One former Guardian colleague remembered her as “a remarkable woman: prickly, but also magnificent, like a Bertie Wooster aunt — both imperious and vulnerable”. Another ex-colleague said: “You won’t appreciate Hella until you see her enter the briefing room in Brussels and six European foreign ministers rise and kiss her on the cheek.”
A former Guardian foreign editor recalled “her extraordinary presence in the newsroom, beautifully dressed in vivid colours (often bright red) with flashing jewellery, a magnificent figure amongst the dowdy mostly male and cardiganned staff. And that haughty toss of the head as she steamed past the subs on her way to the back bench.”
On the Kindertransport, diplomatic editor at The Guardian. Impressive woman.
Impressive in the way that Polly thinks she is but isn’t.
Which is cruel, unwarranted, but possibly true.
“six European foreign ministers rise and kiss her on the cheek.”
Upper or lower?
The only person I’ve known to have come over in the Kindertransport was also a bit prickly though for some reason she spared me.
As for the visas: it seems not to be well known that through the thirties British Palestine offered more visas for Jewish immigrants than were ever taken up.
I sympathise: if I’d been an educated, urban German Jew I’d much rather have got out to France, or Czechoslovakia, or the Netherlands, or Britain, or the USA rather than live as a kibbutz peasant on the desert’s edge among people who were bound to come to hate me.
Heavens, I once saw an implication that there were even Jews who were so picky that they declined the opportunity of going to NZ. Can that have been right?