Viv
My Mother loved the Queen. She loved the idea that you could have a head of state
who looked as good as the Queen.
‘(After she died),
I found her Ketubah, her Hebrew marriage contract, in a file full of documents.
I kicked myself for not asking more, not pushing, being so willing to accept
that they didn’t want to talk about it.’
Viv’s mother escaped Vienna on a Kindertransport, making a life in the UK, initially in Bradford. Her daughter Viv was the only Jewish girl in school. ‘We had no money, but people still made jokes about how mean Jews were. I did A-Level German, and I spoke German at home until I was five.’
‘My mother was fascinated by fashion and managed a boutique. I was a disappointment to her – I was never interested in clothes.’ In her working life, Viv opened two cafés in Camden Town for people with learning difficulties and got 30-40 people into work. As a result, she was awarded an MBE and met the Queen. As a yardstick of the reverence and respect in which former refugees accorded the country that had given them shelter, she said: ‘For my mother this would have been an incredibly proud moment. She loved the Queen. She loved the idea that you could have a head of state who looked as good as the Queen.’
‘I’m applying for my Austrian citizenship. The process is extremely invasive because of all the things they want to know, but my family persuaded me to do it.’
Viv’s mother escaped Vienna on a Kindertransport, making a life in the UK, initially in Bradford. Her daughter Viv was the only Jewish girl in school. ‘We had no money, but people still made jokes about how mean Jews were. I did A-Level German, and I spoke German at home until I was five.’
‘My mother was fascinated by fashion and managed a boutique. I was a disappointment to her – I was never interested in clothes.’ In her working life, Viv opened two cafés in Camden Town for people with learning difficulties and got 30-40 people into work. As a result, she was awarded an MBE and met the Queen. As a yardstick of the reverence and respect in which former refugees accorded the country that had given them shelter, she said: ‘For my mother this would have been an incredibly proud moment. She loved the Queen. She loved the idea that you could have a head of state who looked as good as the Queen.’
‘I’m applying for my Austrian citizenship. The process is extremely invasive because of all the things they want to know, but my family persuaded me to do it.’
This project is part of the initiative ‘Stand Together and Go Virtual’, supported by the German Embassy London and the Goethe-Institut London.
