Hitler, but who eventually had to escape to Denmark. Later, after the Nazis marched into Denmark in 1939, the Gestapo caught up with him, he was sent back to Germany, imprisoned and sentenced to death. He escaped execution when the Allies, in the nick of time, invaded Germany in May 1945. When I met Georg, in 1937, he was a very round-looking person with a round face, a round body, and a cheerful disposition. After one of our meetings he asked me whether I would like to accompany him to the offices of the French Trotskyist paper Lutte Ouvrière. I had nothing to do, so I went along with him. And there was Hugo.
He was sitting astride a wooden bench by a large trestle table stacked with papers, the walls of the room decorated with posters, his head raised towards a French comrade standing in front of him, as the two discussed something very heatedly – or should I say as Hugo held forth with a persuasive voice, first in French and then, when matters got too complicated, in English. It struck me that here was a real, ardent agitator.
Somebody introduced us and told him that I was a comrade and a refugee from Germany on my way to London. He introduced me to his friend Michael Colman, a young student, and they gave me their names and addresses in London. That greatly surprised me. Since 1933 nobody in the movement in Germany had lightly given their name and address to anybody.
Hugo was due to leave for London in a day or two, but Michael was leaving a few days later and we arranged to travel together. At the last moment, however, there was a hitch. My money had dwindled to practically nothing. After paying for my room and some odds and ends, and putting something by for the journey across the Channel, I had only a few francs left. These I loaned to Jan Bur, who found he had to make some unexpected payments in Paris. We arranged to meet at midday on the day of my departure, at the usual café, after I had given up my room and deposited my luggage at the station. But at midday there was no Jan Bur, nor at 12.30, nor at 1 p.m. Lunch time came and went. I did not know what to do. I could not leave for fear of missing him, and I could not order endless coffees, let alone a meal. Nor could I leave without those few francs, the only ‘capital’ I had – worth about £2. Then a Frenchman joined me. He must have been watching me for some time, wondering what I was doing. My tale about waiting for a friend seemed to sound a bit improbable, so in the end I left.
I walked around until 6 pm and then went back to the cafe, hoping to run into one of the comrades. One or two turned up early and so – at last – did Jan Bur. He was very apologetic, but by no means distressed! On the way to town he had run over a chicken in a small village, and the farmer and neighbours were up in arms. Even the local policeman was called to the scene. That was why he had not turned up on time.
But now I had missed my train. Where was I to spend the night? I could not go back to my old hotel. Nor could I afford a room in another. None, but none, of the comrades could put me up. And nobody had sufficient money to offer me something for a hotel, even if it had occurred to them. Then, as we were passing yet another café, Willy Joseph, a former member of the German Communist Party who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, spotted two old friends, Claire and Pavel Thalmann. We did not know each other, but when Willy explained the situation they offered to put me up. They were a remarkable couple. They had been founder members of the German-Swiss Communist Party in their youth, after which Pavel spent three years as a student in Moscow (probably at the Lenin Institute), in 1936 they both went to Spain as journalists, got caught up in the Civil War and fought with the POUM and the Anarchists, who greatly influenced them.
They were eventually arrested by the GPU, which operated in Spain during the civil war, and spent a year in jail in Valencia, partly in solitary confinement. They were eventually released by the Spanish Republican authorities and had arrived, penniless, in Paris shortly before I met them. Somebody had given them temporary use of a small flat and that is where I stayed for my last night in France, on a mattress on the floor.
Being Swiss, Claire and Pavel survived the war in Paris, though not without danger since they were active in helping and hiding people, mainly Jews, and guarding their belongings. When Hugo and I visited them after the war, they were running a small news agency and kept open house for whoever turned up. We visited them every time we were in Paris. Later they moved to the south and grew carnations on a small property in the hills above Nice, which Claire then sold in the local market. For the rest of their days they lived a rather bohemian life, and welcomed numerous young left-wing people from Switzerland, Germany and France. Together they wrote a book about their experiences. Pavel died in 1980 and Claire in 1987. Her obituary notice must have been her own. It was in four languages and read: ‘I am going to make the revolution in heaven.’ It was typical of her.
The next day I boarded the train for Dieppe and took the night boat to Newhaven – a new haven indeed. I had never been on a sea journey before, except as a small child on that ship in the north of Russia, so even this short journey was an event for me. Having stowed my luggage, I went on deck to watch the harbour lights and buildings gradually vanish into the darkness of night. But the sky was clear, the moon was out, and the sea was very calm. I stood at the railings for a long time and watched the sea and the sky, listening to the soft splashing of the water against the keel, reflecting on everything that lay behind me, and wondering about the new life before me.
A great calm came over me and I suddenly had a feeling of great confidence in the unknown future, in the new life to come, in a new land. This confidence has proved to have been fully justified.
Margaret Dewar Archive | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 18 February 2023