Herbert and Wanda Rein in 1939. Credit: Eric Rein
Two German Jews came to Newbury to escape the Nazis in a story echoing modern-day struggles for refugees.*
“At school, I was always the ‘bloody Nazi’. I soon learnt to live with that,” said Newbury man, Eric Rein, aged 80.
As part of World Refugee Week (June 17 to 23), I spoke to Eric about his German-Jewish parents, who found sanctuary in Newbury after fleeing their homeland.
Eric, a retired electronic technician and senior design engineer, is not a practicing Jew. “I haven’t been in a synagogue in my life,” he said. Nor were his parents.
But this mattered little to the Nazis, whose racist oppression against German and Austrian Jews reached unprecedented extremes in 1938.
From August that year, new anti-Semitic legislation required Jewish men and women to insert ‘Israel’ or ‘Sara’ into their names if their forenames did not appear on a list of state-approved Jewish names.
All German Jews carried identity cards and had their passports stamped with a red ‘J’.
The Nazis’ campaign of public alienation and discrimination culminated in a wave of street violence targeting Jewish homes and businesses, known as Kristallnacht – the ‘Night of the Broken Glass.’
Eric’s father, Herbert Rein, was born in 1903 in Marienwerder, West Prussia – part of Poland since 1945.
He moved to Berlin in 1905, where he worked as a women’s hairdresser and met his future wife, Wanda Czapski, born in 1911 to a wealthy tailoring family in west Berlin.
Eric recalled how his parents once avoided a confrontation with some fascist thugs outside a tube station by engaging in a quick-thinking public display of affection.
Herbert and Wanda married in April 1939. But one month later, Herbert obtained a visa and fled to England.
“He had tickets to go to England,” Eric explained. “He had to be single, but he was getting married that Saturday.
“He paid a fee and left on Sunday on the ferry. My mother wouldn’t go as her mother had died young and she was very close to her father.”
Herbert arrived at Southampton on May 1. But it would be six years until he and his family could settle in Newbury.
He was permitted leave to land so long as he “emigrated from the United Kingdom on the completion of his training.” Also, his certificate did not entitle him to “establish himself or to seek employment while in the United Kingdom.”
Herbert had entered the UK under an agricultural scheme organised by the Council for German Jewry, which placed young Jewish refugees on farms and in training hostels to prepare them for emigration to the British Colonies, America or Palestine – or at least, that was the intention.
He resided with at least 150 refugees at Tythrop House in Buckinghamshire – which previously hosted Jewish Kindertransport refugees and Basque children fleeing the Spanish Civil War.
“He got my mother a visa, so she did eventually leave Berlin,” Eric added.
Wanda arrived in July 1939 at Harwich, travelling via Holland. She also came to Tythrop House as an agricultural trainee. She was granted leave to land so long as she registered her movements with the police and “did not enter any employment other than as a resident in service in a private household.”
But the house and estate, owned by Magdalen College, was requisitioned by the War Office in 1940, ending its function as a refugee sanctuary.
That February, Herbert enlisted in the Pioneer Corps – the first in his community to do so.
But Herbert and Wanda were treated as ‘enemy aliens’ at first rather than as refugees.
“They didn’t know if they could trust them initially,” said Eric. “They didn’t know whether he was a spy.”
But his father’s service in HM Armed Forces exempted them both from the special restrictions and internment forced on thousands of ‘foreign enemy aliens’ across the UK under the Aliens Order 1920. One of the largest internment camps was on the Isle of Man.
Wanda lived in a flat at Oxford, where her eldest daughter, Kathleen, was born in 1940.
She wrote to her father Erich Czapski – Eric’s namesake – to relay the news.
But they later learned her father had been murdered at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp around 1942.
“She found talking about the war impossible,” Eric added. “She never forgave herself for leaving. But she had to leave, or she would have been killed.
“Unlike most Jewish people who came over during the war, they didn’t want to live in a Jewish cluster in London, because they didn’t know who was going to win the war.
“If it was Germany, they wanted to be lost in the countryside.”
And so, Herbert and his family moved to Newbury, where Eric was born at Sandleford Hospital in 1944.
Herbert was discharged from the Army in August 1945. The family changed addresses multiple times, reporting their movements to the Berkshire Constabulary. Failure to do so could result in a £100 fine and six months’ imprisonment.
“Most of them changed their names to English names, but they decided they didn’t want to,” said Eric.
They initially considered converting to Catholicism. Instead, the whole family decided to be christened at St Nicolas Church by the Rev Bertram Russell when Eric was 11.
Herbert joined RP Bradshaw Hairdresser in Bartholomew Street as a men’s hairdresser in September 1945, where he worked until his retirement.
He appeared to be close to his employer, Robert Percy Bradshaw, who described him as an “honest, willing, reliable and conscientious worker.”
In late 1945, Robert Percy’s elder brother, Albert Victor Bradshaw, a founding member of the Newbury Royal British Legion, supported Herbert with a matter concerning his sister.
Herbert's sister had been due to marry a Hungarian doctor living in Germany. But circumstances forced her partner to move her to his brother's residence in Budapest in 1943, while he fled to Stockholm. She was raped in Berlin by Soviet soldiers, and again in Budapest, Eric claims.
However, once in Budapest, she discovered that as an 'alien' she would be forced to leave Hungary in a fortnight unless her partner could demonstrate proof of his Hungarian nationality and his intention to marry her. As Member of the RBL Southern Area Council, AV Bradshaw wrote to the Hungarian Ambassador on Herbert's behalf saying:
"As there is no direct communication between Hungary and Sweden, she has telegraphed to her brother to help her obtain the required Declaration.
"Mr Rein served in the British Army during the War, and is a member of this Branch of the British Legion. I shall therefore be very grateful if you will be good enough to give him any assistance possible."
Unfortunately, their pleas were unsuccessful and Herbert's sister was forced to join her partner in Stockholm.
In February 1947, Herbert successfully applied to the Home Office to become a naturalised British citizen. He signed an oath of allegiance, which was countersigned by none other than Mayor and Justice of the Peace for Newbury, AV Bradshaw.
As his wife, Wanda was also made a naturalised British citizen.
The Reins visited Germany after the war, including Wanda’s late father’s flat, but chose not to return.
“West Germany made it very attractive for people who had been expelled to return,” said Eric.
“They would have been given a house and other benefits. But they thought they would be resented by the [German] locals and dismissed the idea.”
Herbert received compensation and his pension. But Wanda was never compensated for the loss of her family business.
In November 1941, the ‘Eleventh Decree to the Law on the Citizenship of the Reich’ removed German citizenship for Jews who had fled abroad. Citizenship could be restored to German Jews who had fled abroad under Article 116, section 2 of the Basic Law. But Herbert and Wanda never applied for this.
In March/April 1948, Herbert sought permission from the Military Permit Office in London to travel to Berlin-Schöneberg to reunite with sister and mother – whose health was failing. His sister had already been granted permission by the Allied Military Permit Office in Stockholm. Herbert wrote:
"As it is nine years since I last saw my sister, we should much appreciate the opportunity of meeting each other again and also of enjoying this reunion in the company of our mother."
His request was approved. Herbert travelled on a Dakota from Heathrow Airport to Berlin in East Germany – then under Soviet control.
Herbert mixed in German circles in Newbury where he inevitably met former German POWs like Eugen Clemens, whose story I covered in my previous feature.
“They were part of a German group that met up,” Eric added. “I never remember any animosity. I used to go with them most of the time.”
Wanda died at her Wash Common home in 1963. Herbert remarried in 1965 and died two years later at Newbury District Hospital.
“They both loved Newbury and never considered moving anywhere else,” Eric said of his parents.
Speaking about early life in Newbury, Eric added: “They didn’t want me to speak German.
“They couldn’t speak English, but they didn’t want me to learn German, because they couldn’t have me running around the streets speaking German just after the war.”
Eric gained his German citizenship in 2022.
“There was a big ceremony at the German Embassy,” he said. “I went on my own. It was all very formal.”
Eric lives in Newbury with his wife, Sheila. They have two children and six grandchildren.
*According to the British Red Cross, a refugee is someone who has proven they would be at risk if returned to their home country. Their asylum claim has been accepted by their receiving country's government, where they have either long-term or indefinite permission to stay. They may also invite their immediate family members to join them. Herbert and Wanda Rein were refugees.
Whereas, an asylum seeker is someone who flees their home and arrives in another country by any means necessary. They have a legal right to stay in their receiving country until their application has been decided.
An immigrant is someone who has moved to another country either temporarily or permanently to work, study or join family members. Many become lawful permanent residents and eventually citizens, according to the International Rescue Committee.
A migrant is someone who has moved from one location to another, either within their own country or across borders, usually for temporary economic reasons.
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