Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Monday
December 31 2001 11 |
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FEATURES |
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Search for Mrs
Thea Graham |
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Inheritance survives Nazi and Soviet eras |
Donald Gowing, of
New Jersey, in the USA: his efforts to stage a reunion of the Huddesrfield
Technical College class of 1942 promidsed a breakthrough in the search. |
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WAR is not just evil,
it's chaotic evil. Fifty-six years after the end of the Second World War
people are still trying to pick up the pieces and put things right. One such group, the Search and Unite
team, specialises in the needle in the haystack job of tracing people who
have property claims in just one area of Europe dislocated by the Nazi
occupation, the Czech Republic. Now David Lewin,
of London, a member of the team is hoping Examiner readers can do what all
previous research has failed to do and find Mrs Thea Graham (or her heirs)
who has a right to reclaim the old family home that was stolen in long ago
1940. The story begins
in 1939, a time that was a nightmare for anyone of Jewish descent. in the
then Czechoslovakia For Oskar and
Charlotte Lowe the last straw was the Anschluss, the annexation by Hitler's
Germany of the Sudetenland, part of Czechoslovakia. The Lowes fled to
England, where they had relatives living, taking with them their two
children, Thea and Klaus, some clothes, household goods and bedding and not
much more. So
far, all attempts to find traces of Thea and her husband have failed. Soon after
arriving they demonstrated their commitment to the new start by changing the
name to Low. They found shelter at 22 Cambridge Road, Huddersfield. Thea went
to Greenhead High School and her father, an industrial chemist, found work. They got away
just in time. Back in Czechoslovakia, the rest of their family, grandparents,
uncles, aunts and many cousins were trapped. The new Nazi government sent
them to the Terezin concentration camp (Teresienstadt) from where none
returned. The family home was confiscated and became the property of the
state. Back in
Huddersfield Thea was at school with Mrs Helen Cummings, of Grimscar, Betty
Thomas (née Hudson) and Anne McNair, who remembers the Low family airing
their bedding in the windows - it was the first time she had ever seen a
continental duvet. Thea went on from
school to Huddersfield Technical College, where records show her enrolled on
the 1941-42 register taking French, commercial French, Spanish, statistics
and typing. Her classmates
included Malcolm Lee, whose family owned Kaye's College, Colin Muscroft (who
went on to Leeds University), David Pickup (possibly a midshipman on a banana
boat during the |
___________________________ Where there's a will there's a
way! And a Czech lawyer and an organisation that reunites lost relatives hope
that Examiner readers can help right a 60-year-old wrong. TONY POGSON reports
on their bid to trace a former Huddersfield woman who has been left her old
family home in Prague war), Donald G Gowing, today living in New Jersey, and Neville Graham
(whose family were in the quarry business) who was to marry Thea in November
1946. Because she could speak German,
Thea volunteered to help the RAF to translate radio conversations of German
pilots. In 1944 there was tragedy when her
brother Peter Klaus committed suicide when he was 17 and was buried in the
United Hebrew Congregation Jewish cemetery in Huddersfield Road, Leeds. The story comes up to date when a Prague
lawyer contacted David Lewin. It had finally been established that Thea's
grandparents, Ernestine and Arnostka Kapper, who had perished in the
Holocaust, had left a will in her favour. The search began in August 2000 with
details posted on the Search and Unite web pages at https://remember.org/unite So far all attempts to find traces of
Thea and her husband have failed. But in October of this year David got an
e-mail from Donald Gowing in New Jersey. He had been trying to organise a 60th
year reunion of the Technical College class of 1942 that included Thea - and
came across the web page while searching the net. Says David: "We have not come much
forward from this point, and we are wondering whether any readers of the
Examiner may have memories which will help with the detective work to try to
trace any of these individuals." The best clue to date is a copy of the
marriage certificate which shows Thea Leonora Ruth Low marrying George
Neville Francis Graham, of Dryclough Road, Crosland Moor, at St Patrick's
Church in New North Road on November 23, 1946. For the first time the searchers now knew
the name of the bridegroom's father - George Alexander Graham - and that the
witness was W F Wright. * Anyone with information should
contact David Lewin: ring 020 8446
00404 or, if you wish, you can e-mail him on searchandunite [at] lewinsdlondon [dot] org [dot] uk |
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