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A London family’s
summer vacation to the Northern Capitals, Hamburg and Nazi Germany
Told by
Nigel Bobroff
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This story begins in August 1937 when my great-grandparents Leopold
and Lily Hirshfield of London took a cruise to northern European cities
with two of their children, Desmond and Joan on board the luxury cruise
ship, the TSS Arandora Star. The
ship left England on 14th August 1937, returning on 3rd
September. The cruise included
stops at Oslo, Gothenburg, Copenhagen, Aarhus, Stockholm, Helsinki,
Tallinn, Zoppot, Danzig, Bornholm, Travemunde, Lubeck and finally Hamburg
before returning to Southampton.
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Introduction page
from album compiled by Desmond Hirshfield, September 1937
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Sixty five years later, on a summer
afternoon in 2002, I would discover hidden in the back of a cupboard, a
photographic diary of the trip compiled by Desmond. From within its pages, a fascinating and
tragic story captured on that summer holiday would emerge.
My great grandfather Leopold, was
born in Birmingham, England in 1889 and died in London in 1966, his wife,
Lily was born in London in 1889 and died in London in 1978, I remember Lily
only vaguely as I was twelve when she died and sadly I never knew Leopold
who died in the year I was born.
Leopold was the son of Tobias Hirschfield, a Polish immigrant who
came to England circa 1870, before marrying Rosa Cohen from Leeds, England
in 1876. Lily was born and raised
in London, the daughter of an affluent tailor.
At the time of the cruise, Leopold
was an active local councillor in Hendon, a suburb of London. The family were affluent but not wealthy
and lived in Golders Green, a leafy suburb of north London in the
1930’s. Leopold and Lily had three
children, Desmond, born 1913, died 1993, later to become The Lord Hirshfield,
Norman, born 1915, died 2000 (my grandfather), later to become Mayor of
Barnet (in London) 1975-1976, during which time Barnet would become twined
with Ramat Gan in Israel and Joan, born 1920, died 1993. Both the sons were well educated having
attended the City of London School during the 1920’s.
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From left:
Leopold, Joan, Lily, Desmond
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The entire journey was meticulously
photographed and recorded with a detailed commentary of events by
Desmond. A beautiful leather bound
album commemorating the trip was produced by him and upon his death was
among some possessions inherited by his brother Norman. A year or so after
Norman’s death, whilst looking through some of his papers, together with my
sister Lara, I stumbled upon the album in the back of a cupboard. It was to reveal the remarkable story of
their summer which had lain dormant for some 65 years.
For so many
of the people and places featured within the album, tragedy and heartbreak
on an unimaginable scale would occur within just a few years.
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