December 1964

MARIA
Maria, a tall twelve year old comes from a Berlin camp. Her parents are conscientious and loving. They have brought her up to be clean, well-mannered and
helpful, and they are saving hard to buy a house. Maria has stayed several times with a family in Wales and speaks English with a strong Welsh accent.
We welcome her at Little Pond House (The reception centre) because she can always help prepare the vegetables or keep the younger children in order.

REINHARDT
Recently I met Reinhardt, who came over with a party of children, some of whom stayed with families in Sevenoaks. But he too bears the mark of an exile.
When I asked him. where he lived, he gave me his camp number-'Lager XVII'. He added that he lived in a house of five rooms with ten
other people (probably three families), but he emphasized that this was not a proper home-" Ich habe kein zu Hause mehr. " .

Short extracts published in mid 60s about children from various refugee camps.

There are nearly 182,000 foreign refugees in Germany. Only 1,000 of them are now left in camps, but 13,000 of the remainder are living in poor and inadequate housing conditions. Many of these have children who could be greatly helped by I.H.C. These figures of course do not include the many who have emigrated from Germany, nor the large number of German citizens who have moved over from the Russian zone. In Austria there are some 25,000 refugees, of whom 100 are in camps, and 1,500 living in sub-standard houses. These refugees include Displaced Persons, who lost their homes as the result of the last war, and many who have been forced to leave their country for fear of arrest, as well as those who "have voted with their feet". The influx rate is very small, owing to the strict frontier control, but there are still about 10,000 people entering Trieste each year from Yugoslavia.

FINKENWERDER CAMP (Berlin) - written in December 1964
After the Second World War, Russia took the eastern half of Poland for her . own defence, and reconstituted the new communist state of Poland by
annexing a large portion of East Germany. Many Germans were expelled from the area, but those who remained have now been fully integrated with the Polish people both in regard to education and opportunities for work. Many of them save up enough money to leave Poland, and by taking only a minimum of luggage they can travel to Hamburg where they hope to start a new life in the western world. Although it is usually possible to find them employment, their only accomodation is in Finkenwerder camp, where overcrowded and difficult conditions prevail. During the winter months the snow and cold climate force the family indoors where they may be living five to a room. Quarrels, disease, and other evils abound, and the children have nowhere to play. Herr Nietsche, the camp manager, has asked I. H. C, to give holidays to these children during the difficult winter months, and a party of thirty, mostly girls, aged six to eight years, will be coming on 2nd. February. Edmonton, Northwood, and Finchley, have been asked to consider them

SPORTALEE CAMP (Hamburg) - written by Jack Finch in 1967.
As far as I could gather Sportallee is the worst of the Hamburg camps, About eleven hundred people live there, either in Nissen huts, where they have to :make use of communal washing or W.C. facilities, or in a large barrack block. Accompanied by two of the foster parents) -we visited the huts of some of the children whom we had escorted back to Hamburg. That of Brigitte and Wolfgang was on the approach road so I passed it frequently. The children have deaf and dumb parents although they speak and hear quite normally themselves. The family of six have a tidy but unbelievably cramped hut. There was no floor space in the only bedroom as it was entirely taken up by the bed. The only daylight cane from a tiny window high up in the roof. Four children and the mother slept there, with the father on a bed-settee in the living room.. Uwe and Barbel's hut on the contrary was slightly better. The family had been there for 15 years; it was tidy; and the mother told me that she looked after her children carefully, and that they unlike Herbert next door had regular meals, We visited many other huts as well and our visit proved well. worthwhile.

LITHUANIAN REFUGEES
The Russian occupation of Lithuania resulted in many of the inhabitants fleeing from their country into Germany. A large number have managed to establish themselves in various countries including the United States and Canada, but there remain many who, through reasons of bad health, poverty or other problems, have been unable to solve their difficulties. For about three years I. H. C, has been in touch with Herr Kurgonas, himself a Lithuanian, who feels very strongly about the pathetic plight of his countrymen. Delighted by I. H. C's offer to have some Lithuanians over, he is at present selecting a party of twenty-five to come on February 2nd. Ages will be between six and nine years, and it is intended to have fifteen girls and ten boys. They will spend one month at Little Pond House, and we hope that families in Exeter and the Isle of Wight will take them for a furthur two months.

RICHARD VALAITIS written in 1967

                    Seven year old Richard Valaitis first came to England with a party of Lithuanian refugee children in 1965. He had been living with his mother and
                    five younger brothers and sisters in two shabby rooms, part of an old barracks which had been turned into a refugee camp. The concrete staircase and
                    the long cold corridors were dirty and untidy and the whole atmosphere was one of drabness. His father had suffered many hardships following his
                    escape from Lithuania and his attempts to settle into the German life in Munster. Earlier that year he committed suicide by taking poison and his wife
                    and family found him dead the next morning. Richard had been very fond of him, and the loss affected him profoundly. No longer a smiling happy child
                    he became morose and difficult, and his mother found him impossible to cope with. In England he lost his tragic mask and became brighter, but a year
                    later back in Munster he was again bitter and silent. As a result it was decided that he should return here as soon as possible on a long term
                    sponsorship.   Now he is staying on the Isle of Wight (where he was before), and when visited by Miss McEwen this month, who saw him at school
                    and talked to his teachers, he appeared much happier with every chance of making progress and settling down in this country. It is hoped that his
                    mother will allow him to receive a British education which will enable him to make his own way in the world.

This commentary was written by the father of a south London family who hosted a refugee child from Germany.

The visit probably took place in the late 1950s/early 1960s. It was the tone in my wife’s voice that made me wary when she mentioned, perhaps over-casually that Stephen’s school were appealing for a family to take in a German refugee boy for three months. Having four boys of our own I hardly thought that she would seriously contemplate such an act of madness, but when Stephen followed up her casual remark with “I think we could find room for him all right, don’t you Daddy?” I realised they’d ‘ganged up’. The combination of my wife and one son is almost impregnable unless you can get the other three actively on the opposition side. In this I failed utterly. Nigel, the eldest, who in any case wisely tries to keep above family controversies, observed that at least it would be an opportunity for him to practise his rudimentary German and the two little boys clearly regarded a child from an “other country” (as the youngest invariably refers to anything further afield than the Isle of Wight) as something of a novelty. In an alarmingly short time, the whole thing was buttoned up. The child was to come under the auspices of an organisation called ‘International Help for Children’. He would attend Stephen’s school and would stay 3½ months. Immediately – perhaps clutching at a straw – I questioned the wisdom of giving a refugee child a tantalising glimpse of the doubtful luxury of living in England. If he stayed where he was, at least he wouldn’t know what he was missing. But the organisation pointed out that this had not been their experience at all. A glimpse of the outside world would give the child new hope and some idea of the environment he would have to cope with if and when he was ever resettled. Soon we got a note giving a few terse details. His name was Rolf. He was ten years old and the eldest of five.

His parents were from East Germany, and his father was in prison. We discovered that the father had been a decent hard-working man before he got to the camp in Hamburg where Rolf had spent most of his life. But at the camp, there was no work for him, demoralisation set in and eventually he became victim to the blandishments of a smash-and-grab gang and was soon caught. Rolf’s address in the camp was ‘Zimmer 158’. ‘Zimmer’ means ‘room’ of course. His family had one room in a Nissen hut. There were two other families in the hut and their rooms were only separated from each other by a curtain.Rolf’s mother toiled each day in a hotel in Hamburg where she earned £5.12s.6d per week – barely enough to feed and clothe the children. She was, we were told, prematurely old and bent with worry and work, and young Rolf had to do whatever he could to help her out. Inevitably he came in for a good deal of nagging. He was desperately anxious to come to England. All this confirmed most of my forebodings. No doubt the child would be undernourished, and perhaps in feeble health (although a health certificate was promised), and we should have all sorts of psychological problems to cope with. He would be pale and withdrawn and almost certainly he would have nightmares. Communications would be an almost insuperable barrier. Nigel knew a term’s worth of German. My wife knew a few words she had gleaned from a boy-friend years ago, but doubtless they would be unsuitable for dealing with a frightened refugee! We began to get panicky. Rolf arrived with a small party of other German boys at Liverpool Street Station one afternoon. Stephen and my wife went to meet him. The party seemed extraordinarily neat and well-behaved and Rolf, when introduced, revealed nothing of his native environment. He shook hands politely and did a sort of burlesque of a German heel-click. He seemed far more at ease than my wife and infinitely more than Stephen who by this time was getting extremely apprehensive about his responsibilities. In the train coming home, they sat in complete silence. Conversation was impossible between them, and my wife and Stephen didn’t want to hurt his feelings by talking English. It was a gloomy beginning. When they got home, however, Rolf seemed not in the least put out by the other two small, rowdy boys who examined him as though he were something from outer space. He seemed to make a rapid and shrewd mental note of various intriguing things which he would – as we found sometimes to our cost – experiment with endlessly later on – and went upstairs to unpack his bag. I had some doubts as to whether he would consider sleeping arrangements any improvement at all on the camp from whence he had come. He was perforce having to share a large room with the two small boys, across which he was having to pick his way over railway lines, wooden bricks and even sometimes electric cables which Stephen had laid. But he was merely curious – immensely and unceasingly – his eyes sparkling and darting all over the room. But he was careful not to convey pleasure or excitement – or indeed any emotion at all. His appearance was somewhat picturesque. He was wearing a tweed suit – shorts with sort of Norfolk jacket – very gay socks of the pre-1930 golfing variety, and a ready-made bow tie which he allowed the little boys to pull out on its elastic. His hair was the most recalcitrant I have ever seen. It was desperately plastered down with grease. He was very clean. In his bag he had a few well-darned underclothes, one pair of pyjamas, and a few oddments. He had brought no toys or personal treasures. But the little boys were dazzled by the bow tie and the socks: “Isn’t he lucky – he’s smarter than we are”, they said. His rather forlorn little bundle was disposed of into a drawer which had hastily been cleared of paints and packets of plaster of Paris, and with a sort of guttural growl which was to be his only kind of communication for the next few days, Rolf scuttled downstairs, went straight into the garden where he shinned up the tallest tree. There he stayed, presumably taking stock of his situation. I got home an hour or so later, feeling very apprehensive. It had been a difficult day and I was in no mood for sorting out the problems of a little boy from a very foreign world. The garden, as usual, seemed to be full of children. Half of them I didn’t know. I noticed that one was wearing Stephen’s old shirt. I went in feeling in a ‘let’s get it over quick’ frame of mind. “Where is he”? I said to my wife. “Who? – oh him” she said, “he’s outside somewhere – there he is wearing Stephen’s old shirt, it was too hot for the one he came in”. It was as simple as that. Small children don’t need to speak the same language, especially if there are a few odd tricycles and – as in our garden – even queerer bits of apparatus to oil the wheels of international friendship. We decided that 8 o’clock would be a reasonable time for him to go to bed. He was obviously appalled and I realised that he probably never went to bed – and certainly not to sleep – until the last adult in his little community was ready to turn in. No doubt that was why he was so extraordinarily short for his age. He did not attempt to hide his disgust but went willingly enough. He was not averse to bathing but he quickly showed a great propensity for keys and locks, and although none of our own children ever bothered, he always securely locked the bathroom door immediately he got inside. For long agonising minutes the hot tap would then be heard gushing away and we would have almost to beat the door down to get him to open it a crack when we made signals to turn it off. He loved to luxuriate in the bath and our electricity bill soared. He would lay in the bath for up to an hour and when he emerged, he took the door key with him. We never saw it again – although each night he would produce it and lock himself in. I think he took it back with him to Germany. When he undressed, he neatly folded his clothes and then stuffed them down the narrow space between the bed and the wall. This was a habit he never gave up during the whole of his stay. It was in vain that my wife would put his newly ironed shirt at the foot of the bed. Always it would be stuffed against a wall by the morning. It must have been a habit in the camp, and was probably his only way of being sure that when he woke up, his clothes would be handy. That first night our own boys were excited and there was a lot of chattering which didn’t seem to be so meaningless to Rolf as one would have thought. My wife went in and kissed Jonathan goodnight but when she tucked Rolf up, he rather reluctantly proffered a hand for a formal handshake. We gave him picture books to look at hoping he would eventually drop off. But in ten minutes he was sound asleep, and it was the same throughout his stay. He was making up for a lot of lost time. Most children experience the thrills of life gradually. When they reach those of boyhood, they’re blasé about the excitements of their childhood. With Rolf it was different. There were so many things he had never seen before and they all got crowded into those first few days. He spent a lot of time running up and downstairs just for the fun of it. He couldn’t bear to pass an electric switch of any kind without turning it on to see what happened. All too often he forgot to turn it off, His excitement at seeing the inside of Marks and Spencer’s was well worth the bill he ran up. Cupboard doors and soda syphons, telephones and the tools, pieces of wood, wire and other pickings from my workshop – these were a constant source of fascination. We had to get used to using the telephone with Rolf crouched by our side, hoping that he would overhear a few phrases which he would laboriously repeat to us afterwards, tremendously thrilled at having experienced part of a telephone conversation himself, even though it meant little or nothing to him

He soon got the hang of television and was constantly asking the time so as not to miss his favourite programmes. Television was not new to him; he had seen it in the camp. Cars were familiar to him, but what pleased him so much with these things was being free to explore them. To be able to turn the knobs on the television set, work the trafficators, and blow the horn on the car, work the electric mixer (this exploit is still commemorated on our kitchen wall), these were endless joys, though they took a rather heavy toll of the apparatus involved. The boat was a great thrill. It’s only a home-made affair with an outboard motor but to Rolf it spelt untold adventure. He couldn’t swim a stroke but had no fear of the water and would leap up and down in the boat in a most alarming manner accompanied by a fortissimo chorus of “Nein, Rolf sitzen” from the children. He soon found out how to handle it and when he got bored, he would sometimes drag me forcibly out to the garden where it was kept, shouting ‘boot, boot’, in an effort to force a boating expedition upon us. I do not think he had much respect for educational establishments. Although obviously an intelligent little boy, he was atrociously under-educated and could neither read nor write his own language. When we asked him on the first day to write to his mother, all he produced was a passable drawing of our house. Attendance at school in the camp was, I gathered, the reverse of obligatory, and illness had given him a good deal of excuse for not going. I suppose if they can see no future, it’s difficult for children to understand about going to school. So, he did not take very kindly to Stephen’s school, where anyway the proceedings were mostly unintelligible. But everyone was very friendly, and he spent most of his time in the gym, the Art room or the playing fields. But, of course, he got bored, and insatiable curiosity wreaked a good deal of havoc especially in the early days. Stephen became desperate. He felt responsible for inflicting this nuisance on his school fellows. At the end of the first week, he said “I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Mummy!” One day Rolf whisked along the top of the ‘bus snatching everybody’s caps off and threatened to throw them all out of the window. Another time, frustrated by being blamed for something he could not refute, he simply walked out and disappeared down the road. It was sometime before the news reached a responsible quarter and when Rolf sauntered back again three quarters of an hour later several teachers and boys were already scouring the neighbourhood. But these were isolated incidents, and nobody took them very seriously except Stephen. On the School Speech Day, Rolf rushed around with far more of a proprietorial air than the sixth-formers. He was, after all, the only one with an unimpeachable excuse for marching through doors marked ‘Private’. But no one seemed to mind. Indeed, everyone was very affectionate towards him. One felt that this was as good for the schoolboys as it was for Rolf. We have had a long succession of charming foreign girls staying with us as au-pairs and the children have got used to an assortment of languages. Currently it is French, but the impact of Rolf quickly began to produce a sort of three-way Esperanto. The most commonly used German word, of course, was ‘nein’. The children chanted it day and night. Sometimes, they meant don’t do something, but just as often they meant don’t not do something. Rolf always took it very calmly. If you’re a small boy living in a Nissen hut with 17 other people I suppose you get told not to do things rather a lot of times. When I was doing the washing up one day, I looked at my wife’s shopping list, if that’s what you could call an untidy bundle of paper stuck above the kitchen sink with an incredible miscellany of domestic requirements scribbled all over it. This time the list looked extraordinarily unfamiliar. I saw ‘sich beeilen’ – hurry up, ‘unartig’ – naughty, ‘nicht gefecht’ – don’t fight, ‘schnell’ – quickly. I began to realise some of the difficulties my heroic wife was having. The little boys invented their own German words which worked quite well. They would say things like ‘lookzen’ or ‘sitzen’, and before long they had Rolf talking this Germanised English himself. Mealtimes were always chaotic – we never knew quite whether we were talking French or English or our own special kind of German.

One evening Rolf was obviously unwell. My wife made all sorts of signs to him, which I think he understood as meaning had he got a tummy ache or a headache or did he feel sick. But she had no luck. Then she saw that his face was swelling, and she realised that he had toothache. It must have been pretty bad because by the time he had been doped off to sleep with far more aspirins than the bottle approved, he had a very large face indeed. He was an extremely stoical little boy. The next day, we took him to our dentist who reported that he had several teeth missing, but none stopped. Evidently the camp routine was to wait until they got so bad that they had to be pulled out. I am delighted to report that the National Health Service has paid for a complete restoration of Rolf’s mouth. But just in case there was any more trouble, ‘zahnweh’ – ‘toothache’ was added to our home-made dictionary. Rolf was very good on domestic help. As soon as one course was over, he would collect the plates and take them out to be washed – probably at home this was a necessary routine before the meal could be finished. After a few weeks, during which we were obviously on probation, he began, quite unasked, to get up early in the morning and go down and vacuum-clean the carpet or do some washing up. I’m not sure that the bigger boys really approved of this, for they have a strictly trade union attitude to domestic work, but the little ones were vastly impressed and soon began to imitate him. I think he did this as part of a pre-conceived attitude. Throughout his stay, he was obviously determined to make as few concessions to us as necessary and not to be put under an obligation to us. For a long time, the only sign of enthusiasm we could get out of him would be his familiar growl, pitched a tone higher than usual, and combined with a wry smile. He knew about ‘please’ and ‘thank-you’ from the children (we tried to indoctrinate him in these small courtesies for the sake of family morale) but it was weeks before he condescended to use them and then only when he could do so entirely voluntarily. He never said ‘bitte’ when we told him to. I admired him for this spirit of independence. One felt that he realised he was with us as a temporary spectator and he had to protect himself from getting involved. He was wiser – far wiser – than his years. But as time went on, we saw more and more chinks in his armour. One night when my wife went up to tuck him up and offered the usual hand to be shaken, he put his face up to be kissed like the little boys. She was more thrilled than on the day I asked herto marry me and I felt quite jealous.

Three weeks before he was due to return, we began to talk to him about going back. He did not seem enthusiastic about seeing his family, but he did say with some relish, “Ah, ich kann sprechen Deutsch’. Then a card arrived from his mother – the only one she had been able to find time to write – and it softened his heart. The school had collected money to buy his clothes and pay for prodigious shoe-repairs, and we had given him pocket money (at the standard family rate of course). He began to buy presents for his brothers and sisters and of course for himself. Then the little boys caught his spirit, and one night, hearing an unusual commotion after bedtime, my wife went up to find him sitting in bed like a king with his subjects, completely surrounded by small gifts that the little boys had thrust upon him and which he was stowing in his suitcase leaving no room for anything else. “Well, he’s a refugee, isn’t he?” said Michael, obviously trying to reassure himself in case the next morning he began to have doubts about the wisdom of his own generosity. On his last day, Rolf had a tremendous fling at the Battersea Festival Gardens. He went on almost everything, steadily working his way through the fun fair. It cost an awful lot of money, but it was worth it. I thought we would be relieved when the time came for him to go, but of course, we were all rather sad. We took him up to Liverpool Street Station where he joined about twenty other returning refugee children. He seemed as jaunty as ever and the welfare officer said his appearance had changed so much, she hardly recognised him. (This was certainly true. He had gained about a stone in weight and my wife had had a major triumph with his hair). Another little German boy came up to me and said: “I speak English a little” so, as he was obviously anxious to show off his linguistic skill, I said “Ask him if he’s glad to be going back”. A short and earnest German conversation ensued, and the interpreter said “He says no. He likes you“. But all the same, Rolf, independent to the last, steamed off full of broad grins and hearty handshakes. What has he gone back to I wonder? I told him that if he went to school and learned to write he could come back to us again. But it will be up to him. There will be nobody, except an overworked welfare officer to encourage him – and. I like to hope, memories of what life was like for the children he met in England. He will never live like that. The world has cheated his of the family life that is the birth-right of most children. But perhaps he will want it for his children and will make the supreme effort to pull himself out of the rut that the folly of the world has pushed him into. But it is an awful lot to ask of a little boy of ten. One thing is clear. Rolf is not indebted to us, and never regarded himself as such. We all had a lot of fun together and we were all much better off for his visit, so it was a fair exchange. In fact, we gained hands down, because there were six of us and only one of him.

The children left Send on their return Journey to Berlin .Promptly at 5.p.m. on 29th July 1963, for the first few miles two of them cried bitterly but they had all settled down by the time we reached London . At Liverpool Street we were joined by 14 Children from Ruislip accompanied by Mrs Wakeling, 11 children from Exeter accompanied by Miss Stoffen and Miss Heath Also there were 3 German Escorts . The first snag of the journey came when Miss McEwan arrived and said that there had been a mixup in the reservations made by the Berlin authorities. No berths were available on the night boat and emergency arrangements had been made for to us to travel on the day boat the following day. We were however allowed to sleep on the day boat, overnight. We left Liverpool Street at 6.10.p.m and arrived at Harwich at 9.40a.m.. The train did not go as far as the quay for the day boat so we had a good half mile or so to walk before we were on board, I was surprised to find that there was a little boy in the exeter group only 6 years old and he must have been very tired by the time he was in bed .

We were given breakfast on board at 7.30 a.m.and then all settled down on chairs on the sun deck for the long wait until sailing time The children were extremely quiet and well behaved all morning. During the morning all passports were signed and stamped by one of the Ship’s officers and landing tickets issued as authority to land in Holland .There were no customs formalities of any kind on the whole of the journey into Berlin. The boat was due to sail at 12.20, but it was 1.20.p.m. before we were finally under way

20 hours or so after leaving Send and 15 hours behind schedule. The boat Journey was uneventful It was very warm on the sun deck ; the sea was calm and no one in the party was ill .Good time was made and we arrived at the Hook of Holland at 7•20.p.m.

Sometime during the morning 2 small parties of teenagers up to 15 years had come aboard, with 2 German male escorts and I female escort from Liverpool and Scotland,so by then there were a large member of suitcases to unload and reload on the train. Compartments had been reserved on the Warsaw train . And at at 8-45.p.m we set off on the long journey, glad to be settled with all children (including some white mice belonging to one of the Exeter children) and baggage intact.

I was allocated a sleeper in a compartment with 5 of the teenage boys from Scotland, but the German escorts had to make do with an ordinary compartment . Just after midnight I was awakened for a passport check on entering Germany and again at about 5.a.m. when we reached Helmstedt on the East German border. Here 3 or 4 East German guards, including One young woman complete with revolver handed out application forms for the issue of Visas which were collected a few minutes later and passports stamped Forms for entering details of currency carried were also issued. Our third check at 7.40.a.m came at Creibnitesce which was the border control between East Germany and West Berlin This station is used only for for train checks and no passengers are allowed to alight .As a result the station is very shabby, the platform being overgrown with grass and weeds. There were a number of East German guards on who searched the train for refugees and inspected passports.While the trains are stopped a guard attends on the line at the back of the train. There is barbed wire everywhere leaving only the railway line free .At 8.10.(wednesday) we arrived at the main line station of Berlin, where parents were waiting to welcome the children , Only then did I learn that some of the children had alighted at Hanover to continue the journey by air. These children, which included Margritt, who had stayed with Mr and Mrs Truphet had previous family history recorded on their passports which made it dangerous for them to travel through the East German zone. They may have been detained or turned back, so they were flown ever instead. At the station we were met by Herr Tauber who said he was there to act as our guide for the rest of the day. Herr Tauber is a schoolmaster in West Germany and has 13 children, 8 boys and 5 girls between the ages of 5 and 18 .

Herr Tauber had a taxi waiting and he took is to our hotel where we had breakfast of rolls and coffee, My room was very nice and apart from the usual bedroom furniture had a writing table with letter headings and air mail letters and telephone. The Charge was 13 marks - about 21/6d per night and was most reasonable. In the Hotel lounge there is a large board on the wall covered with signatures including Yehudii Menuhin, Brendan Behan, Paulette Goddard, Satchmo and many German princesses, actors and actresses which Herr Tauber recognised. My name is now on the board.

Shortly after our arrival at the hotel we were joined by Frau Van Meusel who had just arrived with a party from Belgium and at 10.a.m Herr Tauber returned with a Minibus in which we covered over 80 miles during the rest of the day. The programme was to take us all over Berlin (West) during the morning and early afternoon followed by an hour or so shopping a visit to the office of Der Senator fur Jugund und Sport - the organisation which chooses the children for the holidays- and finally at visit to some of the children's houses.

We set off towards Potzdamerstrasee and on the way passed the Russian Memorial in the British sector. There was a Russian soldier on guard and around the whole of the memorial there were large rolls of barbed wire with a. British soldier doing sentry duty. The Russian was guarding the Memorial while the British soldier was guarding the Russian. It is very difficult to describe in print just what the wall looks like, We seemed to meet it unexpectedly . We would be driving along a wide main road and suddenly would come up against the wall so that the road led nowhere . On the other side of the wall, East German guards were loitering with tommy guns and binoculars. All the houses on their side of the wall were derelict and their side of the wall and the houses near were whitewashed so that when the searchlights were switched on at night, shadows would show immediately and there would be no natural shadows In which refugees could hide.

At Potsdamerstrasse we stood on the wooden platform to see over the wall. There were the usual East German guards standing and sitting by the Brandenberg gate, watching everything that was going on*The Potsdamerstrasse as it was and as it is now is seen on the postcards below. At one stage we went along a road and the tenements one side formed the border with a wall being built across the side streets. Every window in the tenements were bricked up as in the past people had jumped from the windows trying to escape. In this road an old lady of 81 had been killed when jumping from a window and

we saw dozens of crosses with wreaths and pots of flowers on the pavements where refugees had been shot. Houses on the western side of the streets were pitted where machine gun bullets had hit them.

We visited an information centre with leaflets and books available and at this centre there is an observation platform for looking into East Berlin. While there we saw a lady who goes there every day at 12 noon to wave to her sister on other side of the wall

She had binoculars and a handkerchief but her sister puts her hand to her forehead,she dare not wave otherwise she may be shot .

The tenements which formed the border wall in this particular road had barbed wire right up the walls and over the roofs -6 storeys high .We also saw in this street the Church which stood a little way back from the road and the wall had been built across the entrance thus cutting it off completely from people living on the other side of

the street. The Church cannot be used now. Other houses and tenements not forming part of the wall itself and which are now derelict had East German guards at the windows all with binoculars and guns .Near Grunewald Forest there was a quiet country lane ,again blocked by a wall.A farmhouse nearby was derelict,being used by guards whom we saw lurking behind the bushes . During our tour we saw the Reichstag the modern Congress Hall, the Presidents Palace, Charlottenberg Castle, Grunewald Forest and Wansee Lake . This is a very large lake with pleasure boats and is very beautiful .We had lunch at a large log Cabin restaurant at Nikolskoe and as it was so warm all the diners - hundreds of them - were eating at tables among the trees by the side of the lake . Later we saw a most unusual church in the centre of Berlin It is octagonal and each wall almost 100 feet high is composed of small squares of glass which give a diffused purple glow . It has a large beautiful organ on a gallery over the entrance . At night, the purple glow can be seen outside and the whole effect is awe inspiring.

Tine went far too quickly and after a brief visit to Der Senator fur Jugend und sport and a cup of iced coffee which I was persuaded to try, much to my regret , We were left with only an hour or so for shopping before the Shops shut it 6-30.p.m.By 7.00p.m. we were on our way around to visit the children's homes . With 4 groups to visit it was impossible to call at more than 1 or 2 from each party , particularly as their homes were so scattered By 8.45 we had arrived in the street where Doris , my foster child, lived. It walls a drab street with 6 storey tenements either side and no gardens of any kind. At Doris's address„ there was a large heavy double door which led into a wide stone corridor which in turn led into a tiny stone courtyard completely surrounded by tenements. The walls of the corridor. were black with grime, and paint we peeling away and in parts even plaster's falling away. Herr Tauber and I stumbled up dark stone stairways without any light, to the 2nd Floor . We come to Doris's flat and the door had 5 names on it; Herr Tauber said that 5 families were therefore living in the one dwelling. I was most disappointed when we had no answer to our ringing, Doris's family were either out visiting or in bed. We then called at the home of Barbara who had stayed with Mr. & Mrs Peacock conditions here were similar although a little better than at Doris’s address .Barbara's flat was on the 4th floor and after a long climb up the stairs Herr Tauber and I were again disappointed to get no answer to our ringing. By then it was 9.30 p.m. end. we decided that it was too late to visit any other families. Herr Tauber said that after a very busy and exhausting day we should have good meal and he took us all including the minibus driver to a gypsy restaurant It was a wonderful place where we had a wonderful meal to an accompaniment of cello, violin and zither by players in full gypsy costume . Names and addresses of all were exchanged during supper in order that Committee representatives and Herr Tauber could keep in contact. We were each given two souvenir postcards by the waiter which are below and we were finally driven back to our hotel just after midnight, exhausted but full of praise for the wonderful way in which we had been looked after by Herr Tauber who had done everything he could to give us a full and interesting day to be remembered for years to come.

There is very little to report of interest regarding the journey home. we left Berlin by air at 11.45.A.M. and arrived at Hamburg at 12-40 and after a quick look around the shops and a light meal were on the train at 3-56.p.m. on our way to Holland. The train journey was comfortable and we had an English soldier and his wife as companions all the way. Unfortunately there was no berth available for me on the night boat (I was still 27th or the waiting list, so I was told ) and I dozed in an arm chair until we docked at 6-30.a.m.(friday)and at 11a.m.I was back in Send once more.

The West Berliners are virtually prisoners and unless they can afford a trip to West Germany itself are unable to have a holiday out of the city. While there are fine shopping areas, there are many parts which still have derelict buildings still standing from the last war, so that the area contrasts between new modern buildings and shabby, overgrown districts. I am convinced that the children benefitted from the holiday in England and feel sure we should start now in order to have things well organised for another venture next year. The Ruislip Groups have an active Committee which meets monthly. It holds Gymkanas, Jumble Sales, Concerts, Raffles (5800 books at a time) and has 500pounds in the Bank . Exeter is also an active and flourishing group. I hope all parents will have found this report of interest and will wish to help our local Committee again in some way or another in the future.