... And the Policeman Smiled by Barry Turner Page B

along (there was a warning that anything of resale value, like jewellery and cameras, were liable to be confiscated), what to eat on the train. Each child was allowed one suitcase and ten Reichsmarks. Luggage sent on ahead was invariably lost.
    New clothing caused much vexation for parents who often had eccentric images of the well-dressed English. Tweeds were muchin demand for boys who were togged up to look like young versions of Sherlock Holmes.
    â€˜My mother bought me an outfit which marked me as a complete foreigner as soon as I arrived in England,’ Richard Grunberger recalls. ‘I had a pleated jacket and tight-fitting trousers which I soon came to know as plus fours. But though I felt strange I didn’t worry too much about it at the time. I was too concerned about the shop owner. He had a badge on his lapel which showed that he was a long serving Nazi. I was told that the shop had recently been Aryanised.’
    The bolder parents set their imaginations to work on ways to get round the restrictions on taking out anything of value. A few boys carried new Leica cameras, which they hoped to sell in England, but others were more subtle. It was not entirely to support his musical talent that Leslie Brent’s mother gave him a violin that had been bequeathed to her. Stringed instruments held their worth and could fetch good prices.
    Yoash Kahn was nervous that someone would show an interest in the contents of his sponge bag:
    I had been given a medallion – the sort you wear on a chain round your neck. It had my initials on one side and some Hebrew letters on the other. My parents were determined that I should take it with me, so one of them got a tin of Nivea cream, peeled off the silver paper covering very carefully, buried the medallion in the cream and then resealed the tin. Of course, I was scared out of my wits the whole journey. I’m the sort of person who never takes anything through customs illegally because I just know that my face will give me away. But somehow I managed to get away with this. I remember, I couldn’t quite believe it, and for days after arriving in London I kept the medallion in the Nivea, checking every now and then that it was still there.
    Most parents played by the rules. The consequences of being found out were too grim to contemplate. Told not to take any money, Henry Toch left with three Pfennigs in his pocket: ‘My first contact with the English was begging for a penny to send a card home.’
    The constant admonition from parents was to be polite to the SS guards. Sometimes it paid off. When Felix Huttner was askedby a tight-lipped guard: ‘Where are you going?’ he replied, almost apologetically: ‘To England.’ The frown turned to a smile. ‘Oh, you’ll enjoy it there. I wish I was going.’
    Other parents were all for braving it out. The parting words to Nina Liebermann were shouted by her mother across a crowded platform: ‘And if they ask for your gold earrings at the frontier, just take them off and throw them out of the window!’
    As the time came for leaving, parents and children suffered conflicting emotions – sadness, excitement, fear, relief. Dorothy Sim practised her English:
    All I succeeded in learning was ‘I want to go to the WC,’ which my parents and I in our ignorance pronounced ‘VK’ and ‘I have a handkerchief in my pocket.’ Among my clothes they packed a box full of precious family photographs, my own set of cutlery and a toilet case with cloth and soap. My father had taken the toilet case with him when he fought in the First World War. He had won the Iron Cross.
    I recall arriving at the railway station in Hamburg. There were two stone lions guarding the entrance. I was carrying my toy dog Droll and I had my leather shoulder bag on. I dropped Droll underneath the train and a man had to climb down and rescue him. I had a peach and a pear in my shoulder bag. We