A York woman whose Jewish father was given sanctuary in the city after escaping from the Nazis during the war says we should welcome Afghan refugees with open arms.

Speaking as York prepares to take in a ‘small number’ of refugee families, Rose Berl said: “Dad was always so grateful to York. We are so lucky to live here, where we have no fear that someone is going to be hammering on the door in the night.

“We have to welcome these Afghan refugees. They don’t want to leave their country - but if they stayed who knows what would happen to them? We had the Jewish refugees in 1939, and we have the Afghan refugees now.”

Rose’s father Max Berl was born in what was to become Czechoslovakia in 1906.

He was well educated, and by the mid 1930s was a ‘wealthy young bachelor’ who had recently taken over the running of the family’s sawmill business from his uncle, Sigmund. Max's father Heinrich had died of cancer in 1933.

Given what was to come that was, in a way, a lucky escape for Heinrich, Rose said.

The Berls lived in a mainly German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland. In October 1938, with the complicity of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, the region was swallowed up by Hitler’s Germany.

York Press:

Max Berl aged about 60

Jews in the Sudetenland were stripped of their property rights - and Max even found himself being imprisoned, until he agreed to sign a document giving up his claim to the family business.

His family - mother Emilie, sister Hilda and younger brother Fritz - moved out of the Sudentenland to Prague, where they thought they would be safer. Eventually, Max joined them - and, seeing what was coming, tried to persuade them to flee the country with him.

They refused. “They thought that it was going to be OK,” Rose said.

“Grandma didn’t want to leave the country where her husband was buried, and Aunt Hilda didn’t want to leave her mother. Refugees don't leave their home country easily!”

Max got a visa, but, hoping to persuade his family to go with him, didn’t leave until the last possible moment.

He finally said goodbye to his mother at Prague Railway Station in March 1939 just before the Germans invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia. “He never saw her again,” Rose said.

Max made his way through Nazi Germany by train, and eventually got to England, where he was sent as a refugee to York.

He was welcomed by the city’s refugee committee, and was given lodgings and free tickets to the cinema and to dances at the Assembly Rooms. “That’s where he met my mother, Margaret King,” Rose said.

Max taught himself English by reading Shakespeare and PG Wodehouse and before long, with Britain now at war, had enlisted in the British Army, serving with the Pioneer Corps.

Back in Czechoslovakia, his family didn’t fare so well.

They were sent to concentration camps - first in Theresienstadt, in 1942 and then, in 1944, to Auschwitz.

Max’s younger brother Fritz somehow survived, and after the war emigrated to Israel, where he became a doctor. Emilie and Hilda were not so lucky. Max would never speak much about what happened to them, Rose said - it affected him too deeply.

York Press:

Emilie, left, and Hilda Berl

“But the story is that grandma, who was already in her late 50s, was to be sent to the gas chamber, and Aunt Hilda wasn’t. But my aunt pleaded with the guards to be able to go with her mother, and they clung to each other, and were sent to the gas chamber together.”

Max married Rose’s mum Margaret in 1940, and after the war, they both went back to Czechoslovakia.

For a while, Max managed the sawmills which had once belonged to his family.

But once the Communists took power, he found himself, as a ‘capitalist’ and a Jew, unwelcome again.

He and Margaret returned to York, where Max, unable to make proper use of his education and experience, made a living as a ‘commercial traveller’ - first selling ladies gloves, and then tinned tomatoes and fruit from Italy.

Rose was born soon after Max and Margaret returned to York.

The family lived first with Margaret’s parents in Poppleton Road, then moved around for a few years before Max was able to save enough to buy a house in Dringhouses.

Rose went to Fishergate Primary, then Mill Mount Grammar.

York Press:

Rose Berl

Today, after many years working as a teacher in Amsterdam, she lives in Clementhorpe.

A trustee of York City of Sanctuary, she says she has some understanding, from her father’s experience, of what it is like to be a refugee.

Jewish refugees were not always welcome during the war, she points out. But her dad was able to make a life for himself here, and become a contributing member of society.

“Refugees are people, just like us, who have had to leave their country and are trying to make a new life in a strange place,” she said. “And they are people who have a lot to offer.”