Foreign?

I know this story is going to be hard to believe but here goes...

We had an uncle called Max. He was married to my father's sister Lottie. Max was a Polish Jew in his twenties who spoke Yiddish and Polish when he arrived in the UK in 1934. He hitch-hiked from Poland to Ostend and managed to get on a boat going to England. He travelled with his brother and sister. They settled in London, but Max met my aunt and moved to Glasgow. He changed his surname from a Polish one to a Scottish one because he said people couldn't pronounce his Polish name. He also said he wouldn't miss his Polish surname because his family had never had European-style surnames until they were forced to take them by the Poles.

He set about learning English and getting an education but his education was interrupted by the second world war. He was told he didn't have to join the British army, but he did. He fought in the infantry in campaigns in north Africa and was captured by the Germans in Greece and ended up in a camp for POWs somewhere in Hungary. In his 18 months in the prison camp, he never spoke. If he had spoken, he would have been identified as a Jew. The other guys in his hut covered for him, telling the guards he was shell-shocked.

Late in 1944, the camp was liberated. Back in Glasgow, Max took on a shop but then he had a breakdown and had to give it up. When he recovered, he began to study for a degree in sociology at Glasgow University, using the ex-service grant system to pay for his time at university.

As part of his degree, he studied French and German. Because he was already bilingual in Yiddish and Polish, languages were easy for him. He also spoke and wrote excellent English. His only problem was with reading, which he came to later in life. He read very slowly.

He was a Communist all his days and wouldn't join the Labour Party, much to the disgust of people like my father and other relatives. He was deeply suspicious of US intentions in the 60s and 70s and was totally opposed to their involvement in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

He trained as a probation officer and worked for many years in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

He encouraged his wife, my aunt Lottie, to get an education. She loved music and in her 40s learned to read music and joined the Scottish Opera Chorus as an alto and later was in a chorus in Newcastle.

Max didn't blame anyone for the various twists and turns his life had taken. He never talked about the war, although it had clearly left its mark on him. He did talk about pre-war events in the East End of London, where he lived for a time and warned us all about the dangers of Fascism.

I wonder what he would have made of the events of the past few days in the UK.