Herta Groves

Nazi refugee from Austria who rose to become a hatmaker to the Queen

HE HAD escaped Hitler at 19, arriving in the UK with just 17 shillings in her pocket. But by the time she died, killed by a lorry outside her beloved Wigmore Hall, Herta Groves had created Georgette, a successful millinery business whose elegant hats had been worn by the Queen.

That enterprising spirit was evident back in Vienna when, as the Nazi takeover made life increasingly hard for the city’s Jews, the teenage Herta had coached Jewish women in her parents’ flat on how to get work visas abroad.

Before the Nazis arrived, life for the family had been busy but comfortable. Hats played a central part: Groves’s maternal grandfather had been a hatter and her mother, Amelia Lobisch, managed her family’s millinery business.YoungHertastartedworkingas a milliner after leaving school at 14. Her father,WilhelmHerman,however,wasa dentist who had fought in the Austrian army during the First World War.

Owing to his war veteran status – which had left him with impaired lungs – Wilhelm was allowed to continue practising, once the Nazis came to power, but only as “a dentist to the Jews”. He would die of pneumonia in 1942 after being forced at gunpoint to shovel snow.

As for Groves. since arriving in the UK she had tried desperately to rescue the family she left behind. With the help of her first British employer she found a family happy to take in her younger sister Alice, only to be thwarted by the Home Office closing the door on more refugees.

Afterherfather’sdeathsheattempted to arrange a proxy marriage for her mother to a friend in Portugal, but that also failed when the Nazis refused to provide Amelia with Wilhelm’s death certificate. Alice and Amelia were both deported to a concentration camp in Latvia, where they died.

Another huge shock awaited Groves. While working as a sales assistant in Bath she was arrested after being reclassified as a refugee and sent to Holloway Prison. There she was put to work sewing uniforms, but once freed she started her own hat-making business, drawing on the expertise she had learnt back in Vienna.

In 1943 she married fellow Austrian Otto Reichl, but the marriage only lasted three years. She met her second husband, Adam Groves nine years later. They had no children. By then she had already established her highfashion label, Georgette, in Luton, then the country’s millinery capital.

Groves travelled extensively in Europe, particularly Paris. She also overcame her initial reluctance to do business with Germany and eventually opened an office there, exporting her elegant designs to other northern European countries.

On the surface her life was happy and successful, punctuated by regular trips to the opera and travel, her two great passions, according to friend Sandra Molina. For over 50 years, however, Groves kept the door to the past firmly shut. She finally broke her silence on the Holocaust and the price she and her family had paid, in an interview she gave, aged 77, to the USC Shoah Foundation. In it, she said: “The British gave us a chance to rebuild our life…especially those who had some skills or business know-how could start afresh and do very well, including myself.”

But her most important message was one for future generations: “The Holocaust should never be forgotten. Never.” Born Vienna, Austria, April 1, 1920. Died London, April 27, 2016, aged 96