The child refugee who fled the Nazis and then thrived in Scotland
BRITAIN is full of unsung heroes and heroines who deserve recognition. Here, in our weekly obituary column, the moving and inspirational stories of ordinary people who have lived extraordinary lives, and who died recently, are told by their loved ones . . .
When the jackbooted soldiers of the SS came in the night for her family, edith Forrester was just seven years old. They hauled her dying grandmother out of bed and took her father.
She would never forget the image of her cancer-stricken ‘Omi’ (the German name for Granny) praying in her nightdress while the brutes rampaged through the house.
edith’s father, a Christian married to a Jew, was returned a few days later but within a few short weeks, her adored Omi died.
Little edith was then to embark upon a long, lonely journey that would save her life but mean she would never see her mother again.
She was to become one of the lucky ones given passage to safety on the Kindertransport, the humanitarian rescue effort which brought thousands of Jewish children to Britain in the months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.
The rounding up of Jews had begun after Kristallnacht, the ‘night of Broken Glass’, in november 1938, when nazi violence destroyed Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues and schools and resulted in around 100 deaths.
Young edith – born edith Twelkemeyer in nordhausen am harz – could recall hearing the sound of breaking glass while out with her family’s maid.
Soon after her the death of her grandmother, edith was taken shopping for new clothes. As the name tags were sewn on, she excitedly believed she was going on a special family holiday. She was bewildered when friends arrived with gifts and tears in their eyes. even her male teacher wept when he heard what was to happen to his little pupil.
edith was accompanied by her mother to hanover but there, to her horror, she was put on a train alone while her beloved parent remained on the platform.
The frightened seven-year-old screamed out for her ‘Mutti’ (mother), who failed to catch her eye when she spotted her wildly scanning the carriages.
They would never see one another again.
Along with scores of other terrified children, young edith then sailed from holland to London. Recalling her story in a relative’s book, Darling Mutti, she recalled: ‘I was an only and much-loved child and suddenly, like a fledgling, I had been cast out of a warm nest.’
She knew no one but, after being photographed at her final destination, edinburgh, her picture was seen by a Christian couple who had lost their baby.
Bank manager Gavin Forrester and his wife nancy wanted to take in a Jewish child and applied to foster edith who, after a brief stay at a Selkirk
orphanage, went home with them to Kirkcaldy, Fife.
She settled in at the local primary school and at 12 passed the high school entrance exam, specialising there in French, German, English and Latin.
At around 14, she came across some family papers and discovered the appalling truth about Nazi concentration camps, particularly Auschwitz and the Theresienstadt ghetto, where her mother, her second cousin’s parents and his grandmother had all died.
‘I heard someone screaming and only realised that it was my own voice when mum came running in to to see what was wrong,’ she would later recall.
Edith had read about the labour camps and had seen newsreel images which had given her nightmares.
Now she was in shock, incapable of laughter or a smile for a considerable time.
She vowed never to return to Germany or to have anything to do with anything or anyone from Germany – a decision that would later cause more personal heartbreak. After leaving school, she worked as a civil servant for a couple of years before reversing an earlier decision not to attend university.
Although she planned to train as a social worker, she was advised to try teacher training college and, despite initial misgivings, discovered her vocation in the classroom.
She taught French and German at Viewforth High School, Kirkcaldy, where she was admired for her ability to see the potential in her pupils and bring out the best in them.
She became known, affectionately, as Batwoman, thanks to her billowing black teacher’s gown.
During her career at the school, from 1957 to 1989, she advanced from class teacher to principal teacher, adviser to female students and then assistant rector, a post she held for two decades.
Over the years she also returned to Germany, once to visit her father, and at other times with student trips.
She was 19 or 20 when she was reunited with her birth father and, although she recognised him after more than a dozen years apart, she felt nothing for him.
During these visits she also experienced deep feelings of hatred at the thought that German people of a certain age may have been involved in wartime atrocities.
Despite this, she fell in love with a young German but the memories of what happened to her family destroyed any future they might have had.
She pushed him away and broke off the relationship, never having told him about her Jewish heritage.
She learned that her mother had forced her father to divorce her, in the hope that he would be safer without her, and Edith herself suppressed her own German/Jewish background for many years.
It was only after the deaths of her foster parents, when she visited Israel and the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Memorial Centre that, after praying for guidance, she found real peace and felt rid of her bitterness and hatred.
‘Here, part of me died when I saw the eternal flame burning for the six million victims of the Holocaust, and the horrific photographs [in the museum],’ she told Joan Marshall, who compiled Darling Mutti, the stories of three cousins.
‘It became very clear to me that I could have been one of the million Jewish children who perished in the camps.
BUT for the grace of God and the Kindertransport I might never have survived.’ Edith, who had a profound spiritual experience on the banks of the river Jordan, was later baptised in the Baptist Church and served as a deacon for many years.
In retirement she shared her life’s experiences with schoolchildren, among others, and took part in the Gathering The Voices project, chronicling the stories of those who sought safety in Scotland from Nazi persecution.
Although she would have loved her own children, she never married, having vowed only to marry a Jew and declared she was ‘Jewish by race and very proud of it, German by birth and British by choice’.
Edith ForrEstEr, born March 31, 1931, died April 5, 2018, aged 87.