Medical Certificate; Alice Ehrlich

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Accession Number: NEKHC:2012.25.3

Object: Medical Certificate

Physical Description: Thin paper, black printed ink; blue stamped ink; black handwritten ink. Some tearing and creasing. Complete.

Information: This document forms part of the Vera Price Collection. It is the medical certificate issued to Vera's maternal Aunt Alice, necessary for her travel to the United Kingdom.

Further Information

This medical certificate was donated by Vera Price. The document confirms that Alice Ehrlich, Vera’s maternal aunt, does not suffer from infectious or mental diseases, she does not has any vision impairment nor physical excuses that would make her unfit for work. The document was issued in Breslau, on 2 September 1938. The document confirms that a fee has been paid and contains the signature of the local health authority.

Alice was 14 years younger than her sister, Vera’s mother, Suse and left with their mother after the family began to seek refuge from the Nazi persecution of Jewish people. Alice secured passage to England along with her mother, Vera’s maternal grandmother, Doris. They were already living in England by the time Vera’s family had secured their passage out of Poland. The family were granted Australian visas, and in July 1939 Vera’s father left for England to arrange a stopover in England during the family’s travel to Australia. Two weeks after her father had left, Vera, her mother and sister joined him in London having flown to Britain. Some of their goods were already in the process of being shipped to Australia, however due to the outbreak of the Second World War the family are unable to continue their journey on to Australia.

The family all lived in one room in Maida Vale for about a year and shared a bathroom with other families including her grandmother and Aunt Alice. Vera’s father was very ill with heart trouble, but got to know a German refugee living in the area who made salamis, and another who made chocolates. Suse, Ursel and Alice got hold of bicycles and cycled around selling the sausages and chocolates.

They then moved to a house with Aunt Alice, and Vera’s grandmother. In 1941 Richard and Suse took over a small delicatessen in Finchley Road, helped by Ursel and Alice. Vera’s father did not recover his health, and died in 1942, aged 43. Ursel married an officer in the Polish Army and went on to run her own delicatessen in Willesden Green. Vera’s mother remarried in 1947 to a man who had himself come from Germany, and was now in the Pioneer Corps. Vera’s education remained important to her mother, and she went to an excellent grammar school before taking a modern languages secretarial course and later meeting her husband. 

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