As a successful doctor in Berlin, Elsa Shamash’s father was reluctant to leave Germany. But after Kristallnacht, that all changed
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Even 80 years on from her flight from the Nazis, Elsa Shamash, 91, retains a strong German accent. She is a little deaf and her daughter helps her understand my questions. Her father was a pioneering radiologist and the family, which lived in Berlin, was wealthy. She and her brother Heinz were at private school before Adolf Hitler came to power, but then had to transfer to a Jewish school. The family’s non-Jewish maid had to quit: it was no longer permissible for Jews and non-Jews to work together.
Her father had been a medical officer in the first world war, so was given permission to carry on working in medicine but, from 1936 on, he could only treat Jewish patients. The family was considering emigrating: her father visited Palestine, but felt it would never be peaceful; they also had visas for Ecuador, but worried that the climate would be unsuitable. It seems extraordinary now that they would stay in Germany rather than flee to South America because of the weather, but Shamash says her father was 61 and worried how he would make a living outside Germany. “He didn’t expect Hitler to last,” she says.
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