‘I’m 106 and noticed horror of Nazi Holocaust – Mum’s resolution saved my life’

Speaking ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on Jan 27, as a teenager, Annelis Callender’s life was irrevocably altered by the horrors inflicted by the Nazis. Here, she shares her poignant story with with Mirror

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As a teenager living in Berlin in the early 1930s, Annelis Callender was a happy child with loving parents, going to a good school, with a maid at home and enjoying holidays to Switzerland and Austria. Her birthday parties would see her friends crowd into the family’s spacious second floor apartment – except for the year she turned 14, when nobody came.

Annelis, known as Ann, says: “I couldn’t understand it. That’s when my parents explained to me that we were Jewish and things in the country had changed. In retrospect, of course, it would have been my friends’ parents who must have said ‘you can’t go to that party – we don’t have anything to do with Jews.’ It was horrible and I was very confused.”

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Sitting in a comfortable armchair overlooking her north London garden, Ann, who was born in 1919 and is now 106, is speaking ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday, January 27. The great grandmother’s memories remain as sharp as her wit, as she cracks jokes about her driving – she finally stopped last year. She keeps a journal and is currently taking a keen interest in the Beckham family saga. “I don’t feel 106 up here,” she laughs, pointing to her head. “The body is a different story!”

Joking aside, as a Holocaust survivor, Ann’s life was irrevocably altered by the horrors inflicted by the Nazis and feels her story and experiences must be told and heard. She says: “Sometimes I feel guilty at what others endured; I have ultimately had a very happy life.

The oldest member of the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) and one of only 18 centenarians within the organisation, she continues: “What happened to me as a teenager in Berlin absolutely shaped me. It is important for our future to learn the lessons of the past. That way is our hope of avoiding the same terrible things happening again.”

Her birthday party was an example of the tightening grip the Nazis had begun to exert over her life and that of her parents, Friedrich and Alice Kassel, and little sister Brigitte. She recalls: “I went to the equivalent of a grammar school, and I really enjoyed it. I was bright, had friends. I did well. But around 1933, I was told by the school to leave. I was Jewish, so they chucked me out.”

Months earlier, pretty, blonde, blue eyed Ann had been held up in front of her classmates as an ideal example of a ‘perfect’ German child. She says: “I was quite proud of that, then six months later, I was forced to go. It was very disorientating. Ours wasn’t a religious household. Our parents never discussed politics with us either so, at first, we had no real idea what was going on. But after the party and then my school, things began to crystallise in my mind.”

Living on a main road, she recalls seeing members of the SS and Brownshirts marching outside ‘singing loud songs’. She says: “As children, we quite liked that – I can remember the songs now – but initially we couldn’t connect it with anything to do with our life.”

Her parents, though, could feel the change. A civil engineer, her father Friedrich was forced by the Nazis to give up his job and found work as a paint salesman. Ann says: “He was useless at it, but it was a job; it was money.”

Her parents also witnessed the horrors of Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass – in November 1938. Thousands of Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues were attacked across Germany and Austria, in Nazi co-ordinated anti-semitic mass violence.

Around 100 Jews were killed and 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. Ann still has her father’s diary from that time. Friedrich, who fought for Germany in WWI and was awarded the Iron Cross, recalled his brutal treatment during Kristallnacht and his subsequent arrest and detention in Dachau Concentration Camp.

He and Ann’s mother had been visiting relatives in southern Germany and were staying in a hotel when violence erupted. He wrote: “The doors were broken open. Furious men with pistols forced us to leave the room. Everything that could be broken was smashed. I was in my pyjamas. We were herded onto the streets and forced to march.”

On Dachau, he recalled: “There was delirium, hysteria, depression, mental breakdown and illness, usually followed by death. The sickbed barracks was run by Nazi doctors; men who went there seldom returned. After being thrown out of school, Ann went to an American establishment to learn English. Then her parents sent her to Housekeeping College in Geneva.

She says: “That decision saved my life. I was upset that my life was being changed so completely, but they knew something had to be done.” As war clouds gathered, family contacts helped Ann find work in the UK.

For women desperate to escape Fascism, nursing or domestic service were the best way of entering Britain legally from the late 1930s to the onset of war – but, for many, the experience was not happy. Ann says: “My first job was with an elderly lady in Cambridge. She already had a cook – but I helped with the cleaning and she gave me a very nice room and treated me as part of her family.

“Then the war started and this lady was scared and moved away. She got me another job with a professor at the university. I had to share a room and I was treated like a maid. I had to do everything – empty chamber pots, light fires, empty grates. I absolutely hated it. I had no real plan for my life when I was a teenager – I wanted to marry a good looking boy and ride in an open top car – but this wasn’t what I had expected.”

Her father was released from Dachau – putting this down to his war record – and also relocated to the UK with her mum and sister, arriving with little money or furniture. Eventually, the family settled and Ann subsequently met and married an RAF pilot called Maurice Callender in 1941.

Together until he died in 2010, they travelled around the world with his jobs with the RAF and the civil service, before settling in London. They had two sons, four grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Ann says: “I don’t speak about what happened to my family – there are other things to talk about. But my experiences in my teenage years absolutely shaped my life. I became more ambitious and I tell young people now to grab any opportunity that comes their way.

“I am strong. I used to deliver writs for a living, which could be a bit dangerous and my husband hated it. I accept what comes my way without too much grumbling.”

Ann visited Germany in 1979, but found the experience difficult. She says: “I was looking at everybody and thinking ‘these are the people who’ve done these horrible, horrible things. What am I doing here?’ But, after a while, I met these younger people who had nothing to do with what happened years ago and it didn’t seem to matter that much anymore.”

Ann contacted the AJR only three years ago, after spotting an ad asking for survivors’ testimonies and was presented with membership at the German Embassy in 2023.

Now wearing her badge with pride, she says: “We must never have a repeat of what happened in the 1930s. If I could talk to that teenage Ann I’d tell her as a young person to find out about other people’s lives and troubles – doing that gives you a better understanding of what others are like. And to learn more languages!” Of Holocaust Memorial Day, she says, simply: “I will remember.”

*Michael Newman OBE, CEO of the AJR says: “Ann Callendar’s story reminds us that Holocaust memory does not end with the eyewitnesses. Through the UK’s largest community of descendants, AJR is committed to carrying remembrance forward – from those who lived it to those who must never forget.” For more information SEE HERE

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