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Rethinking Transnational and Devolved (Hi)stories: German-Speaking Refugees from National Socialism in Wales

Part 1: Refugees’ Work, Visas, and Lives in Wales

This is the first in a three-part series of blog posts on the migration history of Wales. In the first, I will set the scene, outlining the conditions under which German-speaking refugees lived and worked in Wales during the Second World War. In the second and third, I will focus on the experiences of two specific sub-groups: artists and children.

In the introduction to the second edition of A Tolerant Nation? Revisiting Ethnic Diversity in a Devolved Wales, Neil Evans, Paul O’Leary, and Charlotte Williams write about the need to ‘rethink the national story’ and for nations to re-imagine themselves.1 The authors then focus on Wales and its story, and how those not born in Wales fit into it. As their book notes, this re-imagining cannot be done without examining history, and while the three authors place a larger emphasis on black history and what we would commonly call ethnic diversity, the history of refugees and migrants from Europe also plays a part in their exploration.

It has sometimes been argued that refugees from National Socialist persecution, especially those who escaped German-speaking Central Europe, are the ultimate ‘good refugees’.2 Culturally, the majority had a Western European background, and there were many examples of high-culture success, such as eminent composers and artists. Additionally, the demarcation between the persecutors and those being unfairly persecuted was clear: in the public imagination in Britain during and after the Second World War, Hitler and the German Reich were the enemy and needed to be defeated. Thus it was felt that those who were desperate to escape Germany because of their religious, ethnic, or political background deserved to find refuge in the UK.

However, this narrative omits a few inconvenient historical facts. It omits the period of appeasement towards the National Socialist dictatorship by the UK government; the less than generous support and admission policies towards those persecuted by the National Socialist government; the fact that the majority of refugees from National Socialism were Jewish; and the widespread antisemitism in the UK.3 Louise London asserted that the Kindertransport scheme, which admitted over 10,000 child refugees to the UK between December 1938 and September 1939, was considered a good idea at the time because, as she phrased it: ‘Adding good white stock to the population was seen as demographically advantageous at a time of worry about the declining birth rate.’4 However, this claim has received criticism. Anthony Grenville argues that it is highly doubtful that the UK would have considered Jewish children in this way: ‘most scholars critical of British policy maintain that the British authorities treated the Jewish refugees, children included, as far as possible as temporary immigrants and sought to expedite their departure to third countries, not to integrate them into the national bloodstock.’5

Heavy Northern Gothic style synagogue in (weathered) red brick.  Crowning gable with polygonal finials and narrow louvred openings. Narrow entrance gable flanked by two 2-storey polygonal staircase turrets with conical roofs and narrow windows. Some windows blocked off. Double flight of steps with stone piers rises to gabled. doorway with white door and hood mould. Five cars parked in front of building. Trees in the background and to the sides.
Fig. 1: Former purpose-built synagogue in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. It was completed in 1875, inaugurated in 1876, and served the Jewish community until it was sold in 1982, whereupon it became Merthyr Christian Centre. In 2019 it was bought by the Foundation for Jewish Heritage, which is restoring it and planning to open it as the Welsh Jewish Cultural Centre. Photo by Chris Andrews. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licence.

Closer investigation clearly shows that immigration policies in the UK at the time were not primarily guided by humanitarian concerns. Initially, the numbers of those seeking sanctuary from Nazi persecution in the UK were not very large: between 1933 and 1935, 4,500 people managed to find refuge in the UK, with another 5,500 arriving by early 1938.6 Between 1933 and 1938, many sanctuary seekers preferred to flee to countries with a direct border with Germany, such as France, the Netherlands, or Belgium. Switzerland and Austria, too, were seen as potential countries of refuge, as it was obviously easier for German speakers to find employment there. Safety in Austria turned out to be short-lived, however, and for most Jewish refugees, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands also eventually became dangerous traps. After the annexation of Austria in March 1938, the number of people trying to escape to the UK increased dramatically. In response to this development, the UK government brought in changes to its immigration procedures in April 1938—not to make it easier to escape to the UK, but to make it harder. From April 1938, anyone who wanted to enter the UK had to be to be in possession of a visa.

Who Could Get a Visa?

Visas were only granted in very specific circumstances, mainly to those adults whose presence would be advantageous to British society or the economy. Initially, there were three ways to obtain a visa. First, the government was willing to grant visas to well-known artists and academics who would enhance the standing of their profession in the UK. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud fell under this category. On 5 June 1938, the Daily Mail carried the headline: ‘Freud comes to London poor and a refugee: “Here I can finish my life’s work in peace.”’ For most artists and academics, this was a difficult route, and they depended on sponsorship by UK institutions or patrons. Many applicants were unsuccessful, and most were in insecure positions even if they did manage to gain admission to the UK.

The second category of people to be granted visas were individuals who could convince the authorities that they had the expertise and the funds to establish a business which would employ UK workers. Many of them were encouraged to establish a manufacturing business in one of the government’s so-called Special Areas, which were regions in need of support because of high unemployment rates. The Treforest Industrial Estate near Pontypridd in Wales was one such Special Area with large numbers of people who were unable to work in the steel and coal mining industry, such as women or those who had disabilities.

The third category of refugees who had a chance of being granted a visa for the UK were those who were willing to work in domestic service and able to find a position in a UK household. Since the 1920s it had become increasingly difficult for households in the UK to find domestic staff due to the poor wages and difficult working conditions, which included long hours and the requirement to live in their employer’s household. Unsurprisingly, British working-class women preferred to go into the different jobs that were opening up in manufacturing and the retail sector. The country was said to be suffering from a ‘servant crisis’. Admitting refugees on so-called domestic service permits was seen as a means to alleviate this labour shortage and aid the smooth running of British households.7 It is estimated that over 20,000 refugees made use of these permits to escape to the UK. The majority of them were women, as households preferred female domestic staff, but some men were also employed as butlers and gardeners, and occasionally couples were hired together—the woman as a cook and the man as a butler, for example.8

However, many of the recipients of these visas were not experienced in domestic service. In fact, it was not uncommon for those desperate to escape from persecution to take such positions despite the fact that their only experience of domestic labour was as employers rather than as the employees who actually carried out the work. There are many amusing anecdotes about misunderstandings regarding expectations around this sort of employment arrangement.9 Such problems were widely acknowledged, and Continental Jewish organizations set up courses to prepare would-be domestics for their role. The Central Office for Refugees in the UK also issued a leaflet in 1940 which instructed refugees on how to behave in their new positions:10 

[I]t is good manners to speak and walk quietly, both in the house and in the street and public places. You will notice that the mistress usually states her requirements in the form of a request. This should be carried out at once as an order. It is not correct to argue with a mistress.

A small number of other sectors, such as psychiatric nursing and some agricultural occupations, were considered to be suffering from labour shortages, and it was possible to obtain a visa for such jobs if applicants could find employment and submit the right paperwork.

A fourth category of refugees who were allowed to find sanctuary in the UK was, of course, unaccompanied child refugees who came via the Kindertransport scheme. Unlike the three categories described above, however, this was in fact a visa waiver scheme: those under 18 who were admitted to the UK for education or training purposes did not need a visa.

The first three categories outlined above clearly show that the government’s policies were not first and foremost guided by altruistic principles and the desire to save as many persecuted people as possible. By and large it can be said that rescuing people from persecution was only supported if there was an advantage (or at least no disadvantage) in doing so. Ideally, the refugee had to bring a benefit to UK society. The refugees were not be a financial burden on the state, nor to compete with UK citizens on the labour market. These regulations led to a situation in which many of those desperately seeking refuge were refused entry to the UK. Despite the strict admission criteria, it is estimated that a further 80,000 refugees arrived between the annexation of Austria in March 1938 and the start of the Second World War in September 1939.

Beyond the Metropolis

The history of refugees from National Socialism who settled in the UK is often seen as a London-centred experience, or one that at least focuses on large urban centres with pre-existing Jewish communities, such as Manchester. However, refugees escaping Nazi persecution settled all over the UK, including an unspecified number who moved either temporarily or permanently to Wales. This is important to acknowledge from the point of view of the social history of Wales and the telling of its national story, as well as from the perspective of German refugee history.

The following life histories were chosen to show the spectrum of experiences and the individuals’ contributions to life in Wales. One example of a successful refugee business on the Treforest Industrial estate was the General Paper and Box Company, founded by Rudolf Wilheim, Paul Schoenmann, and Hermann Toffler. The Schoenmann family had escaped from Vienna, the Tofflers from Prague. The paper section of the company was especially successful, producing boxes of cigarette paper in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The business was eventually bought by the well-known cigarette paper manufacturer Rizla in 1946. In an oral history interview, Paul Schoenmann’s son George explained how the business employed local workers who were unable to work in heavy industry, and how it also successfully converted part of the factory to be used for war work.11

In some cases, people had to find ways around the admissions criteria, such as visa officials bending the rules somewhat. One extreme example is Frank Foley, who worked as a passport officer at the British Embassy in Berlin and is said to have saved many lives by issuing entry documents to people who should not have received them according to the letter of the law. In other cases, it was visa applicants who were economical with the truth. Fanny Höchstetter was a 30-year-old former civil servant from southern Germany. When she applied for a domestic permit in order to take up a position as a maid, she used a reference from her uncle, who praised her housekeeping skills. Another example is Anton Hundsdorfer, a communist originally from Munich who was persecuted for his political convictions and later married Fanny Höchstetter. He was a master carpenter, but his first visa application was refused, probably because qualified applicants were considered potential competition to British workers.

As mentioned above, some occupations had the potential to attract a visa because Britain was experiencing a labour shortage, and one of these was agricultural labour. As Hundsdorfer had been in hiding on a pig farm, he was advised to apply again, this time stating his occupation on the form as agricultural labourer. This second application was successful. He ended up working for the Forestry Commission in North Wales and living in Llangollen. Hundsdorfer and some fellow left-wing refugees went on to establish the first local branch of the Agricultural Workers’ Union, achieving higher wages and better conditions for all local forestry workers.12

Fig. 2: River Dee flowing through Llangollen, June 2023. Photo by Llywelyn2000. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licence.

Hundsdorfer met Fanny Höchstetter in Llangollen, and her story is also interesting in terms of both the changing rules around refugees in Wales and refugee women’s experiences in particular. Fanny detested housework and had limited domestic skills. After arriving in the UK, she did not get on well with her first employer and felt that she was being treated like a skivvy. After the start of the war, the regulations stipulating that domestic service permit holders had to stay with their sponsoring employer were amended, and they were allowed to change both the type of their employment and their employer. Fanny quit her position and ended up working as a chambermaid in a hotel in Llangollen. She preferred this new role and stayed there for the rest of the war, marrying a fellow refugee and starting a family.13 Actor and writer Mala Laaser is another example of a woman refugee whose ambitions were quashed by the need to obtain a domestic visa to escape Nazi persecution. She had a miserable time in a household in Aberystwyth, before finding a more amenable position in the vicarage in Llanarth.14

Clearly, these individual stories are fascinating and help us understand the experiences of refugees from National Socialism in Wales. However, it is important to avoid generalizations and acknowledge the limits of this type of research. The study of refugees from National Socialism suffers from a lack of quantitative sources. There is no central register or archive that has reliable material on how many refugees found sanctuary and where they lived. As a result, we do not know how many refugees settled in Wales. Local police forces were required to keep a register of those without British citizenship who resided within their district, whether permanently or temporarily. The Cardiganshire Constabulary kept a notebook which recorded fifty aliens in the county at the start of the war, twenty-nine of whom were categorized as refugees. As Cardiganshire was one of the least densely populated areas of Wales, we can assume that the number of refugees in the whole of Wales was in the low thousands.15

‘The story of Wales is the story of migration.’16 This is an obvious statement, but it is necessary to be reminded of it at times. In my next two blog posts, I will continue this story, focusing on two categories of refugee that stand out for Wales: artists and children . . .  

Featured image: Y ddraig goch Red dragon weather vane. Photo by ceridwen. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 licence.

  1. Charlotte Williams, Neil Evans, and Paul O’Leary (eds.), A Tolerant Nation? Revisiting Ethnic Diversity in a Devolved Wales (Cardiff, 2003), 11. []
  2. See Tony Kushner, The Battle of Britishness: Migrant Journeys, 1685 to the Present, 2nd edn. (Manchester, 2014), 136. Refugees from outside Europe arriving since the second half of the twentieth century have not been afforded the same status. []
  3. See Andrea Hammel, ‘A Safe Haven Full of Contradictions: German-Speaking Jews and Their New Lives in the United Kingdom’, (Hi)Stories of the German–Jewish Diaspora, 8 May 2025. []
  4. Louise London, Whitehall and the Jews, 1933–1948: British Immigration Policy, Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust (Cambridge, 2003), 121. []
  5. Anthony Grenville, ‘The Kindertransports: An Introduction’, in Andrea Hammel and Bea Lewkowicz (eds.), The Kindertransport to Britain 1938/39: New Perspectives (Amsterdam, 2012), 4. []
  6. Precise numbers are a matter of contention in this field of study, as the UK government did not keep reliable records for statistical analysis. These figures are based on Louise London’s extensive examination of government files; see London, Whitehall and the Jews. []
  7. Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford, 1995), 92–3. []
  8. See Jennifer Craig-Norton, ‘Refugees at the Margins: Jewish Domestics in Britain 1938–1945’, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 37/3 (2019), 295–330. []
  9. See e.g. the autobiographical novel by Lore Segal, Other People’s Houses (New York, 2004). []
  10. Central Office for Refugees, Mistress and Maid: General Information for the Use of Domestic Refugees and Their Employers (London, 1940), 9. []
  11. Jewish History Association of South Wales, Transcript of the oral history interview with George Schoenmann, Penarth, 20 Sept. 2018. National Library of Wales. []
  12. See Gerhard Oertel, ‘Trade Union Activity of German Refugees during the Second World War in the Forestry of North Wales: Recollections of Personal Experiences’, Immigrants & Minorities: Historical Studies in Ethnicity, Migration and Diaspora, 14/3 (1995), 257–64. Despite the fact that the British government was suspicious of some socialist refugees, Hundsdorfer and other similarly minded refugees integrated well—at least from the workers’ perspective—into the area and the forestry industry. []
  13. See ‘Love and Politics in Llangollen: Fanny Höchstetter and Anton Hundsdorfer’, in Andrea Hammel, Finding Refuge: Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Fled to Wales to Escape the Nazis (Aberystwyth, 2022), 101–11. []
  14. Letters and documents by Mala Laaser, 1937 to 1945. Private collection Joy Dillon. []
  15. See Aliens Register, Cardiganshire Constabulary, Ceredigion Archives, Aberystwyth, ref. no. MUS/204. []
  16. Catrin Wyn Edwards, Laura Shobiye, and Rhys Dafydd Jones (eds.), A Welcoming Nation? Intersectional Approaches to Migration and Diversity in Wales (Cardiff, 2025), 11. []

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Andrea Hammel (October 27, 2025). Rethinking Transnational and Devolved (Hi)stories: German-Speaking Refugees from National Socialism in Wales. German Historical Institute London Blog. Retrieved November 6, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/151m3


Published by

Andrea Hammel

ANDREA HAMMEL is Professor of German in the Modern Languages Department and the Director of the Centre for the Movement of People at Aberystwyth University. She is the author of Finding Refuge: Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Fled to Wales to Escape the Nazis (Honno, 2022) and The Kindertransport: What Really Happened (Polity, 2024). Her focus is on research impact and public engagement. She has led a project on 'Refugees from National Socialism in Wales: Learning from the Past for the Future’ and 'Unsettled Lives: War and Displacement in Wales'. both included exhibitions which showed at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre, the Senedd Gallery in Cardiff, the Houses of Parliament and Pontio Bangor.

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