In a very different world and time, Anna Reinert gave birth to Frieda in a Klagenfurt hospital. Home was Leoben. It was here, that Anna and Marcus set about teaching Frieda the skills they had expected to pass onto a son. Frieda learned how to ride a bike, ski, skate and climb trees.
 
Overjoyed, they paid scant attention to the rising populism and anti-Semitism. Marcus and Anna continued to work at their ladies and gents' outfitters. As for Frieda, she went to the local school and spent lots of time playing with her best friends Greta and Evi.
 
Then, one day in 1938, Frieda arrived at school to find the desks re-arranged. Hers and Greta's desk had been separated from the others. As Jews, they had to sit well away from the other children. The environment soon became hostile and dangerous. Marcus had no choice. He gave up his shop and the family moved to Vienna, as did Greta and her family. Marcus then tried to escape into Holland and Belgium. His intention was to get Anna and Frieda out afterwards. The plan failed and he returned to Vienna. Meanwhile, Evi and her parents fled to Czechoslovakia, where they were murdered in a concentration camp.
 
It is impossible to imagine Marcus and Anna's feelings that day at the train station. With a pretence of joy and false promises, they put Frieda on the Kindertransport. They assured her they would follow shortly. They knew they would not. They were exterminated too.
 
Frieda and Greta travelled together. Separated on arrival, Frieda went to a girl's hostel in Tynemouth. There, Frieda and the other girls exchanged letters with their parents. In letters to their children, the parents pleaded for sponsors, so that they too could come to England. None came forward.
 
The war started and the letters ended. There was great fear about what would happen to the girls if the Nazis invaded Britain. The matrons persuaded the girls to destroy their parents' letters.
 
Later, in 1939, the girls moved from Tynemouth to a hostel in Windermere, where they remained until 1946. Frieda formed lifelong friendships with many of the girls, particularly Ruth. Ruth and Greta both died in 2020.
 
Frieda always remembered her time in Windermere with fondness. The end of the war brought great joy, but also great trepidation to Frieda and the other hostel girls. With no reason to stay, they dispersed.
 
Frieda went to London, where she worked as a typist and went to teacher training college. It was here that she joined a club for Kindertransport refugees in 1948. Another member of the group, a certain George Jonas, set about wooing Frieda with cricket and concerts.
 
Frieda and George married on 23 December 1951. Shortly after George qualified as a solicitor, they moved to Birmingham in 1952. I arrived in 1956, five weeks premature, a direct result of mum laughing too much when watching The Gold Rush. My sister Helen joined us on 8 March, 1959.
Frieda qualified as a teacher and taught until I was born. She then became a full time mother and later bookkeeper for my father's firm, until they both retired.


It is difficult to describe how close George and Frieda were and how supportive Frieda was to George. My father was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in December 2004. He died the following July. My mother had never intended nor expected to outlive my father. However, as she told me shortly after his death, 'she wasn't ready to die just yet'.
 
Frieda never got over George’s death. Not that this stopped her from having a more active social life than the younger members of her family. In her 80s she would drive to meet friends at the theatre in Malvern, holidayed abroad and was going to concerts up until lockdown.
 
Throughout her life, Frieda was the gentlest of people, only seeing the good in others. She retained her interest in current affairs up until the end.

She treated her daughter – in – law, Hazel, and her son – in – law, Bill, as if they were her own children. She was thrilled at the births of her two grandchildren, Tim and Mike and was devoted to them.

© Steven Jonas