We’ve created this website to preserve, honour, explore and share our discoveries about our Jewish family history.  
 
The inspiration for our research came from a recording of our Austrian grandmother Hedwig’s reminiscences as a holocaust refugee. It was made on a hand held cassette recorder by Rachel Stevens and her husband John Brough in 1991 at her residential home in north London. Hedwig died in 1995 aged 91. The tapes lay ‘dormant’ until 2017 when we started to listen again and realised their full significance as a first-hand account of living through the rise of fascism and its aftermath.  
 
We have included some short audio clips from Hedwig’s reminiscences on these pages. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hedwig’s story begins in 1930’s Vienna and follows our family's escape from Nazi occupied Europe to the safe haven of England.  
 
Hedwig describes Grandpa Siegfried’s escape from their Vienna apartment after Kristallnacht in November 1938 and his journey through Europe in search of an escape route for his family. This led him to shelter under the protection of Muslims on the coast of occupied Albania in a Jewish refugee community where he was reunited with Hedwig and son (our late father) Eric.  

Then, with visas and the sponsorship of a “guardian angel”, they arrived in England just a week before the war broke out.  After a brief stay in London they were offered sanctuary with the Boyle family in the rural idyll of Linton, West Yorkshire. 
 
Other family members weren't so fortunate. We honour their stories too on these pages. 
 
During the war, Siegfried was interned as an “Enemy Alien” on the Isle of Man before joining the Pioneer Corps to serve in the British Army. After the war, the family moved to be near Siegfried’s sister in north London and a new chapter began. 
 
Our 'First Generation', Hedwig (Grandma), Siegfried (Grandpa) and Eric (Dad), have passed away. But we, in the second generation and our children Alice, Arran, Josh and Amy in the third generation, can be the guardians of their experiences and memories. 
 

May we never forget. 

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Harriet, Rachel and Jessica (Eric's daughters)