My mother, Edith Whyatt, who has died aged 97, fled from Nazi Germany just before the second world war and settled in the UK, where she worked as a midwife until marrying and raising a family.
She was born in Frankfurt am Main in Germany to secular Jewish parents, Otto Wertheimer, who ran a business selling wholesale fashion accessories and lace, and his wife, Erna (nee Schwarzhaupt).
As Nazi persecution of Jews grew to fever pitch in the late 1930s her father, who had a passport, managed to get out of Germany on Kristallnacht in late 1938. Later, in May 1939, Edith and her mother made the journey across continental Europe and joined him in London, along with Edith’s brother, Ernest, who had made his own way over.
Soon they moved to Nottingham, where they had family links in the rag trade, and where Edith attended secretarial college. After war broke out, Edith and her mother were classed as enemy aliens and taken to Holloway prison in London. They were kept there for several weeks until internment on the Isle of Man, where her father and brother were being held in a different camp. In 1942 the whole family were released, and they went to Birmingham to stay with relatives.
It was there, in 1944, that a friend invited Edith to a Christian missionary meeting, where a speaker challenged the audience with the question: “Are you doing something useful with your life?” Fired up, Edith began to do nurse training at Mansfield and District general hospital, where she qualified as a state registered nurse, later training as a state enrolled midwife and working at the Annie McCall maternity hospital in south London. While nursing Edith became a Christian, a deep conviction she held for the rest of her life.
In 1952 she got a post at a mother and baby home in Israel, but it was not all she had hoped for, and after contracting jaundice 18 months into the job she returned to Nottingham, to work in the office of her parents’ clothing factory.
Shortly afterwards she met Ken Whyatt, a technical representative for an engineering company, on holiday in Bournemouth. They married in 1956 and moved to Leeds, where Edith became a full-time housewife, raising two children and involving herself with the Open Brethren church.
After Ken died in 1981, she moved to the Harehills district of Leeds, where she became a volunteer teaching assistant. When she started losing her sight due to glaucoma, she joined sight loss, missionary and prayer groups. She was a big radio fan and enjoyed the talking newspaper services. In her later years she took an interest in writing, and composed many wry, amusing poems.
She is survived by her children – my sister, Esther, and me.
