The Bamboo Bracelet by Merilyn Brason

This is the moving experience of one woman who lived in an internment camp for much of the duration of World War II .This story is told by her daughter, who was actually conceived during the internment.

Merilyn Brason has enjoyed a multicultural life having lived in China, Nigeria and Australia. She has experience of radio journalism and she is a retired psychotherapist.

We are left with the impression that she is well qualified to write this book  that is based on her mother’s memories and notes.   

We gain valuable insight in this work to what it was like in an internment camps. These are different from POW camps and the Nazi organised concentration camps: there is some mingling of men and women. Protagonist Ronny and her husband Pat, along with their good friend Reg enjoyed living in “shanty” home.

A whole village or even town exists within the camp. There are shops, cafes and even a barber’s. Our protagonist even manages to gain an income by sewing garments for the richer people in the camp.

We know all along that Ronny will survive because her daughter is here to tell the tale. Yet we are gripped throughout.

This story is extremely well told.   

Internment

Arguably we treated people in internment camps and prisoner of war camps better than the Nazis treated inmates of their prison camps, the concentration and death camps. However, we were still taking away human freedom and were depriving people of their normal living conditions.

Thankfully, Renate and Kathe Edler were not interned. They merely became Class B enemy aliens. Clara Lehrs was interned, with a tragic result.

Some German Jews were interned in Britain. Many of them later joined our forces.

Was it right to intern German Jews during World War II?

Can an internment camp be made humane?     

  

The Kindertransport

I’ve watched some interesting archive films about the Kindertransport today. It is quite extraordinary that the German authorities actually allowed it to happen. They were probably happy to be rid of some of what they considered to be the superfluous Jewish population. Children were allowed one suitcase, one piece of hand luggage and ten Reichmarks. When they reached the German border, the German authorities were quite brutal. However, Dutch and English officials were much friendlier. Some Dutch women even brought the children hot cocoa.
On the whole, the children were well received in England though one or two were made into servants. They did have to have sponsorship - £50.00 each – the equivalent of about £1000 in today’s money. Some were fostered straight away, whilst others had to go to holding camps to start with. Note, in the film, there were flowers on the breakfast tables. Was this effort made just for the film? A little like Theriesienstadt all over again?
Once the war started, it was harder for children to keep in contact with their parents. Lengthy letters were replaced by 25 word telegrams. A few more characters than Twitter, then?
Those over the age of 16 became enemy aliens and were interned – in many cases transported to Canada. Later, because of poor conditions in those internment camps, they were allowed back to England provided that they joined the forces.
The hope remained that the end of the war would bring reconciliation between parents and children. It often didn’t, because the parents had been killed in the death camps. And even where parents did survive and parents were reunited with children, it was difficult. Six years is a very large slice of a child’s life. Most of them had become very English.