Foley by Smith Michael

Author:Smith, Michael [Smith, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785900686
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2016-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

Powitzer asked if he could have an interpreter. ‘Yes, of course,’ the SS officer said politely for the benefit of the British visitor before going to fetch one. Once they were alone, Powitzer turned to Foley and said: ‘I understand English, sir.’ Foley smiled and said: ‘Tomorrow you’ll be free and there are papers at the consulate for you to travel to Palestine.’ ‘What about the child?’ Powitzer asked. ‘Don’t worry, he is also registered on the papers,’ said Foley. ‘Your brother in Palestine has taken care of everything.’ The next day, someone was waiting at the camp gates to pick Powitzer up and take him to collect his young son. A few days later, they were on their way to Palestine.

Although for some time it had been clear to most people, even Chamberlain himself, that appeasement would not work, it was finally brought home on 15 March 1939, when Hitler sent his troops into Bohemia and Moravia, the only parts of the Czech lands left unoccupied. Hitler had originally given the order to invade Czechoslovakia in May 1938. The invasion, planned for October of that year, had only been forestalled by Munich. Now he had acquired enough Austrian and Czech armaments to arm more than forty more divisions and had immensely strengthened his strategic position in the south. Göring said quite openly that the transfer of Czech arms factories to Germany would be a major advantage ‘in the event of an attack on Poland’.

Two days after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain announced that if there were any further attacks by Germany on small states, Britain would ‘resist to the utmost of its power’. Few people now doubted that the invasion of Poland would come, and with it a major European war.

Yet despite the gathering storm clouds, Berlin’s nightlife remained as lively as it had been in the Golden Twenties. ‘There was always something going on really,’ said Ann Forbes-Robertson.

The nightclubs were a very social affair. Great fun. You would see Frank every evening at one or other nightclub with his wife. They were all mostly in the Kurfürstendamm. But it seemed every house was a nightclub. You didn’t pay to go in. There were so many of them, they were delighted to welcome you.

Some of them were like in the film Cabaret . Some of them laid on quite an elaborate entertainment. I remember there was the Journalists’ Club where it was always rather daring, rather naughty anti-state jokes, where you always felt: ‘We’re going to be raided’. There were also of course the ones that did a little more than others. You know, telephones on the table. You rang up the girls that you wanted but I wasn’t really into quite that sort of field of course.

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