refugee domestics

Question 1

Lisa Hoffman

Answer 1

• 20,000 refugees admitted
• she arrived aged 20 in august 39
• permits whereby females could go to England and do nothing else but
  domestic work. It wasn’t—perhaps this doesn’t sound very grateful—it
  wasn’t entirely altruistic of the English to do that. They had great
  problems to have servants because at that time they really exploited their
  maids—there was always that class distinction—and they really took
  terrible advantage of them as a rule and underpaid them so that slowly
  their own people didn’t want to do domestic work anymore and so this
  was a marvellous opportunity for them to import some servants. And
  meanwhile, of course, it saved my life.

Question 2

refugee maids

Answer 2

• position within the family
• loss of status
• employers want to be seen to be doing good
• old-fashioned British households
• communication rude
• feeling excluded
• no interest in their refugee experience
• threats regarding internment
• feeling betrayal in jewish homes

Question 3

Stella Rotenberg

Answer 3

• poet and writer
• Stella Siegmann took work as a domestic servant in Leiden, ran the home of a 40 yr old man whose aspirations for her were inapropriate. she managed to change jobs to somewhere else that was unpaid
• managed to get a visa to England where she had a boyfriend. traineeship for a hospital.