On 2 July 1930, Susi Davids was born in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, the second child of Paul and Irma Davids (née Feldheim). She and her brother Gerd, who was three years older, lived comfortably in the bourgeois Briller Quarter. Their father had an exclusive women’s fashion shop. Susi’s mother came from a family of factory owners from nearby Barmen. She wanted to become a children’s nurse, yet her father was so proud of his daughters not having to work for their living that he did not allow her to do so.
Even before the November pogrom in 1938, the father’s company was “Aryanised” and the family had to move. The parents tried to emigrate to America. On 10 November 1938, the fact that the nameplate on their new apartment had repeatedly being torn down proved to be lucky. Unlike that of their Jewish neighbours, their apartment was spared from the anti-Semitic destructive rage. However, Susi’s father was arrested and taken to the Dachau concentration camp. When he came back after six weeks, he was ill and remained so for the rest of his life.
Coffee bean chocolates
Irma Davids succeeded in saving her children by sending them on the first children’s transport to Belgium.
My favourite chocolates were small coffee bean chocolates. I was never allowed to eat many of them. My mother gave me a whole box for the train ride. And I thought: ‘That’s unusual!’ But I said nothing and sat comfortably on the train by the window and waved goodbye. The whole compartment was full of children.
In order to stay together, the siblings came to the children’s home in Wezembeek-Oppem. However, Susi was troubled: she could not communicate with anyone and did not understand what was happening to her. After a few weeks a cousin of her mother’s took her in, while Gerd was accommodated in a Belgian family for a short time before he moved to the Speyer home in Anderlecht.
Susi experienced a “culture shock” with the family: ‘Hasn’t your mother taught you how to do that?’ It was obvious that she [the cousin’s wife] came from a family in which you just got on with things together as quickly as possible. Well, it was a clash of cultures. Anyway, she was very kind in a sort of way, but I was unhappy at that time.
Susi’s mother arrived in England in the spring of 1939 with a domestic servant permit. At the invitation of relatives who guaranteed for him, her father was also able to leave for England. The mother’s employer organised and paid for Gerd and Susi’s visit to England in the summer of 1939. They stayed in England.
Many years later, in an interview at the Imperial War Museum in London, Susi Shipman (as she became after her marriage) still remembered how relieved she was to be reunited with her parents: “It was like getting rid of shoes that were too tight. It was unbelievable!” The family survived the German bombings. “I remember very well that every time the anti-aircraft guns went off; I woke up and had to go to the toilet – it was such a nerve-racking thing! It was terrifying, I hardly got any sleep.”
On 8 December 1942, Paul Davids died after a stroke. Susi’s mother’s diabetes worsened. After collapsing, Irma Davids passed away in the summer of 1943 shortly after Susi’s 13th birthday. Her mother’s sister took Susi in, but the place that became Susi’s home was the Bunce Court School. When her brother decided to emigrate to Israel in 1948, she followed him. In 1955 she married her husband Frank Shipman in Kibbuz Kfar Blum. They had their first child in 1956 and in 1958 the family moved back to England.
Susi Shipman visited Cologne for the exhibition opening in November 2019. She died on February 20, 2021. ÄW
Portrait of Susi Davids: © Elaine Freedman