Opera glasses
Object numberM2019/023b
TitleOpera glasses
DescriptionLorgnette Opera Glasses with handle, white metal with inlay Mother of Pearl.
Originally owned by Alice Beer, mother of Beate Hammett (nee Beer). When Beate was nine years old, she recalls her mother packed them into her kindertransport suitcase, along with other items currently held in the Museum collection. Beate was too young to remember whether her parents went to the opera; she has used these glasses twice in her life.
Prompted by the destruction of the Prinzregentenstrasse Synagogue in Berlin, on 9 November 1938, Beate’s parents made arrangements for their daughter to travel with the kindertransport to Britain. In April 1939, her new life began, commencing with a train journey and then three days on the S. S. Manhattan, the American liner which docked the children in Southampton. Beate spent the war years with a foster family in Bridgnorth, Shropshire. Correspondence with her family continued for the first two years of the war, after which time communication was limited to 25 word Red Cross messages.
‘’During the first two years of the War, brief communications with my parents continued, on double-sided postcards with a space for a reply… My parents' side of the card made a sad litany of reproaches: for infrequent responses, unanswered questions, neglect and a painful change of tone became evident... I can now neither recall nor imagine how I came to be so thoughtless and cause so much pain”.
Beate’s reflections of her time in Britain echo the experiences of many kindertransport children. Assimilation into unfamiliar families with unknown customs was in many cases, traumatic. Classified as refugees, or as ‘enemy aliens’, these children underwent significant and instant transformations in their pre-war identities; cut off from their loved ones by distance and eventually by correspondence, kinder children undertook their own struggles to fit in and build lives.
Originally owned by Alice Beer, mother of Beate Hammett (nee Beer). When Beate was nine years old, she recalls her mother packed them into her kindertransport suitcase, along with other items currently held in the Museum collection. Beate was too young to remember whether her parents went to the opera; she has used these glasses twice in her life.
Prompted by the destruction of the Prinzregentenstrasse Synagogue in Berlin, on 9 November 1938, Beate’s parents made arrangements for their daughter to travel with the kindertransport to Britain. In April 1939, her new life began, commencing with a train journey and then three days on the S. S. Manhattan, the American liner which docked the children in Southampton. Beate spent the war years with a foster family in Bridgnorth, Shropshire. Correspondence with her family continued for the first two years of the war, after which time communication was limited to 25 word Red Cross messages.
‘’During the first two years of the War, brief communications with my parents continued, on double-sided postcards with a space for a reply… My parents' side of the card made a sad litany of reproaches: for infrequent responses, unanswered questions, neglect and a painful change of tone became evident... I can now neither recall nor imagine how I came to be so thoughtless and cause so much pain”.
Beate’s reflections of her time in Britain echo the experiences of many kindertransport children. Assimilation into unfamiliar families with unknown customs was in many cases, traumatic. Classified as refugees, or as ‘enemy aliens’, these children underwent significant and instant transformations in their pre-war identities; cut off from their loved ones by distance and eventually by correspondence, kinder children undertook their own struggles to fit in and build lives.
SubjectKindertransport, children, refugees, world that was
Object namebinoculars
Materialmother of pearl, metal, glass, plastic
Dimensions
- width: 100.00 mm
height: 122.00 mm
depth: 61.00 mm
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection, Donated by Ms Beate Hammett