Daisy Hoffner

Born: 1924

Place of Birth: Berlin

Arrived in Britain: 06/01/1939

Interview Number: RV157

Interview Summary

Date of interview: 19/10/2015

Daisy was born in 1924 in Berlin, where she grew up as the only child of Kurt Holzapfel, a doctor, and Erna Lehmann. Daisy was baptised when she was six. She attended the Viktoria Luisen Lyzeum. When she wanted to join the Hitler Youth, she found out that she had Jewish grandparents. The only youth movement which she could join, was the Quaker Youth Movement. By chance she found out that the Quakers organised a list of children to be send on a Kindertransport to Britain. She managed to get on the list and left Berlin on the 5th of January 1939.

After staying in the Dovercourt Reception camp, she was sent to a doctor’s family in Milton Abbas, the Gasters, where she was expected to help with the child the family was expecting. When the family found out that her father was a doctor himself, they enrolled her in the Dorchester County School for Girls.

While in Dorset, Daisy managed to get the Quaker family, the Connollys, who she had been supposed to go to, to sponsor her parents who came to the UK in July 1939. The parents first settled in the village Milton Abbas and then moved to London. Once Daisy turned 16, she was classified as an ‘enemy alien’ and had to leave Dorset. While her father was interned in several camps, she shared various boarding houses with her mother. She describes in great details the atmosphere around the Finchley Road and the Blitz.

Her father was allowed to work as a doctor and set up his practice in Islington. Daisy wanted to train as a doctor but the only medical school in London which took women was the Royal Free. When Daisy did not get a place there, she decided that she did not want to leave London and therefore trained as a dentist. She met her husband Charles, a refugee from Leipzig, and they settled in Belsize Park. They adopted two children. Daisy still attends Quaker meetings. The writer Erich Fried was in her circle of friends.

Key words: Holzapfel. Berlin. Viktoria Luisen Lyzeum. Kindertransport. Dovercourt. Quakers. Dorset. Milton Abbas. Dorchester County School for Girls. Finchley Road. Boarding Houses. The Dorice Cafe. Dentist. Erich Fried.

Place of Birth

I thought that it had next to no effect on me and that's not true. I've never fully got over it.

Never getting over it

All I wanted to be was an English schoolgirl. I had no regrets, I didn’t feel homesick, and I didn’t want to speak German. All I wanted to be was an English schoolgirl, in my school uniform, riding my bicycle.

wanting to be English

So my parents and Aulchen [the nanny] had taken us, and then we boarded the train. And you know this was, as I said Bahnhof Friedrichstraße, but everybody, all the parents or anybody who had accompanied children, rushed off to take the S-Bahn zum Bahnhof Zoo, because the train would come through Bahnhof Zoo - you know from Friedrichstraße to Bahnhof Zoo - to wave once more. Dreadful, huh? Dreadful!

Parents putting kids on train

And then I remember when we crossed the border into Holland. And I looked out of the window and the Swastika flag - the Nazi flag - receded. And I thought, “Oh, my God. Now I am a Flüchtlingskind.” Look at that. I’ve left Germany. And then we came to the first station. And the Dutch, the train stopped, and the Dutch… there were a lot of Dutch women came and brought big…canisters or something with hot soup or cocoa. You know, I think it may have been cocoa or it may have been soup, but anyway, and said, “Welcome” to us. And I thought, “Marvellous. But oh, how awful to be a Flüchtlingskind.

Leaving Germany

And my cousin Inge said, “Do you know, I’ve found out something.” And I said, “What have you found?” And she said, “You know, we’re really Jewish. Oma, the only one who is left alive is still a member of the Jüdische Gemeinde, of the Jewish Community. So shock-horror for me. I belonged to this, by now, infamous lot of people, the Jews. So I was rather lost, because I couldn’t really go back to a Jewish Youth Group movement, whatever. And I couldn’t go to the Aryan ones either, because I was jolly well “nicht-arisch”.

Discovering she was Jewish

I remember when Hitler came to power because for some reason I was out in the street with my father, and there was a gate, or door being being banged, and my father said, “Ha-hah. That’s the ridiculous Hitler coming to power.” He didn’t take it seriously. He thought the whole giggle couldn’t last more than six months. Yes, I remember that.

Hitler coming to power