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Interview
with Judith Troper - Remembering a Wartime English Childhood
I interviewed my mother-in-law Judith on Saturday afternoon, October
23 2004. while Leora and the kids were at Emily's, typing her
words as she spoke.
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Miles Hochstein: When were you born?
Judith
Troper: 1934.
MH:
Where?
Judith
Troper: London England, at Queen Charlotte's Hospital.
MH:
How'd your mother feel about being a mother?
Judith
Troper: Oh she was very excited. She had 15 hours of hard
labor but when they showed her the baby she said "Oh you
darling!"
MH:
What's your earliest memory as a child?
Judith
Troper: My mother tells me that my memory is from about 18
months old... I remember being held by my mother in what was our
living room but they used it at night as my bedroom temporarily
because they had rented the upstairs to another couple.. that
was the only way they could afford the house... and the couple
upstairs.. the man was a chauffeur and he taught my father to
drive... I think just for friendship.... he didn't charge him
anything... I remember specifically when my mother held me...
I remember the wall lights which I could even draw for you now...
and many many years later Shmuel and I had to buy a light fixture
for the duplex (in LA) and we found a light fixture which I suddenly
felt looked like a large version of the walls lights in my parents'
living room and I was so excited I said "can we switch with
the upstairs one and we'll keep this one for us?” and that's
what we did.... And ever afterward when I looked up at it it gave
me this very good feeling of comfort... which obviously must have
been associated with comfort and looking at those wall lights..
MH:
After the wall lights what is another very early childhood memory?
Judith
Troper: I have vague memories of my sister Jenny as a baby
... she was born when I was three.
MH:
What was your childhood house like?
Judith
Troper: Up until the time I was 5... during that period we
were living in our London house... it was a well built but modest
house. It had two rooms downstairs... first of all it had quite
a nice hall, an entry hall... which many of the less wealthy homes
didn't have... We had a dining room.. which was the front room,
with a bay window, a big bay window... lots of those windows could
be opened. I remember summer time and we had those windows open....
and I remember a wonderful feeling of freedom because I was wearing
few clothes and very light clothes.... my mother tells me when
I came to see my new baby sister, Jenny was born in a a heat wave,
and my father had put on me a little dress and matching underpants
and sandals and for England that was fairly rare that you could
wear that few clothes and be happy..
The
back room was the living room and it had windows from floor to
ceiling and... French windows... the middle window opened into
the back garden and there were two red tiled steps going down
into the paved terrace.
The
kitchen was very small. Functional. My mother produced meals in
it for sometimes large groups of friends and family... but it
was very small. Upstairs we had 3 bedrooms.... 2 good sized rooms
and what we called the box room which was Jenny's bedroom which
was very small... and we had the bathroom with a bath and a basin,
and a separate toilet with what we called a "high flush tank"...
have you seen that? It frightened Leora when she came to visit.
She was afraid that water was going to come pouring down on her.
We
had a pleasant garden, with a an apple tree, and I think we had
a cherry tree and quite a lot of soft fruits - raspberries, black
currents, red currants, gooseberries.
In
later life my father planted vegetables and was a successful producer
of wonderful green beans... scarlet runner beans they call them
in England.
MH:
What else did he produce?
Above:
Judith Miller (right) with her sister Jenny (left) and mother
Janet (center) around
1948.
Judith
Troper: I think he produced Zuchinis, I think they call them
courgettes in French.
MH:
Before the age of 5 were you aware of anything outside of your
house?
Judith
Troper: Yes I played with various children on the street,
and I became friends with a little boy who lived down the road...
his name was Gordon Goldman... we were introduced to each other
when we were one year old... we were approximately the same age.
MH:
He was a play mate?
Judith
Troper: Yes. We started school together. I have no recollection
of actually starting, but my mother said that some of the bigger
children watched us crossing the playground holding hands and
said "oh aren't they sweet!"
MH:
You don't remember that?
Judith
Troper: No. What I do remember are some strong memories that
come from when I was 5 ... I remember being introduced to the
man we later knew as uncle Phillip. Somebody picked me up and
put me on the lap of this man and said to me Judy this is your
new uncle... and I remember that I really liked his face... Later
when I saw his face, I realized was he was drop dead handsome...
he really was Miles... probably the best looking man I have ever
met.
MH:
But the war came at some point...
Judith
Troper: Yes, we were taken away from London... my whole family...
my cousin Barbara, her parents, Bess and David, and my grandmother....
our grandmother, and we were in the village of... my guess is
Longworth... when we stopped outside somebody's house and they
had the radio on very very loudly... and maybe there were other
people standing out there too and we heard a voice saying "England
is now at war". And I remember my mother bursting into tears.
MH:
And how did you understand that?
Judith
Troper: Well I knew it wasn't something very good. I could
tell my mother was very upset and everyone looked very serious
and worried.
MH:
You were how old?
Judith
Troper: Five. We stayed for a while in this village, and nothing
much happened at the beginning of the war, so we went back to
London and my Aunty Ann and Uncle Phillip got married, in September
1939 and I remember a bit about their wedding... I remember being
very excited... I don't remember the civil ceremony in the registry
.. Jenny and I were bridesmaids and we had matching dresses. Everyone
was very happy that Ann had found a husband.. since she was a
quote "old maid" of 33.... (I was still 5) and the night
of their wedding was the first German air raid on London... and
when the siren went off we all sat downstairs with our backs against
the pantry door and the staircase because the pantry door was
build in under the stairs, and we were told that the staircase
was the strongest part of the house and the part likely to remains
standing in the event of a hit.
MH:
Were you scared at that point?
Judith
Troper: I don't remember being scared. We were
in London during the Battle of Britain. This was about 1940. The
Government helped people to build air raid shelters in their gardens.
They sent workmen who would dig the area that had to be made into
a shelter. It was in the back gardens. They helped the homeowners
to build the shelters. My father decided.... my parents decided....
rather than call us out of bed every night when the siren went....
that we should go to sleep straight away in the air raid shelter...
so my father built bunk beds into the back wall... the strongest
wall of the shelter and every night Jenny and I were put to bed
in the shelter.. my parents would tuck us up in the blankets and
my father would give Jenny and me one square of chocolate and
he would say "here you are girls... here's your anesthetic..."
Much
of this seems to have been summertime in my recollection... It
probably wasn't freezing cold and the days were very long. My
parents put us to bed very early, much too early really, so we
couldn't go to sleep. One evening they put us to bed and whether
Jenny had gone to sleep I don't know... it was still daylight
and the air raid siren went off... And normally when the siren
went my parents' would come out of the house and join us in the
shelter... On this occasion they didn't come out of the house
and I was very worried. However, I could hear Mr. Gurney whistling
away next door, in the garden, digging his garden bed, so I got
out of my bunk and came out of the shelter and I spoke to Mr.
Gurney and I said to him Mr. Gurney the air raid siren went and
my parents haven't come out. And he was very reassuring. He said
to me "I wouldn't worry if I were you... I'm sure they'll
be out eventually." So I went back to lie down in the shelter
and I could hear Mr. Gurney whistling away very cheerfully and
obviously he wasn't afraid and I settled down and went to sleep.
Many
years later when I was a mature adult I told my mother about this
particular incident and she said that she remembered it. She said
she and my father were so exhausted from trying to sleep in the
air raid shelter... and they slept in English deck chairs... English
deck chairs used to be awful with a wooden run that went under
your legs.. how they could sleep I don't know... they couldn't
lie on the floor... because it was earth and much too damp..
MH:
Was it underground?
Judith
Troper: Semi-undergrond.
MH:
How much above ground.
Judith
Troper: A bump (Judith gestures 3 feet high with her hand.)
I'd say that 2/3 must have been underground. And she said that
she and my father had gone to lie down for awhile on the bed and
fallen asleep and simply didn't wake up until the morning.
I
do remember something of the Battle of Britain. I remember the
sound of whistling bombs, which were devised by the Germans to
terrify the British. And I do remember a lot of noise. There were
what we called ack ack guns and they were firing at the incoming
German planes. I remember the British search lights sweeping the
skies, and pinpointing the German bombers. And I remember, when
of course the air raids were over, going out on the front doorstep
of my house and picking up pieces of shrapnel. I do believe that
I've still got one or two pieces.
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Left:
The Miller family(left to right) Judith Miller with her father
Henry Miller, her
mother Janet Miller
and her sister Jenny, circa 1947. |
MH:
You mentioned terrifying the British. When did you become conscious
of being Jewish... or was it just always there?
Judith
Troper: I definitely thought of myself as British. I think
I became conscious of being Jewish when we were living in Quainton.
MH:
Why was that?
Judith
Troper: That was because there were other London kids in the
school and they knew what Jews were and they apparently talked
to the local kids about what Jews were and we were pinpointed
as being Jews.
MH:
OK, I jumped ahead from London.... How long were you in London
and when did you move to the village or countryside?
Judith
Troper: Every move we made was with Barbara and her family
and our grandmother... not living together, but living in the
same place... well we lived together part of that time.
MH:
Let me get the chronology roughly right. Regardless of when, where
did you move first, where next...
Judith
Troper:The two places were Luton and the very very small village
of Longworth.
MH:
So first you moved to Luton or Longworth?
Judith
Troper: Yes (not sure?), and then back and forth to London...
and each time we left London again when the air raids got bad.
I do have a very strong recollection of going to school one day
somewhere between the age of 5 and 6. Apparently it was an OK
thing for a little child of 5 or 6 to be alone. Maybe I went with
Gordon... I have no recollection of being with anyone... While
we were walking to school the air raid siren sounded. And I was
so frightened I didn't know what I ought to do... run back home?
continue to school?
MH:
What do you think you did?
Judith
Troper: I think I went to school. And I do remember being
in a large air raid shelter at school and were were given interesting
snacks, which was undoubtedly to help us stay cheerful. We
moved to the village of Quainton when I was probably around 6.
And we lived in Quanton for two and a half years. We had a farmhouse.
It wasn't a particularly ____ farmhouse. It was a very indifferent
Victorian structure. We share it with the farmer, his wife, their
daughter Mary, who was my age, I have a photograph of her by the
way, and the grandson of the farmer and his wife. His name was
Charlie Clark, the son of Winnie Clark. And he was there because
both of his parents were in the military.
MH:
What were relations like between you and the family?
Judith
Troper: For the children it was wonderful. I was big boss
of all the kids on that particular street. I don't know how I
got to be.. I invented the games. I led the games. I was generally
in charge. And I was very good friends with Mary.
MH:
And for the adults?
Judith
Troper: For the adults it was a pretty mixed pleasure, particularly
for my parents because the living accommodation was quite difficult.
We had one room downstairs on the left as you came in thorough
the front door and in that room my mother did everything. She
prepared food and she cooked food. The house was very primitive.
It had no running water, although it had a bathroom. The toilet
was an outhouse down in the garden. And in order to get water
my mother had to take buckets down the road to a standpipe that
stuck up out of the ditch with a faucet on the top of it and she
filled the buckets and lugged them back to the house. At some
stage while we were in the house the cold water was piped into
the house by the local authorities..
MH:
Even during the war?
Judith
Troper: Apparently yes. I guess they were trying to make things
a bit easier for the population. The
room we had upstairs the four of us shared the one bedroom. And
my sister and I caught whooping cough, and we coughed for over
two months... my parents couldn't sleep... until someone told
them about a natural medicine.. the name eludes me... it had a
lot of garlic in it... that stopped the coughing.
MH:
What a relief that must have been!
Judith
Troper: Yes for everyone. I don't (or do?) remember enjoying
playing in the orchard of the farm. Lots of fruit trees. The farmers...
Oh I forgot the oldest son... Fred Dimmock... he and his friends
tied a small zinc tub between two branches of a tree and made
a swing. and I remember putting my sister in it, and she hung
on, laughing rather nervously... She must have been very little
at the time. I
remember listening to the radio. I think. We listened to lots
of music. I remember things like "don't sit under the apple
tree with anyone else but me till I come marching home" And
I remember some wonderful spirit lifting comic programs ... the
BBC made a huge effort to have a lot of comedy on the radio which
certainly kept up the spirits of the British population. We
had the Tommy Handley show. We had a couple named BeBe Daniels
and Ben Lyon. They were an American Jewish couple and they chose
to remain in England even though they could have gone back to
America because they wanted to support the British and this was
the way they did with a lot of humor. We
had a comedian named Arthur Askey. There were several others.
They may come to mind later. Later on we had the Goon show.. but
I think that was after the war was over. We
also had a program called "The Archers" about a farming
family. This was put on during the war to help people to learn
how to farm and garden for those who had very little experience,
because many of the people who had been working on the farms went
to war. And it became the task of those people who had never farmed
before including Princess Elizabeth who became Queen Elizabeth...
MH: Oh come on, that must have been pure propaganda.
Judith
Troper: No. She worked a tractor... There are films of her
working. She knew what she was doing. And the King and Queen used
to go out to the worst hit areas and they talked to the people
who had lost homes and possessions and they did an enormous amount
to bolster people's spirits.
MH:
But you don't really believe that princes Elizabeth was doing
real farming, independent of propaganda films?
Judith
Troper: Oh yes. I think she was. There was a tremendous pulling
together spirit in England during WWII...
MH:
...
Judith
Troper: The farmer washed only his face when he shaved and
down to the collar of his shirt. He washed his neck sometimes.
They periodically took baths. But taking a bath there meant lugging
in the water from outside, heating it on a range, a wood burning
stove, and then carrying it upstairs to the bathtub.
So they did not bathe very often. And I don't think it worried
them very much.
MH:
What abut your family?
Judith
Troper: My mother offended them very deeply because she wouldn't
buy milk from them. The reason was the farmer would take the bucket
of dirty clothes and march off to the fields to milk the cows
in this dirty bucket. The milk was neither boiled pasteurized
nothing. And my mother told me that she remembered the farmers
wife Mrs. Dimmock(?) standing talking to my mother, and putting the
bread knife down her back and scratching her back with the bread
knife.... Did you ever read Nancy Mitford, Cold Comfort Farm?
MH:
I saw the movie, not the book.
Judith
Troper: The book sort of described the type of place we lived
(Judith smiles wryly.) But Jenny and I were oblivious. Didn't
bother us. My mother and father worried about the dirt.
MH:
Was your father able to run his business through this period?
Judith
Troper: My father commuted up and down. There was a
period of time where he and my uncle David quote camped out in
our London house and they fed themselves on tinned cornbeef and
sardines and who knows what else but that was during the week.
They came down to Quainton on Friday nights. On Friday nights
my father would come down bringing two bars of dark chocolate.
This was probably already when there was rationing and you couldn't
get much in the way of sweets which of course is English for candies.
And he was able to get this chocolate because in the shop next
door to him in Prade Street worked a Mr. Waldes. He was a Jewish
refugee from Europe... I want to say he was Hungarian but I'm
not sure.... Mr. Waldes had this very small shop what one might
call a half shop, and in it he sold handbags, toys, stationery
and sweets... and he would give my father these two bars of chocolate
every Friday to bring down to Jenny and me and we used to try
to make that bar of chocolate last all week. We were allowed to
have two or 3 pieces every night. I'm
sure my mother must have been very worried about my father when
he was up in London because not only were there night time raids
but as the war progressed there were also day time raids..
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We
concluded the interview with the promise to do more some day.
| Right:
Judith Troper and Shmuel
Troper in England, November 5, 2001. |
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