Lili Todes
LT: "That’s a picture of the so-called Judenschule where all Jewish children who were kicked out of State schools were plonked together in a hall of the synagogue with one toilet which always was a problem
LT: Harvest festival at the farmhouse of her parents' staff ("all the children got gingerbread hearts")
LT: "That’s a picture taken by Renee Farmer who is the wife or ex-wife of Art Farmer the jazz musician"
LT: Mother aged ca. 19 on the doorstep of her home in Bamberg
LT: Late husband on the front doorstep of their house
LT: Evacuated and housed with the local postman's family in Keswick during the Blitz
LT: Family home in Hainstraße 17 (top floor) in Bamberg
LT: July 2022 - painting of her husband Cecile Todes analysing patients
LT: Grandmother Rosalie with LT's mother (baby) and older sister Antonia (taken at the turn of the century)
LT: Extended family outing in Hain Park
LT: Interview with the Sudanese Foreign Minister
LT: Mother as a school girl with her older sister and younger brother
LT: July 2022 with a painting of her husband
LT: Interview with the ambassador from Oman at the United Nations
LT: "In the press section at the UN General Assembly. Maybe the Security Council. With two colleagues: Hella Pick and Ellen Lucas."
LT: Picture of her three children on Primrose Hill
LT: Picture of her father Robert Loebl with his brothers at an international fair in Leipzig
LT: July 2022
LT: With her older sister and brother at the back of their house in Hainstraße
LT: With her sister Hannah and cousins George and Ronnie in Newcastle
LT: July 2022
LT: Bamberg
LT: Parents on their first post-War holiday in Vichy 1948
LT: Father when he served in the German Army in WW1 with the Iron Cross
LT: Easter egg hunt in the garden of her house in Bamberg with her sister and brother
LT: Drawing of her father's factory in Bamberg
LT:
Lili Todes
Born: 1930
Place of Birth: Bamberg
Arrived in Britain: 12/05/1939
Interview Summary
Date of interview: 11/07/2022
Lili Todes, née Loebl, was born in 1930 in Bamberg, Germany, as the youngest of three children. Her father, Robert, was one of the sons of Hugo Löbl, who had founded the electrical wholesale trade “Hugo Löbl & Söhne” (Hugo Löbl & sons). The company used Bakelite as a material for installation works.
She remembers a happy childhood in a beautiful part of Bamberg until Hitler came to power. In the house opposite hers, the Gestapo moved in and there were often parades. She didn’t attend school for very long in Bamberg, but the short time was marked by antisemitic harassment by her fellow students. During a holiday in Switzerland, her parents got to know Lord and Lady Dunlop. The latter was a stamp collector like her mother and the women agreed that Lili’s mother would send a rare stamp to Lady Dunlop in case they needed help to leave Germany. That time came after Kristallnacht, when her father was arrested. Her older siblings were sent ahead to boarding school in England. Lili and her parents followed in what she remembers as a traumatic train travel across Germany to the Netherlands and from there onwards to England. Her father was later interned on the Isle of Man and her mother had to work as a cleaning lady. Later her father and his brother Fritz founded a new company. Unfortunately, her father didn’t enjoy the success for very long as he died of a heart attack in the early fifties. After Lili finished school, she won a scholarship to study at King’s College Newcastle and Sorbonne. And after graduating, she started a very successful career in journalism. As a member of the foreign department of Newsweek magazine in New York, she chronicled the sessions of the UN General Assembly and reported on world events. In her interview she recalls meeting Patrice Lumumba and reporting about the Eichmann trial.
She met her husband Cecil Todes in London when she came for dental treatment to his surgery. He had been born, raised and trained as a dentist in South Africa.
He changed careers to become a psychiatrist and they married in 1964 and had three children. Lili captures her life in her autobiography “Don’t ask me where I come from”.
Key words: Bamberg; Hugo Loebl & Söhne; Newcastle; Newcastle King’s College. Sorbonne. Newsweek magazine; Cecil Todes;
Place of Birth
And on one holiday– it was in Switzerland in Champéry and we met an English Lord, Sir Robert Dunlop. And he and my father hit it off, they became good friends, and my mother was also a stamp collector and Lady Dunlop was a stamp collector. And my father was told by Sir Robert, ‘Don’t go back to Germany,’ and my mother was told by Lady Dunlop, ‘If you have to go just send me one stamp, one rare stamp, and I will know you need help.’ And that’s how we got our papers [to emigrate to England].
Meeting the Dunlops