Hana Samson (1933 – 2022) and George Frankl (1935 – 2023)
My beloved sister Hana and brother George were born in Prague in the early 1930’s.
They had a huge influence on my life and in so many ways acted as parents, guides, supporters and critics throughout my life. They were very different in character, almost opposites with Hana, the louder, extrovert, and self-opinionated person, while George was much quieter, quite shy, an introvert but still a person with very clear views on what was right or wrong.
Our parents, Franta and Marta, were married in a ceremony at the Hotel Bristol in Prague in 1931. They were middle class, educated and assimilated Jews. They had many friends and enjoyed, the “good life” entertaining, dining out, theatre, opera and concerts. They had lots of help at home. Mum was an only child and grew up without having to learn to any domestic chores including how to cook, so they had lots of help in the early marital home. Dad and one of his mother’s cousins had their own successful fur trading business. They loved to go skiing in the winter months and to the Bohemian countryside for the summer. They were close to dad’s mum, Fanni Porges, who also lived in Prague, as did his three married sisters.
Mum’s parents, Marta, Julius and Maria Haurowitz lived in Mlada Boleslav, where they owned a general store and some of Hana and George’s early childhood was spent there, where they were looked after by Marta’s elderly nanny, Ruzena. The family enjoyed summer picnic outings into the lovely rolling hills of the Czech Uplands. I am not sure if they were actual members of a synagogue in Prague, perhaps they went occasionally on special occasions.
In Prague, the family lived in a large apartment near the Vltava River. The address was number 46 Podskalská. The famous painter Alphonse Mucha lived at number 7 from 1923 to 1928. It was an almost idyllic life, but by the time George was born in late 1935, the threat from Hitler’s Nazi Germany was a big dark threatening cloud casting a shadow over all the Jews in Bohemia.
It wasn’t long before the threat of Nazi invasion dominated family life. Dad was required to rejoin the army. He had been a soldier in the First World War. The Czech army was well organised and armed but was no real opposition for the Nazi war machine. The 1938 Munich agreement where Chamberlain and Daladier, the French prime minister, agreed to allow Hitler to invade Sudetenland (the German speaking part of Czechoslovakia) meant that the Czech army was left completely exposed and unsupported. As a result the government decided to disband the army and so dad arrived him. As I understand, he immediately made plans for the whole family to get out of Prague. In late 1938 he flew to London with two friends to set up a home for the family in London and to obtain the necessary visas to help mum, Hana and George come to London. Mum managed to arrange for their goods and chattels to be shipped from Prague to London.
Our parents developed a habit of having a photograph taken of Hana and George each summer by a top Prague photographer, a copy of the photo was given to the grandparents. The photo of Hana and George taken in early 1939, both dressed in traditional ‘lederhosen’, was displayed in the fashion photographer’s window in the city square. Both Hana and George had blond hair and blue eyes, which was somewhat unusual for Jewish children.
The Nazis invaded Prague in March 1939 and there was a family story that a German officer picked this photo from the photographer’s shop window and instructed it to appear in the next addition of a daily newspaper, with the headline that this is “What Typical Aryan Children should look like”.
With Dad in London, Hana and George stayed with their grandparents in Mlada Boleslav while mum travelled on the local train to Prague where she spent her days trying to organise permits and travel passes that would allow her and her children to leave Czechoslovakia. It was a huge struggle as the Nazis made life as difficult as possible and put many obstacles in her way. She was a very good-looking woman and one can only speculate about the comments and innuendos she faced from soldiers and bureaucrats she had to convince to provide the important documents.
To assist obtaining the correct visas for her family, mum found a priest who provided an official Baptism certificate for both George and Hana. He even backdated it to October 1935, very shortly after George was born.
During this time, our dad, Franta, was frantically organising visas, tickets and travel permits to enable the family to leave Prague. He was able to obtain plane tickets, but only booked two, assuming George was too small for his own seat because he was less than four years old. Unfortunately, the authorities would not let George on the plane, so the family was unable to leave Prague that day.
The havoc growing in the Jewish community in Prague was horrific. There were rumours about new restrictions and whispered tales of people who knew people that went out at night and never returned. Jews were forced to sell businesses. They were forced to wear yellow stars on their clothes and Jewish children were prohibited from attending school. It took quite a while to get the permissions, but eventually they received papers and had visas and tickets for train travel. Unfortunately, the three grandparents weren’t prepared to leave, they said they were too old and that staying wouldn’t be so terrible for them. Mum had some of her jewellery coated in lead, most of it she left with the family nanny in Mlada Boleslav.
They finally left on a train bound for Holland in August 1939. It must have been agonising for mum, torn between leaving her parents and trying to get to safety with her husband and protecting her children. It turned out that this was the last train that was allowed to travel through Germany. They arrived in Harwich just a few days before war was declared.
Franta’s two friends had moved out of the apartment the three men had rented in Hendon and Marta and the two children moved in.
Hana had good memories of her early life in Prague, particularly remembering outings with granddad Haurowitz to the parks and riverside. George always said, he had no memories of those years, maybe he was too young, maybe he was traumatised by their abrupt departure from Prague.
The family moved around a few times during the war years from Hendon to Orpington and then to Beaconsfield to escape the worst of the Blitz and finally to Finchley in late 1943 or early 1944. Schooling was haphazard and uncertain. I don’t have any direct stories of what their lives were like during this period. It must have been incredibly difficult. Dad had to find ways to earn a living and mum who must have been terribly worried about her parents, had to run a home without any of the servants or help that she had grown up with, and also with rationing, shortage of food and a hugely limited budget. Our parents were very loving, but also really clear about the need for children to help with everyday duties and responsibilities. Hana and George were not indulged in any way. Life was hard, difficult and probably quite frightening as Britain was under the threat of invasion and the bombing of London was continuous in those first years. The weight of responsibility and duty are attributes that dominated Hana and George’s lives throughout their teenage years, early adulthood and through to becoming parents themselves. The impact on me was similar but learnt more from Hana than George.
In Czechoslovakia, the situation for our grandparents deteriorated very quickly. Our relatives in Prague were forced to move into crammed accommodation in a ghetto like area and those in the countryside lost all their businesses, authority and bank accounts. Eventually, in early 1943 they were all sent to Terezin. Mum’s father, Julius died there in December 1943, grandmother, Maria was sent to Auschwitz where she was murdered in May 1944. and somehow, Fanni, the oldest of the three survived. My cousin Zdenka Kalinova, daughter of Artur Klein, Maria’s nephew, passed on to me five postcards that were sent by the grandparents to Artur from Terezin. They were about food parcels he had sent to them.
My cousin Paul Verba, dad’s nephew was seconded to the American Army in Prague as a translator and he found Fanni in a hospital in Prague in June 1945. Sadly. She was very sick and when she heard that her youngest two daughters and their husbands had been murdered by the Nazis, she gave up the fight to recover and died within a few weeks.
In England, at the age of eight in 1943, George started at a preparatory boarding school and then at eleven he moved to Framlingham College. Hana went to a local school in Finchley, eventually getting a place at Henrietta Barnett School, a very good all-girls school. After the war, our house in Finchley became a centre for many Czech refugees living in London. In particular, our cousins, Hana Bandler and dad’s nephew and niece Paul and Eva Verba, along with the young trainee rabbi, Hugo Gryn.
Back in England he bought a house in Finchley in North London. 57 Beechwood Avenue became the family home.
One of dad’s friends who had come with him to London before the war was Pepik (Joseph) Robbins. His wife, Manja, was not Jewish, and she and their son Charles stayed in Czechoslovakia throughout the war. They finally got to London as the war ended and Charles became George’s best friend.
In the summers of 1946 and 1947, the family travelled to Prague during the summer. George and Hana spent much of the time in Mlada Boleslav, staying in the flat above the toy shop that had belonged to two of our uncles, Rudolf Klein and Rudolf Haurowitz before the war. Our parents searched for any surviving relatives and tried to decide whether they should move back to Czecholsovakia. The full invasion by Russian troops in early 1948 ended that debate!
In early 1948, our dad made a trip to New York to see the family should move to America. He very quickly came across significant prejudice against Jews and black people and decided that life was not for us! But he did come back with an 8mm movie camera, which he enjoyed using. He also came home to discover, mum was pregnant and I guess that was a major surprise to them all. I arrived at the end of July and the following day the London summer Olympics began. George and Charles spent the next two weeks travelling to Wembley Stadium to enjoy long days of athletics. George told me that the stadium was quite empty most of the time, they had excellent inexpensive seats and sports programmes where they recorded all of the results. My presence on the scene did not distract from their enjoyment – perhaps they were even encouraged to stay away. Later that summer Hana and George were sent away to the Czech School in Shropshire for most of the summer. Hana told me once that this had not been a happy experience for either of them.
George had little time to become acquainted with me, because he headed straight back to Framlingham in September. He stayed there until he was nineteen, only coming home during the holidays.
Our parents liked to travel during the summer holidays and in the small family car, a Morris Eight, they drove across Europe to Adelboden in Switzerland. In the early years, some form of cot with me in it sat on George and Hana’s laps, with a string of drying cloth nappies waving across the car in their faces. I cannot imagine teenagers today putting up with such a situation.
I do remember, our parents entertaining on Sunday afternoons, many of their Czech friends came over for card games and tea, sandwiches and cake.
Back at school, George was a reasonable student and became a good rugby player. He obtained his school certificate and was most interested in becoming an engineer.
Hana wanted to go to Art College, but our dad said he needed her to go out to work and so she joined a dress making company in Mayfair, where she learnt some good skills but was very disappointed that she could not develop her artistic talents.
In 1952, our mum became very unwell with septicaemia following some dental work. Hana was required to both looking after our mum and take me back and forth to a nursery. She had also become involved with the Junior Membership group (JM) at The West London Synagogue. The Synagogue Review – The Organ of the Association of Synagogues in Great Britain, April 1953 recorded under the Junior Membership heading “Thanks to Hana Frankl and her family for providing their home for the last Oneg of the year.” In this group she met people who she stayed friendly with all of the rest of her life. She also met Jeoff Samson, who eventually proposed marriage. I suppose that her friends were pairing up and getting married and she felt that this was her ‘duty’ as well. Our parents would expect nothing else, so Hana probably never even considered any other possibility. I suspect in later life she regretted this. I have a vague recollection that she had another boyfriend before Jeoff and somehow that relationship was deemed unsuitable, so maybe Jeoff was regarded as a more appropriate ‘catch’.
As soon as George finished school in the summer of 1954, he had to join the armed forces to complete his National Service. This was compulsory for all young men after they left school. He joined the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME). For most of these two years, he was based in Catterick, Yorkshire. The unit he was allocated to concentrated on looking after tanks and tank transporters. George learnt how to drive both and often talked about this experience later in life. The Suez crisis occurred while he was at Catterick and he and his team were required to drive the huge tank transporters carrying the new Centurion tanks to the South Coast for shipping to the Middle East. I remember George bringing me a Dinky Toy version of a Centurion Tank on its tank transporter. It was a hugely treasured gift.
I believe that dad tried to advise Hana not to marry Jeoff, but she did not take his advice and they were married at The West London Synagogue in December 1955. They moved into a small flat in Sheen, Richmond. At the time Jeoff, who had obtained a first class degree in Physics at night school, was working for an instrument manufacturer called Foxboro Yoxall.
At the end of May in 1956, our parents took me away for a weekend visit to Bournemouth. My mum was driving on the way home and somewhere near Blackheath, something went wrong and the car hit a tree. Very unfortunately and extremely sadly, she was killed in the crash. Dad had a bad injury to his leg and I had a bruised back.
We were on our way to got to Hana and Jeoff for lunch at their flat in Sheen.
George was home for the weekend and travelled with our cousin Hana Bandler by bus from Finchley to Sheen. George and Jeoff were required to go to the hospital to identify Marta’s body. George described that day as the worst of his life.
I have two specific memories of that weekend. The first is in the hotel in Bournemouth. I was sleeping in a separate room from my parents, with a linking door between the rooms. One morning, I opened the door between the two rooms and came face to face with mum, standing stark naked in the middle of the room – she screamed and shouted at me to get out of the room – I was very shocked and scared, and immediately backed out of the room.
Later that day, the car crash occurred, and I have one vivid memory like a photograph of my mother lying on the ground with red blood all over her white blouse.
I felt for years that my only and dominating memory of mum, was her shouting at me that morning. Unfortunately, that is the only memory I have of any event or activity with her. I know about other family occasions but sadly cannot recollect any personal direct interaction between us. I guess I went into some sort of shock or depressive state as I have no memories of the next few years.
I have also recently realised that I cannot recall anything about my mum’s personality. I imagine that she was a caring, loving mother, because if she was not, I imagine I would have negative impressions. I recall asking Hana once or twice about what she was really like but mainly got a description about how she managed in the war years, coming from a background where she had servants, so had no experience of looking after a household or even cooking a meal. Hana said she was very creative making birthday cakes that looked and tasted good, with the very scarce sugar and other ingredients available through the ration system of the day, but never anything about what mum was really like. I think Hana once also told me that mum was an excellent piano player and she said that mum had mentioned that her family was somehow linked to that of Gustav Mahler. I was able to make the link through Geni.com, but it was not exactly a close link via my grandfather’s sister’s husband’s family!
George’s reply to me was that he was away at school so much, that he also had little memory of what she was like. Maybe it’s a little strange that it is only now some 69 years after she died, that I have really start to recognise that I know so little about what she was like as a person and that I would really like to understand what sort of person she was, and of course, now there is no-one else to ask. I have also recently realised that I have no recollection of her voice. I guess she must have had quite a strong Czech accent, as she came from Prague with scarcely a word of English and I remember from some of the other female friends of dad, that they all had quite limited grasp of the language and very strong accents.
After her funeral, a cremation at Hoop Lane, which I did not attend, Dad asked or perhaps ordered, Hana to come back to Finchley to look after us, but after a few months, Jeoff insisted, quite rightly, that she should go back to the marital home. Our cousin Hana Bandler came to live with us for a while, but that didn’t work out so well and he decided to employ a housekeeper.
It is only recently that I have begun to think about the impact that her death must have had on both Hana and George. George was still only twenty years old and had so much of his childhood and teenage years away from home that just at the moment when he was in a position to build a new adult relationship with his mother, she was taken away from him – a devastating blow. And for Hana who had been very close to mum, often having to help out at home and act as carer for me, the loss of someone to talk to and confide in as she began her own married life must have been equally damaging.
After George finished his National Service, he enrolled at the Battersea College for Advanced Technology to study for a degree in mechanical engineering. He contacted our cousins Franta Mautner and Pepik Schuck, who ran a business importing Contessa Scooters from Czechoslovakia and bought a large very heavy scooter. He used this to travel to Battersea from Finchley and he even made a couple of summer holiday trips around France.
With his best friend Charles he joined Maccabi Association London, a Jewish sports club. They decided that they wanted to learn to sail and joined the sailing section. The sailing took place at Burnham-on-Crouch, a small town on the Essex Coast, just north of Southend. They both learned to sail well and enjoyed many weekends travelling down to Burnham with the rest of the sailing section.
He stayed living in the family home in Beechwood Avenue with me and dad, while he travelled to Battersea for his studies. I was not doing particularly well at school, so he decided to move me to a Prep School to get prepare for the Common Entrance exam and an eventual move to a Public School. The chosen school was called Leas House and it was a short bus ride away.
After a term or two at Lease House, I became a weekly boarder and the housekeeper left. Dad had a row with the headteacher at Leas House because while trying to get me into Brighton College, he received a letter saying that their Jewish Quota was fully covered and therefore they would not take any more Jewish boys. This made dad furious and he wrote a very angry letter to the College. This led to the headteacher at Leas house requesting that Dad removed me from the school!
In 1959, Dad married Milada Pick, aka Mila, and they decided to move away from Finchley. The house was sold to our cousins, the Mautners and Dad, Mila, George and I moved to a lovely large flat in an apartment block called Alvanley Court on Finchley Road. George continued his studies at Battersea, while Mila found a new school for me in Swiss Cottage.
Hana became pregnant and their son Jonathan was born in September 1959. Shortly after this, Jeoff accepted a job working for his dad, who owned a canning business, which made a variety of tinned goods for Marks and Spencer as well as some own brand products. The factory was in Didcot near Oxford. Jeoff decided to join the company as managing director, so he could get some management experience. He and Hana bought a new house in Oxford.
During the summer of 1960, the four of us went on a trip to Prague and northern Italy. I remember seeing the “Iron Curtain” at the border from Germany into Czechoslovakia, the huge fences, rolled barbed wire , watch towers with soldiers and machine guns. It was quite frightening. The visit to Prague depressed our dad, who found the dismal grey country with his defeated and down trodden cousins, too much to take and so we left early and drove on to Merano in northern Italy, where we met up with our cousins the Schucks.
I eventually passed the Common Entrance exam in July 1961 and got a place at Sutton Valence School in Kent. During that summer we made another trip to Merano and at the beginning of September I had my barmitzvah at Alyth Gardens Synagogue. A week later I was taken to Sutton Valence for my first term.
At the end of this term I came back to Alvanley Court with a rather average school report. Dad expressed his disappointment with my report and there was a slightly frosty atmosphere in the flat. The day after Boxing Day, late in the evening, after I had gone to bed, dad had a major heart attack in the bathroom of the apartment. When it happened I was asleep. The very strange sound of dad breathing through an oxygen machine woke me up. I lay half asleep wishing that the fearful sound would stop. When it did, I sort of knew that something terrible had happened, but was glad there was quiet and I could get back to sleep. When I woke in the morning, Mila and George were sitting in the kitchen and they told me that dad had died during the night.
I cannot recall how I felt, I guess all my emotions shut down again. The funeral service, a cremation, was held soon after and I was sent back to Sutton Valence at the beginning of term, probably just a few days later. The impact of his death on all three of us was huge. He was a very kind and loving dad, quite strict and very clear on what was right or wrong. He very actively helped others and believed strongly in duty! In our different ways, we were quite lost without his leadership and guidance.
I think in our different ways, we all went through a period of depression. Hana gave birth in February 1962 to a daughter and named her Frances from his name, Franta. It must have been very hard for her to look after a new baby, toddler Jonathan and all the housekeeping. Jeoff decided to leave his dad’s business and managed to land a job with an instrument making company based in Workington, Cumberland called Fischer and Porter. This meant they had to move and they found a house, on the top of a steep hill overlooking the town of Whitehaven. This managing director job for Jeoff, was very suited to his skills and interest, but it also left Hana hundreds of miles away from her friends and family. It was a lonely and tough existence for her. She worked hard to meet a few people and through some of Jeoff’s work contacts made some new acquaintances so they could have some form of social life.
George completed his studies and started work at Napier Engines. I think he relied on his sailing friends to help him deal with the loss.
Mila decided that they could not afford to stay living in Alvanley Court and moved to a smaller and cheaper flat in Chalk Farm. When I came back from school at the end of that Easter Term, the move had already taken place. During that summer of 1962, George, who by then had graduated from the scooter to a convertible Hillman Minx, took me to Burnham-on-Crouch for a week of sailing. It was a formative week for me. It gave me a life-long love of sailing and for Burnham. It helped build our friendship and a strong relationship which lasted until George passed away in 2023.
As soon as I had gone back to Sutton Valence, Mila told George that it was time he moved out and started living on his own. He found a small bedsit in Willesden and Hana helped him to get set up with a small amount of kitchen equipment, cutlery and crockery. The sailing section at Maccabi formed the centre of his social life and he was instrumental in organising some very popular dances and fundraising events. It was there he met Linda Fishburn, who soon also became very involved in the sailing section. The Fishburn family welcomed George into their midst. In 1963 they got engaged and were married in November 1964 at Dollis Hill Synagogue.
George left Napiers and started working on an exciting new project “The TSR2” a new UK jet aircraft fighter. Unfortunately, the Government withdrew funding and he had to find another job. Eventually he joined Simms Group Research and Development (SGRD), a very good choice as he grew and stayed with them as they changed ownership for the rest of his working career.
George and Linda managed to scrape enough of a deposit together to buy a three bedroomed semi-detached house in Kenton, Midddx. 28 Uxendon Hill was their starter home. George spent much of their first two years in the house installing central heating. They continued to enjoy sailing with Maccabi, travelling to Burnham most summer weekends and working on maintaining the boats during the winter months. The even managed to visit me once a term at Sutton Valence.
When Passover or the High Holy Days were in the school holidays, the Fishburn family generously included an invitation to me to join their family celebratory meals. This was my first exposure to any sort of enjoyable, participatory Jewish event. I also began to form a friendship with David, Linda’s brother, who was two years older than me.
During one or two of the longer holiday breaks, Jeoff would pick me up from Mila’s flat and take me with him back to Whitehaven. I had two or three very enjoyable vacations with Hana and on a few occasions took the bus into the heart of the Lake District for enjoyable exploratory walks.
After a couple of years at Fischer & Porter, Jeoff moved on and got a senior job with Negretti and Zambra, a larger and more established instrument maker based in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. They moved to the village of Jordans and into a lovely big house. Hana had acquired a lovely border collie called Scamp and during the school holidays, I spent many an enjoyable day walking the fields with him. I also had time to be with Hana and became much more aware of how unhappy she was in her marriage. Her commitment to ‘duty’ taught to her by our dad, meant that she was absolutely committed to her marriage vows and there was no way, she would contemplate a divorce.
After I finished school at Sutton Valence in July 1966, I planned to follow in George’s footsteps and go to Battersea College to study Chemical Engineering. When I returned to Chalk Farm and Mila’s flat, she told me that she didn’t want me to stay living with her anymore. Fortunately, and very generously, George and Linda offered me a home in Kenton. It was a very generous offer, especially since they had only been married for about eighteen months. After a few weeks staying with Hana & Jeoff and working at a local supermarket, I moved in with George and Linda and bought a Vespa scooter, so I could travel back and forth to Battersea. On my first day at Battersea I met Patrick McArthy a fellow chem eng student, who I soon discovered enjoyed sailing and that was the start of a life long friendship.
Now that I was living in London, I joined Maccabi and the sailing section and weekend trips to Burnham continued sometimes with George & Linda and at other times with Linda’s brother David and her cousins Howard and Judy.
In early 1967, Linda announced that she was pregnant and Alexander arrived on the scene in November. After Alexander’s birth, Linda suffered for a quite severe attack of psoriatic arthritis which was very painful and limited her ability to walk freely. She tried many different diets to relieve the symptoms, sometimes they worked for a while, but often for not very long. As a child she had caught Polio and perhaps this weakened her resistance to this unpleasant illness.
Both Patrick and I decided to opt for industrial years. Our cousin Paul, a chemical engineer living in Toronto got me a job with his company as a shift operator at their Oil Refinery in Mississauga.
Linda decided that she was going to knit me a special sweater to keep me warm in the cold Canadian winter months. I had to wear the monster five strand heavyweight woollen sweater on my journey to Canada in July, as it was too large and heavy to pack in a suitcase! On my return from Canada in March 1968 I moved to Newark, Nottinghamshire to complete my industrial year. During this year, Battersea College of Technology moved to Guilford, Surrey and became the University of Surrey. I moved into the Jewish flat in one of the Halls of Residence for my last year of studies. I completed my degree course in June 1970 with a Third Class Degree – the same as Patrick. We had accepted jobs together at Bush Boake Allen, a manufacturer of Food Flavours and concentrated Fragrances based in Stratford East London. Ewe agreed to rent a flat together near Alexandra Palace.
In early 1970, Timothy joined Alexander in the Kenton household and George and Linda decided it was time to move to a larger house not all that far away, but with a much larger garden and living room. Although advised not to have any more children because of the effect another pregnancy might have on her health, in 1973 she did become pregnant and Jason was born in 1974.
Through my involvement in Maccabi, I met Carol Stechler in the Spring of 1972. Carol was keen to learn to sail and soon became proficient. We became engaged and married in the summer of 1974. Our summer weekends were dominated by journeys to Burnham.
George’s career with SGRD continued to develop and around this time, the company was purchased by Lucas Industries. George became a senior project engineer and eventually asked to lead all of SGRD.
Jeoff left Negretti and Zambra and join the much bigger company, Plessey. He began to travel regularly down to their headquarters in Poole. They decided to move away from Jordans to a large apartment in Montagu Mansions very near Baker Street and Regents Park. Jonathan went to St Paul’s School while Frances went to City of London Girls School. They did not particularly enjoy school and I think because their parents were always critical of their results, they left as soon as possible. Jonathan to work as a trainee stockbroker in the city and Frances went into the hotel business, promoting hotel facilities and organising events.
In June 1983, Frances married Andrew Balcombe at west London Synagogue and moved into a house in West Hampstead. Two years later Jonathan married Debbie Pollock in Cardiff. They moved into a house in Radlett.
As Alex, Timothy and Jason grew up. George introduced them to sailing at Burnham and they also used to tow their sailing boat to the South of France for their summer holidays in Gites and Villas. Alex was not well encouraged by his time at Haberdasher Aske School and left to go into the building trade, learning how to make furniture and training to become a project estimator. Tim went to Westminster College to study surveying, Alex eventually joined him on the same course and Jason studied electrical engineering. At one time the three of them were part of the Westminster College Water Polo Team.
When Carol and I came back from three and a half years living in New Jersey, we also brought back the complete kit to build an above ground swimming pool. In the end it was too large for our new home in Woodside Park, so George took it off our hands and put it up in his garden. They enjoyed it for a few years and then replaced it with a proper built in pool inside a glass house and with an excellent heating system. This they enjoyed for many years and it was particularly helpful for Linda and her arthritis.
Jeoff’s career continued to progress, and he became a senior director at Standard Telephones & Cable (STC) and when this was bought by ITT, his role grew. They moved to a large five story house in Canonbury with a small garden. Scamp was placed with Rigsby a larger but lovely dog and through walking the dog, Hana made new friends in and around Highbury Fields.
Their first grandchildren appeared in 1988, Nicky to Jon & Debbie; Katy to Frances & Andrew. Amy and William followed a couple of years later.
Hana also trained as a magistrate and sat on the Family Court in Harlesden until she was compulsory retired in 2003 at the age of 70. She also continued her art training and rented a small studio in St John’s Wood, which she shared with one or two other artists. She developed her skills as a sculptress and began to produce many beautiful wooden and stone sculptures, often of human figures, but almost never with any faces. She sold many of these and eventually one she made referring to the Holocaust called Defiance, Denial and Despair we used to place on top of a column in the Jewish Cemetery in Mlada Boleslav, Czechia, which is where our mum was born. This was a memorial to all our relatives who had been murdered by the Nazis.
In 2003 Hana and I made a trip to Prague visiting Mlada Boleslav and Louny where our dad has been born. It was a very rewarding trip for me and encouraged me to carry on my search for surving relatives. During this visit Hana discovered a lump in her groin and eventually this was discovered to be cancer and led to several months of aggressive treatment. Partly as a result of the treatment, Hana and Jeoff moved from their big house in Canonbury to a flat in Swiss Cottage. The two of them used to make a big trip to the Curtain Bluff Hotel on Antigua, an annual January visit that Hana thoroughly enjoyed.
George’s career also progressed well and he became one of the country’s leading experts in fuel injection systems for large diesel engines. His team designed innovative systems which he helped to sell to major engine producers all over the World. A large new factory was built in Gloucestershire, and they won the Queens Award for industry. George was very proud to be invited to receive the award from the Queen, he was promoted to Chief Engineer. He was a very good manager and with Linda’s excellent hospitality skills, they arranged many good social gatherings for his team.
Lucas Industries were bought by an American company and George decided to take a slightly early retirement before the end of the twentieth Century.
In 1999, Alex fell in love with an Australian girl spending time in the UK, when she returned home, he followed her to Sydney. His romantic plans didn’t work out, but he fell in love with Australia and Tim and Jason joined him for a wonderful touring holiday. He managed to get some work helping to project manage a large building project for Lend Lease and this set up his career path for many years. He met Gila Rakusin and they married in May 2000. Tim and Jason followed soon after in June 2001 and January 2002, but fortunately for George and Linda they stayed in the London area. Over the next few years they all produced grandchildren, eight in total. George and Linda loved hosting and entertaining all of them and made several trips to Sydney to spend the Australian summers with Alex, Gila and Natasha.
Linda’s joints continued to cause her problems and her ability to move around and walk became severely restricted. This put extra stress and burden on George especially when they travelled anywhere.
In about 2018 George was diagnosed with Leukaemia and started having to make regular visits to University College Hospital for chemotherapy injections. These visits often took all day and sometimes I was able to go with him and although the treatment was tiring for him, it was lovely for me to be able to spend time with him.
Jeoff’s health also deteriorated and Hana was having to spend more time looking after him. He finally passed away in January 2020. Hana was not really able to make much of the time she had after he died as the restrictions of the Covid pandemic started in March 2020 and she found the next year and a half very hard. She disliked all forms of technology, so was not able to communicate using a tablet or smart phone. We did manage to bring to Cambridge to enjoy some sunshine for a few days. She really did enjoy sitting on our terrace and aborbing the sunshine. Once we had all been vaccinated and we were able to move around more freely, we were able to take Hana to some of the Sunday morning concerts at the Wigmore Hall. In the summer of 2022 Jonathan and Frances helped Hana move to the care home Signature at Hendon Hall. We all though it was lovely, but Hana really disliked being there, she hated losing her freedom and independence. Her health deteriorated and she finally passed away in December 2022.
George’s health was also getting much worse and in February he was taken into St Luke’s Hospice in Kenton. He was only there for a short time and died in March. Unfortunately, Linda could not cope at all with the loss of the love of her life and she was soon diagnosed with a fearsome cancer of her throat and she died in July.
