Kerry's Children: A Jewish Childhood in Nazi Germany and Growing up in South Wales

Name of traveller

Ellen Davies (b. 1929)

Reason for travel

• German Jewish refugee from Third Reich

Date of travel

June 1939

I followed mother to the bathroom to wash my hands, then downstairs to the dining room. Waiting at the table was father, a man I grew to love. I know he loved me, but was never allowed to show it, my new mother would not permit it. (Davies 56)

Content

• customs:
  • descriptions of Jewish community life in south Wales, difficulties and rewards
  • taboo of meeting with non-Jewish boys
• language: 
  • no knowledge of English prior to arrival in Swansea
  • learns English quickly in school
• diet: difficulty and sometimes impossibility of finding kosher food in south Wales
• people:
  • adoptive parents: elderly couple of immigrants from Poland and Russia
  • adoptive mother changes Kärry's name to Ellen
  • clashes with local children who attack the author for her being German
  • chronicles her family life in post-War Swansea
• politics:
  
  • suffering traumatic experience of the Kindertransport in 1939
  • years of volunteer work around Wales by giving lectures to children and adults about childhood in Nazi-Germany

Nationality of traveller

German

Language of publication

English

Gender of traveller

Female

Type of publication

autobiography

Citation

Davis, Ellen. Kerry's Children: A Jewish Childhood in Nazi Germany and Growing up in South Wales. Bridgend: Seren, 2004. Print.