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Inge Little Interview with AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive

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Interviewee Summary

Ingeborg Steinweg (Inge Little) was born in Holzwickede, Westphalia in 1924. She had an older brother. Her parents were from Holzwickede and Harswinkel, Germany and both came from liberal Jewish families. She did not know any of her grandparents. The family kept the high holy days and Inge attended the Liberal Synagogue in Dortmund where the family moved when she was 4. Her father was a painter/decorator and an artist and together with her mother, they were caretakers of the Jewish Community Home in Dortmund. The family lived in a flat above the community centre. Her mother catered a lot for functions in the centre and Inge attended youth groups there. The centre housed offices of organizations, two halls, youth groups, a synagogue and meeting rooms. It was initially housed in Markische Strasse and then moved to Saarbrucker Strasse. Inge belonged to the Reichsbund Judische Frontsoldaten Sports Group and won certificates and medals in athletics and gymnastics. She attended a Jewish school. On Kristallnacht the home was attacked and ransacked but their flat was saved to some extend by a Brown shirt, who placed a table in front of their front door. Her father had already died in 1936. After Kristallnacht the family arranged for her brother to go on a Kindertransport. The lists were drawn up by Miss Kleimenhagen in the Jewish Community Centre. Her brother, Ron, came to the Jacobs family in Great Yarmouth and they arranged for his sister and mother to come over in May 1939. The family were very good to them and Inge helped them at home and in the fish business. With the outbreak of war they had to leave the coast and settled in London. Inge went to work for a laundry for a year; her mother became a cook in a school. Inge was accepted to train as a midwife but her mother became ill and she was needed at home. She went to work in an office for a haulage company. They experienced many bombing raids in London but took them as a matter of course. She mixed solely with work colleagues and not with other Jews or refugees. She started a dramatic society at work and was involved with amateur dramatics for many years. She helped her mother and brother run a restaurant in Acton from 1949 for three years. She met her husband at the restaurant. He was an English engineer, Ken Little and they married in a register office in 1952. She did not work after marriage. They lived in Southall, London and had 2 girls.

Testimonies

4 November 2003

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INTERVIEWEE:

Inge L.

Born:

1924

Place of birth:

Holzwickede

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Place of Birth

Holzwickede

Place of Interview

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Recorded Talks

Place of Birth

Holzwickede

"The whole reason that we have this interview is to let future generations know what kind of life of we had so they should have a better life, not have to suffer through all the traumas we had to suffer. As time goes on the memory of those days and the importance of it will dim, and this programme will help keep it in people's minds and hopefully let future generations have a better life. It should be a better world."

- Arnold Weinberg, AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive.

"The distribution of life chances in this world is often a very random bus"

- Peter Pultzer.

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