Hedi was born in Vienna in 1929. Her father was a defence lawyer, her mother looked after the home, and they led modest lives surrounded by extended family. Hedi remained an only child and although she was brought up to be proud of her Jewish heritage, she struggled to deal with antisemitism in school.
The day following the Anschluss (the German annexation of Austria) in March 1938, Hedi was turned out of her school; a week later her father’s law practice was taken over by a Nazi lawyer; and before the end of the month, the family’s home was requisitioned for a Nazi family. Hedi’s father was made to scrub streets and clean lavatories and was finally arrested for making anti-Nazi comments. Hedi and her mother watched the Kristallnacht (the pogrom of November 1938, in which Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues across Germany and Austria were attacked), from the windows of an apartment belonging to an Austrian socialist who had fled the country and left them her keys.
The family’s attempts to leave the country became desperate when Hedi’s father was released from prison and given six weeks to get out or be sent to Dachau concentration camp. They already had visas for England and a guarantor who pledged to support them financially, but they also needed affidavits from the USA to say that they were on a quota to move on to America in due course. They received the affidavits just in time and left Austria six weeks before the start of the Second World War, and a week after Hedi’s tenth birthday. They arrived with a small suitcase each and £2 17 shillings and six pence between them. 27 members of their extended family perished in the Holocaust.
Life in England was not easy. Hedi’s parents became domestic servants, then her father was interned and subsequently joined the Pioneer Corps, initially the only British army unit in which German and Austrian nationals could serve. He was never able to practice law again. The family remained in England because the war prohibited travel to America. Hedi loved her school in the Midlands. She became a British citizen in 1946. She married and had children and studied to become a social worker. She thinks of herself as a European Jew.