Memories, Memories…

It’s June 1940. The German armies are storming through the Low Countries, are occupying France, and are now on the Channel coast, threatening to invade England. A very frightening time, not least for us refugees from the Nazis, the so-called ‘friendly enemy aliens’. We are no longer allowed to stay close to the eastern coast of Britain and the men living there are interned. I am not affected as my former host, a professor in Cambridge, has arranged with an acquaintance, the headmaster of a public school in Derbyshire, that I should work at his school as a gardener’s assistant in the mornings and give cello lessons to any interested boys in the afternoons. I am expecting that internment of all male ‘enemy aliens’, whether ‘friendly’ or not, is bound to come before very long – there is a lot of pressure for it. After all, who can guarantee that no German agents have infiltrated the 60,000 refugees in this country? So I have packed my suitcase and have written a brief letter to my sister, who is still working as housekeeper at the Cambridge professor’s house, informing her that I have been interned, leaving only the date open – to be posted when the day arrives …. I don’t have to wait for long. While doing my gardening job during the morning of 4 July, I am called to the headmaster’s office, where two gentlemen in civilian clothes are waiting for me. They are police officers who have come to collect me for internment, in accordance with Churchill’s order to ‘Collar the lot!’ I ask whether I can post the letter to my sister. No, certainly not – any letters I write from now on will have to go through the official censorship, like all letters from abroad. And when I want to go to the toilet before we leave the school, one of the detectives comes with me. This makes me smile inwardly – do they think I will try to abscond? After a brief stay in a transit camp we find ourselves at York Racecourse, where we are housed in the stables. Just over three weeks there and on we go to the Isle of Man – by train to Liverpool, on a steamer across the Irish Sea to Douglas, and another train journey across the island to Peel on the west coast (the railway no longer exists: it was closed down in the 1960s). Once in Peel, we enter the newly established Peveril Camp, where the British authorities have requisitioned a row of eight houses along the sea front and surrounded them with barbed wire. They are tall houses – four storeys, with the kitchen in the basement. We are told that each house will cater for itself: from the 20-25 ‘residents’, volunteers have to be found to do the cooking. At first, I join a group of three non-Jewish ex-trade unionists as an ‘assistant’, providing general help in the kitchen and serving at meal times and, after my cello arrives (surprisingly undamaged!) from the school in Derbyshire, I join a group of other musicians, some amateur, some professional, to provide entertainment for the other inmates of the camp. After about two months and severe pressure in Parliament, the Home Office relaxes its rules for the continued detention of ‘friendly enemy aliens’, one of the categories for release from internment applying to me – to join the Pioneer Corps of the British Army as a volunteer. All this is still very clear in my mind even though 74 years have passed. And suddenly my journalist son asks me whether I would like to revisit the Isle of Man and Peel to refresh my memories. He is engaged on a project ‘to retrace the steps of his forebears’ and this trip will form part of it. Of course I agree. He organises all of it and, after a short flight from City Airport, we are on the Isle of Man, where a half-hour taxi ride takes us from the airport to Peel. It’s a blustery day and, when we find the sea, the tide is in and high waves are breaking against the sea walls and rocks, causing a lot of spray to fall onto the road. We reach the northern end of Peel Bay, where Peveril Camp was situated, and there is the row of eight tall houses in which we lived! Standing in front of them, I know we are at the right place. Yes, I remember the view south, where one can clearly see the ruins of Peel Castle (which I find out later was first built in the 11th century), but I’m not sure which was ‘my house’ – I only remember its approximate position. It’s a very odd feeling, revisiting this place after so many years – I find myself wondering whether it’s a dream …. Peel is quite an attractive small town. Of course we never saw it as internees since we were allowed to leave the barbed-wire enclosure of the camp only on the few occasions when we were permitted to bathe in the sea and were taken to the neighbouring beach. Even then a soldier with fixed bayonet was guarding us – were the authorities afraid we would try to swim across to Ireland? Douglas has a large museum, which we visited. My son had a long and very interesting discussion with a senior archivist, who had assembled a lot of material about the internment camps for us to view. We learned that ‘enemy aliens’ were interned on the island in the First World War as well, but that many documents relating to the Second World War had been destroyed. However, quite a few have been recovered from various sources and he showed us copies of instructions from the Home Office laying down exactly what food, and in what quantities, had to be given to the internees. Other instructions, issued by the Isle of Man authorities, specified which streets had to be closed, where the barbed wire fences had to be erected, etc. The sudden establishment of several internment camps meant that the owners of the requisitioned houses had to leave their homes with only a week’s notice, leaving much of their furniture and all their kitchen utensils behind. Naturally this caused a lot of resentment. Peveril Camp was used later in the war for the detention of British fascists, IRA suspects, and other ‘undesirables’. It is probably for that reason that historical documents about the camp have not been released yet – much less is known about it than about the other camps on the island and the archivist we met was quite frustrated about that. The island authorities are obviously very keen to collect as much material as possible about the internment camps, which form a very important part of the history of the Isle of Man. Fritz Lustig