WW2 75.3: The Austrian maids

Continued from
 https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/07/ww2-75-yes-budleigh-was-bombed.html

'Moorcroft', Lansdown Road, offered by Lord Clinton to Belgian refugees in Budleigh during World War One. Perhaps Austrian Jewish refugees were offered work as maids in the 1930s in grand Budleigh houses like this.

Moved and curious as I am when reading stories of the plight of refugees, especially those who have somehow found themselves in our local area, I am continuing on the theme of an earlier post about the German Jewish boy R. Muller, who was evacuated to Budleigh during World War Two. 

Sadly no one has yet contacted me to say that they knew him, but at Exeter Synagogue they are making enquries. 

A 1915 poster published by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, London. It shows a soldier standing defiant as a woman and child flee a burning village in Belgium  Image credit: www.loc.gov

The early years of World War One had seen Belgian refugees in Budleigh, fleeing from the German invasion of their country. 

Long before that, I was fascinated by the story of Daniel Caunières, the 17^th century French vicar of East Budleigh, a Huguenot who had fled his homeland during the reign of Louis XIV.

And now, thanks to a Budleigh friend who is writing a book about the author and artist Joyce Dennys, I learn about the Austrian maids.

Two drawings from Joyce Dennys’ book Repeated Doses (1931), illustrated by the author. She also published Mrs Dose, the Doctor’s Wife. In Budleigh she was better known by many people as Mrs Evans 

While carrying out her research, my friend was told by one of her sources that there were many Austrian maids in Budleigh. And that among the notes that Joyce Dennys made for The Sketch between 1939 and 1946 there was a brief reference to her husband, Budleigh GP Dr Tom Evans. He had had to purchase a German dictionary because he was having trouble understanding what the Austrian maids were suffering from, and was apparently making some amusing mistakes.

‘Wondering whether these women were Jewish refugees,’ my friend wrote, ‘I quickly found myself directed to an excellent history website which contained interviews with some of the many female Austrian Jews - usually highly educated - who were able to escape to this country during the 1930s because of the need for domestic staff in the kind of gentry households with which Budleigh was well endowed.   

‘Many of them had deliberately become proficient not only in English but also in cooking and household management. Inevitably one wonders what on earth it was like for them here in Budleigh, what desperate fears they had to conceal and what their individual stories were. One wonders too how they were regarded by the local populace and their employers. What a pity we'll never know. But I suppose at least they had each other, assuming they were ever given time off to meet up.’

The Guardian of 31 March 1939, reported: ‘Refugees who had been refused permission to stay in England figured in a distressing scene at Croydon airport yesterday. They were so distraught that the pilot of their 'plane thought it unwise to leave, and they will be sent to Copenhagen by train and boat.’  The group, Jewish refugees from Czechoslovakia, had been put on a flight to Warsaw but threatened to jump out of the window if the plane took off.  Source: Wikimedia

Indeed, the extent to which the refugees were welcomed by the British public is a subject that historians like Dr Susanne Wurm have explored in her website. She points out that Jewish domestic servants were not always welcome in the UK, and that unfortunately also, Britain had a long tradition of anti-Semitism that did not just erupt during the Second World War and that the authorities were aware of anti-Jewish sentiment in the British public.

Even Neville Chamberlain seems to have shared such feelings. Dr Wurm quotes from a private letter that the British Prime Minister wrote to his sister Hilda in 1939: ‘I believe that the persecution arose out of two motives, a desire to rob the Jews of their money and a jealousy of their superior cleverness. No doubt Jews aren’t a loveable people. I don’t care about them myself; but that is not sufficient to explain the pogrom.’

Between 1933 and 1939, around 20,000 Jewish, ‘non-Aryan’ or politically active refugee women from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia entered Britain on domestic service permits, writes Dr Rose Holmes, a British historian who has made a special study:  Their immigration, mostly organised by women in the British voluntary sector, served as a moral response to the humanitarian crisis caused by Fascism in Europe, and a practical response to the ‘servant crisis’ in Britain as working-class women increasingly rejected domestic labour.

In  2011, Dorset-based author and screenwriter Natasha Solomons wrote a bestseller, The Novel in the Viola, also published as The House at Tyneford: the heroine, Elise Landau, was inspired by her great–aunt who managed to escape Nazi Europe by becoming a ‘mother’s help’ in England.

Perhaps one of Budleigh’s Austrian maids will inspire a local author to emulate Natasha Solomons’ success. 

Dr Wurm's website about Austrian Jewish maids is at 

http://centraleuropeaneconomicandsocialhistory.com/maid-servants-in-england-austrian-jewish-women-in-emigration-193839

The next piece in my WW2 75 series is at https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/08/ww2-754-resentment-or-reconciliation.html

You can access other posts on this blog by going to the Blog Archive (under the ‘About Me’ section), and clicking on the appropriate heading.