A Detour Worth Taking
I had intended to make this post the story of Anna Essinger’s school after she arrived in England. There is truly a story there.
But then this happened.
Two YouTube videos from alumni of Bunce Court School completely hijacked my blog post. I do recommend listening to their interviews, even though the audio quality is incredibly poor. But I want to share some of their stories here.
Leslie Baruch Brent and Three Words That Changed His Life
Leslie Baruch Brent, born Lothar Baruch, came to England as part of the Kindertransport, a program that rescued over 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi Germany. As I mentioned in my blog about Anna Essinger, Anna was instrumental in organizing one of the reception camps where the children stayed after their arrival.
Leslie was born in 1925 in Köslin, Germany. When antisemitism increased in his hometown, his family took him to a Jewish orphanage in Berlin. He described his years in the orphanage as one of the most traumatic experiences of his life, leaving a small protective family and joining a large institution.
At 13, the director of the orphanage chose him for the first Kindertransport. He arrived at the reception camp that Anna oversaw.
Anna brought several people from her school with her to the camp, including some of the older students. Leslie described playing ping-pong with one of those older students, who described the school and suggested that maybe Leslie would like to go there. Leslie replied, “Maybe I would.”
Three words that would change the course of his life.
Not long after that, he ran into a “very short-sighted lady” who asked, “Who are you?” He told the lady his name, and she asked if he would like to come to her school. He said, “Yes, please.”
Leslie’s Life After Bunce Court
Leslie joined the British Army when he turned 18 in December of 1943. The Army told him to change his name, because if he was captured by the Germans with a German-Jewish name, his chances of surviving the capture were slim. After the war, he felt as if he had rejected his family by taking his new name, and chose to add Baruch as a middle name.
In his interview, Leslie talked a lot about the cook at Bunce Court and how good the food was. The detail that stuck with me was that this same cook sent him care packages after he joined the military.
Leslie went on to study zoology and contributed greatly to Burnet and Medawar’s work, which received a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1960.
Sadly, none of Leslie’s family survived the Holocaust.
Ruth Boronow Danson and the School That Met Her Where She Was
The second interview was of Ruth Boronow Danson. She was born in Breslau, Germany, in 1924. At 12, she witnessed a parade where Hitler passed by in an open car. At 14, she witnessed Kristallnacht. She saw the synagogue burn and warned friends that her father had been arrested. Her father was sent to Buchenwald but returned a month later. The condition of his release was that the family leave Germany.
She arrived in London in the spring of 1939. Her father knew one of the teachers at Bunce Court, so Ruth went to school there.
Ruth did not enjoy school in Germany, and she decided she would no longer attend school in England. She said that Bunce Court handled this dilemma in a very wise and respectful way.
Ruth was sent to live at one of the houses where other girls from the school lived. When the other girls left for school laughing, Ruth remained behind and helped the housekeeper with various mundane chores. The other girls returned from school excited about what they had learned and done. It didn’t take long before Ruth agreed to a half-day at school, then full-time attendance. She even chose to join the French class, although French had been her least favorite subject in Germany. She wrote in a letter to her family, “It shows just how much I’ve changed.”
Poems, Blackout Curtains, and a Gas Mask by the Bed
She still remembers a poem that she and some of the girls wrote to another student who was shirking her chores.
It should be everybody’s duty
To keep the bathroom in its beauty
Everybody ought to know
One cleans the bath with ???
(I’m sorry. I just couldn’t make out that last word.)
Ruth also wrote about the new routines that came when the war began. All of the school had to help with the blackout curtains every night. They were allowed light until a quarter past nine, and they had to keep a chair by their bed holding a pair of shoes, a pair of stockings, and a gas mask.
Anna’s Care, Up Close
Ruth said that Anna never called her to scold her, only to praise her. She especially remembered the day Anna personally delivered the news that she had passed the exam for matriculation.
One other story Ruth shared underlined the stark facts that lay beneath life at Bunce Court. Anna’s mother was interned on the Isle of Man. When she was freed, she moved near the school and looked for work as a piano teacher. Ruth asked Anna if there was a job at Bunce Court for her mother, and Anna had to say no. She explained that it would be difficult for all the other children to see Anna with her mother at the school. These family separations were far different from what was seen in your average boarding school.
Ruth’s mother found a job at a nearby boarding school and remained there long after Ruth left for London, so it seems to have been a good fit. Ruth was occasionally allowed to visit her there.
What Anna Essinger Gave Back
Anna took in many refugee children, including some who arrived after the war and had lived in hiding or survived the concentration camps. For all of them, she tried to give back something that had been stolen from them—their childhood.
When Anna Essinger died, Leslie Brent was asked to speak at her funeral. One line he spoke there sums up this story better than I ever could.
“The death of Anna Essinger will be deeply mourned by her many relatives and friends all over the world, not least by those of us whose fragmented lives she helped to rebuild.”
