As she stands by the letter she wrote some 70 years ago, a tear forms in Cilly Horwitz's eye.
“It was a crazy time. Really, when I think of the war, Hitler in particular, it shouldn’t happen. How can you kill people for being one religion, one colour, where does it stop?"
The letter that stirs up her emotion, written to her father during World War Two, is one of the many items on display in a new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum London that bring to life the drama of the first few months of the war.
Cilly, a German-Jewish girl, was transported from Germany to England in December 1938. She is one of a number of veterans who have travelled to the Museum to explain the stories attached to the belongings they have donated to the exhibition, entitled Outbreak 1939, that focuses on the personal effect of the war on veterans.
Cilly explains the letter she wrote to her father when she was 12.
“He was trying to learn English to get out of Germany. He asked me to write him in English so he could learn, but my English was just getting started.”
“Traumatic? I didn’t have time to think about it, there was so much change in such a short time, you didn’t know where you were sometimes ... I didn’t know where my parents were or what they were doing.”
Her father was deported from Germany in 1941 and murdered.
William Gillespie survived the destruction of SS Athenia with his mother and brother after an attack by a German U-boat.
The original telegram attempting to trace the Gillespie family, entitled 'Hoping and Praying’ is another unique item on show at the exhibition.
“We were one of the few survivors," says William, another veteran who has come to talk about his contribution to the exhibition.
"My biggest concern was getting onto something that was gonna float, but truthfully, it never bothered me. Of course, it did my mother. Apart from the fact that we were all in the ocean, she didn’t know where we were until dinnertime the next day, so she was pretty concerned that day.”
William's calm response to the adversity of the war as a child appears to be shared by other veterans.
“We used to see the spitfires fighting the Germans,” says Betty Lowry. "I was 9. We just used to stand and watch, we didn’t run indoors.”
Betty looks at a teddy bear that was originally given to her in a bag packed with clothes, toys, a gas mask and labels when she and her sister were evacuated to Sussex, where they frequently witnessed spitfires fighting the enemy.
“Mum and dad took us to the station and they weren’t allowed to come on the platform with us. No one knew where we [other children being evacuated] were going and so we all piled onto the steam train.”
At 95, John Harrison, who as a 23-year-old Ordnance Artificer on HMS Belfast was under a gun turret when a mine detonated nearby, surprises interviewers with his jolly and energetic account and his attitude of being unfazed. He points to HMS Belfast’s bell in the War Museum.
“On 23rd November 1939 at half-past ten in the morning ... it was a glorious sunny day and everyone was on the upper deck except me. I was charging air bottles and suddenly there was a terrific upsurge, I thought my spine was going to go into my skull, and then the deck bounced and we’d been mined and lifted up some 18 foot.”
"The only way out was this little hatch ... and it’s this little corkscrew. I couldn’t force it open without difficulty and then water came pouring in. I thought, we’re under water, but what had happened was that the fire-drenching gear had been damaged and was directed straight down this hole, much to my relief.
“I had a hell of a headache next day. I reported to the medics and they said, ‘Right Chief, three aspirins and report in the morning.’ And I did, still with a headache and sore shoulders but that was life.”
The 3rd September marks the 70th anniversary of the radio announcement that Britain was at war in 1939.
Outbreak 1939 runs from 20th August 2009 – 5th September 2010 at the Imperial War Museum London. Admission is free.
Reporting in association with NTDTV.
