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Date of Interview:

24/06/88

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Place of Birth:

Hamburg

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Collection:

Jewish Museum London oral history collection

Date of Interview:

24/06/88

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Interview Summary

Interview with Bertha Sterly (3 cassette tapes), born 1904 in Hamburg and emigrated on 4 October 1938 to the UK as a refugee from Nazism. Her maternal grandmother was born in Whitechapel High Street but went to Germany, where she met her husband. She describes growing up in Hamburg with her parents (father one of the founders of the Springer Press) and family; her education at a non-Jewish school followed by training in domestic science and social work, and studies at Hamburg University to qualify as teacher of textile subjects in trade schools; political and financial effects of the Weimar government, Treaty of Versailles and 1920s inflation on the family; her memories of Nazism – encounters with Nazi supporters at university, the trade boycott of Jews in 1933, the ban against employment of Jews in state institutions and her subsequent work in a Jewish school, as well as a 3-week imprisonment; her emigration by boat in 1938 Harwich to Lenham in Kent to work as domestic science teacher in Bunce School and the escape of her parents to London the following year; memories of the war and VE day; her application in 1942 to work as a domestic science teacher in Manchester refused on political grounds (and written up in the Manchester Guardian), and her decision to go into the dressmaking trade in London, first as an employee and then working from home while also teaching at the Hampstead Institute, where she stayed for 21 years; her marriage in 1949 to a former non-Jewish Social Democrat colleague from Germany who had emigrated in 1948 but was unable to get a UK work permit; their involvement with the 43 Club, of which she is still secretary; her feelings about Germany which she has visited since but has no wish to live either there or in Israel, where her sister lives.
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