When I trace a Family’s Family Story I never know what I’m going to find, and of course, never do they, a lot of it is sad, after all “No one gets out of a Family Tree alive!”, but often I can tease out the happy times that would have occurred but not recorded in any official documents, and very occasional something exceptional is found, made all the more interesting when it seemed mundane at the time to many of the people involved, who considered they were just doing the right thing.
I found one such story that held some subtle ironies, that may not have been apparent at the time, and spanned two World Wars, a quiet English farm, and the Holocaust.
I have worked for some time with the Tizzard Family to investigate their various Family Lines, and as part of this, I occasionally travel down interesting avenues of research when I get the scent of a good story, much like the work I do for DNA Journey for ITV on British Television.
This particular story started with a girl named Alice Tizzard who lived in Peckham at the turn of the 20th century and worked for her sister Ada, a dressmaker, as her assistant. As young people do, Alice had met a young man named George Panning, a Boot Fitter who may have worked with her family in the Boot and Shoe Shop they had built up from nothing to a going concern in South London. They married on 6th September 1914, before George marched off to War.
Germans
George’s family were originally from Germany, his father Albert was a German waiter in a restaurant, a common and quite fashionable employment for the more “presentable” German immigrants in Victorian and Edwardian times.
Given that George’s father was German, the family were in danger of being singled out should anyone be aware of the fact, especially if George didn’t join up. It’s possible that his father’s background wasn’t obvious, as in an earlier census his father Albert had been registered by his Mother-in-Law as being born in London, so it is likely that he had adopted a London accent, and given the name Panning doesn’t sound particularly German, it may not have been too obvious. Given that Frederick was a Bootmaker by trade, he could have avoided joining up as he was in a reserved trade, but join up he did, entering the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC) as a Private.
After the War Alice and George settled down to running the Boot and Shoe Shop for Alice’s father. Alice’s father had invested in a large house in Peckham with a number of his married children living there with him, and after his death the house was sold and part went to each child.
It looks like Alice and George took an interest in a small farm in the Surrey Countryside in a tiny hamlet named Oulton. Here they sold off the old farm contents, and turned the farm over to being principally for poultry and in particular egg production, winning two runners up places for their eggs in 1936 at a local Country Show.
1939 The Eve of War
In 1939 we find Alice and George living on the Farm at Oulton, where they were running it as sheep and poultry farmers.
There were ten people living on the farm, spread across two or three houses/cottages. There are two other Pannings living with them both female relatives of George helping in the House; Florence, George’s sister-in-law married to his brother John, and her daughter George’s niece Marjory, it looks as if they had moved down from London to avoid the Blitz that was fully expected.
Also on the farm were couple named Walsh, Edward A Walsh a Bookbinder and Florence L Walsh who was living off Private Means, Florence was more likely to be Edward Walsh’s sister than his wife, perhaps also renting a cottage on the farm away from urban areas in expectation of the coming war.
Alice and George employed James Adams a Cowman, who lived on the farm. Two entries are ‘Officially Closed’ indicating younger children who could still be alive today (theoretically).
Then I came across an intriguing entry that lead to a bigger story; Paul M Cohns, registered as a 14 year old ‘German Jew Refugee’.
WW2 Kinder Transport
Paul Moritz Cohn, to give him his full name, was, as per the stark description in the 1939 Register, a German Jewish Refugee. Because of the rise of Hitler and the persecution of Jews that was increasing in Germany during the 1930s, forward thinking German Jewish Families who had the wherewithal, began to ship their children to England in what would become known as the Kindertransport, facilitated by the Red Cross and sympathetic volunteers in England.
The Cohns were middle class merchants in Hamburg, who saw first their business, then their everyday lives being encroached upon by the Nazi State. They had the presence of mind, and indeed the family connections, to send their son Paul to relatives in England. Being an adolescent boy would have given Paul a little priority to get on the Kindertransport List as he would have been seen as being at more risk than girls or younger children from Nazi persecution.
Paul’s father’s business had been confiscated and his mother dismissed from her job as a teacher, his father was then arrested and temporarily sent to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, before being released and bluntly told to emigrate. This was despite his father being a veteran of the German Army wounded and awarded the Iron Cross in The Great War, fighting for Germany. So these factors and Paul’s parents’ contacts in England, plus having the wherewithal to jump through the administrative hoops to deal with bureaucracy helped Paul to be included on the Kindertransport lists.
England
Paul was shipped out by steamer to England, and then onto a train, the experience must have been harrowing, still just a boy, but old enough to have an understanding of what was happening in Germany, and the risks his parents were taking by still being there.
When Paul arrived at Liverpool Street Station he was met by a distant relative, a Mrs Lisbet Mueller-Hartmann, she took Paul on the Tube to Victoria Station to get a train to Dorking. Here he was destined to work on George and Alice’s Farm, facilitated by the Dorking Refugee Committee. In his own words he described what happened:
“…put on the train to Dorking. I was met by a lady from the Refugee Committee who drove me to my destination, the farm in Newdigate. Here was my first chance to practice my English; after six years’ study at school I was pleased to find that I could keep up a conversation without too much difficulty.”
Paul Cohn described himself as a ‘town child’ and he was from a well-to-do Middleclass family, but took to the farm work with gusto and apparently it was Milking Cows, undoubtedly alongside James Adams the farm’s Cowman, ten years his senior, that:
“…more than anything gave me the feeling of being a real countryman”.
We can glean some interesting information about Alice and George from Paul Cohn’s memoirs, for example they kept about 5000 chickens, and that Paul was considered as being of working age, i.e. 14, so could legally work rather than be schooled, the same as was the law at the time for all British Children.
He worked unpaid for bed and board, as was the requirement for being accepted for the Kindertransport, he would be taught farming and once he reached 18 would be relocated to the Dominions (probably Canada or Australia) he had no issue with this even before he left for England but apparently did not want to kill any chickens, but farming reality hit home and he did so within a short time of joining the farm.
His cousin Peter was also working on a farm and told Paul that he received pocket money from his employers, that lead Paul to ask for pocket money from Alice and George, who gave him half a crown (two shillings and six pence) per week, that would rise over time. Paul worked 70 hours per week, although as he said himself the work wasn’t hard, mainly feeding, watering, and mucking out the chickens, he received three half days off per fortnight.
During 1939 he corresponded regularly with his parents and did his best to find some employment for his parents as a Gardener and a Housekeeper in England, but never succeeded, and in 1941 his parents were deported by the Nazis to Riga, and the letters stopped, along with their lives.
By 1941 small farms were no longer viable due to pressures of the War and a lack of chicken feed. So the Pannings were forced to sell everything off. This was a sad event for Paul Cohn, as he recorded in his memoir years later, remembering his time on the farm fondly.
Life for Paul Moritz Cohn after The Farm
Paul Moritz Cohn gained a work permit, moved to London and got a job as a fitter in a factory, however the refugee committee in Dorking encouraged him to carry on with his exams, and he eventually applied and was accepted at Cambridge to study Mathematics. He would go on from there to become a world renowned Mathematician.
This relationship between Paul Cohn and Alice and George Panning is an interesting one. On the one hand Paul was seen as a workhand, and the same as any other would have been, but leaving the practical economic mundanity of this aside, you can see that the actions of his parents, the Red Cross, his elderly Aunt in England, the Dorking Refugee Committee, and finally Alice and George Panning, saved Paul’s life. Without these people he would have died alongside his parents.
One interesting question is, what mixture of motivations were there for Alice and George to take in a Refugee? There was obviously a pragmatic economic one of having an unwaged apprentice working for bed and board and pocket money, at a time when food production was life or death for the British population and working age men were mainly away fighting the Axis powers. There was also the simple humanitarian wish to do your bit and help a child in need, but perhaps there was a need for George Panning with his German heritage to be more representative of ‘The Best of British’ and reject the unfolding horrors of Germany at the time.
Paul Moritz Cohn FRS Astor Professor of Mathematics at University College London, author of many textbooks on algebra, died in 2006. He was a visiting professor at Yale University during 1961-62, spending part of 1962 at the University of California at Berkeley
A life fully lead despite the horror that had overtaken Paul in his early years. He had found a sanctuary and like the people who took him in, he accepted the situation in a very phlegmatic, perhaps very “British” way. Paul made the most of his situation and simply did what he needed to do to live a full and meaningful life without fault or fanfare.
Just another story that perhaps would be forgotten, unless, of course, we choose to breath life back into it to make sure the nightmares that instigated the story never happen again.
Alice and George after the War
After the War Alice and George continued to live on the farm until at least 1946 before they retired to Hove in Sussex during the 1950s and 1960s. George died in Hove in 1966, Alice died in 1973.
Just an ordinary elderly couple who had done their bit in World War One and World War Two, pragmatically, quietly, and without expecting anything more from it.
Sometimes, just doing the right thing is enough.
Travelling Through Time to Trace Your Ancestors 