Mom's Memoirs:

All this time Lila had stayed faithfully with my mother. But now, spring 1939, my father had to think seriously about emigration. They packed up as much as they could, sent a steamer trunk full of my stuff to me in Geneva, sent a “lift” with a lot of their furniture (nowadays it probably would be a “pod”) to “Freihafen Hamburg”, part of the harbor outside German jurisdiction, to be picked up whenever, and my mother went to stay with Aunt Franka in Solothurn[1], while my father was traveling to France and Belgium, finally England (London) seeing whether he could land a job. somewhere.. September 1 Hitler invaded Poland, September 1 England, France etc. declared war. September 3 found me in Geneva, my mother in Solothurn, my father in London. I immediately told my mother to get to London, that it was either now or never.[2] This journey was quite an adventure for her! A great many English people used to vacation regularly in Italy and the threat of war caused a huge exodus, but when my mother arrived a day later on the French side of the station in Basel for her train to Calais, everything was pretty deserted and dark. The French had already ordered blackout, but seeing that there had not been any provisions made for it, they simply turned all the lights off! The conductor, armed with a flashlight, escorted her to the train and found a compartment with one other passenger (she did not want to sit alone in the dark!). When she got to Dover she had another scare: foreigners were being separated from holders of English passport for going through customs and immigration, her line was tiny and she was afraid she would not be granted entry, but she got to London all right where my father met her. They spent several months in London, where they had a number of friends, refugees like themselves, until my father got a job in Manchester, a job unbelievably similar to the one he had left in Berlin! I remember that his main complaint was that his employees called him “Doc” and he thought that was derogatory! (A Ph.D. on a job like that was simply very unusual)

Notes:

See Wikipedia article on getting to the United Kingdom. Also, there is a book about UK immigration policy: Louise London (27 February 2003). Whitehall and the Jews, 1933-1948: British Immigration Policy, Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust. Cambridge University Press. pp. 26–28. ISBN 978-0-521-53449-9.

1. Granny says she left Berlin on May 14.

2. Note: This does not agree with Granny's affidavit, which says she arrived in London on September 1. Mom's card to her mother (see below) shows that her encouragement did, in fact, precede the invasion.

3. In German, "Mutsch"--apparently another synonym for mother, although Google Translate didn't render it. In the note, Google translates "Mutti" to "Mommy."

4. Hard to read--haven't figured out the word/name.

5. Don't know--landlady? [Even though her mother was also in Switzerland, Mom never said if she actually saw her during this period, so don't know who in Geneva might also have wanted to add her salutations to this card.]

6. The Register of 1939 , compiled in England , "was taken on 29 September 1939. The information was used to produce identity cards and, once rationing was introduced in January 1940, to issue ration books."

7. Mom says they spent several months in London, so this may have been sent early after getting to Manchester.

8. An allusion to the argument with Fela?