Holocaust refugee, 106, feels ‘personally attacked’ by Hatzola fires

A 106-year-old Holocaust refugee said she feels “personally attacked” by the firebombing of four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green.

Berlin-born Anne Callender, who came to Britain on her own just after her 19th birthday in January 1939, has twice called on Hatzola’s emergency care, including in the past six weeks.

“I really feel that I was personally attacked by this,” she said from her home in Stanmore. When she called on the charity most recently, she had Covid- and flu-like symptoms. “The neighbour said ‘I think you really ought to get an ambulance.’ I rang them and within five minutes they were there.

“They examined me from top to toe – everything. One [of the paramedics] was a very nice young man, something in the law – they have real jobs and do it all voluntarily. I thought they were absolutely fantastic.”

Of the arson attack, Callender – who has “never been practising” – added: “At the moment, I feel more Jewish than I ever did. Because I feel as if they attacked me, by attacking those ambulances.”

She was born to Jewish parents, but was unaware of her ethnicity “until Hitler came to power”. On her 15th birthday, all her friends made excuses for not attending her party, and she was later thrown out of her school for being Jewish.

Her father was imprisoned for six months in the Dachau concentration camp, while Callender was able to gain access to the UK on a “domestic service” visa, going on to work as a maid for a family in Cambridge. Her parents managed to follow her to Britain just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

She said she did not witness any antisemitism during the war in Cambridge and never thought she would see this level of anti-Jewish racism again in her lifetime: “No. I mean, you can see it’s growing, isn’t it? It’s horrible, horrible.”

The great-grandmother of four is the oldest member of the Association of Jewish Refugees, having only joined at 103 – the first time she became affiliated to any Jewish or refugee organisation. She had spotted an advert placed by the AJR in a German newspaper asking for survivors’ stories, and became the oldest person ever to share a testimony with the London-based charity.

She told journalist Etan Smallman earlier this year at a party to celebrate the AJR’s centenarian members at the German embassy that she had joined because “Holocaust survivors are running in quite short supply these days”. Of finally being part of a wider Jewish community, she added: “I feel that, in a way, I’m home.”