Ilse Shatkin (née Grünwald) originally came from Vienna. She emigrated to England as a 15-year-old teenager on the Kindertransport scheme in 1939. She initially spent 10 days in a refugee camp at Dover Court before being transferred to London where she stayed with various host families and in refugee hostels. Ilse refused to attend boarding school which the Jewish Refugee Committee had organised for her. Instead she wanted to earn money and took on casual jobs such as factory work. She was working as a waitress from 1942.
Ilse's father, Armin Grünwald, was a merchant born in Vienna in 1886. According to the surviving correspondence he was living in Zurich by 1938 where he stayed throughout the Second World War. Ilse's mother stayed behind in Austria. She was meant to follow her daughter to England but did not manage to obtain a permit. She was deported to a concentration camp in Poland in 1941 where she perished. Armin's mother and his sister Anna Perker and her husband were deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp (letters dating from 1942-1943). Armin's mother died there in 1943. His sister's fate is unknown.
From the guide to the Ilse Shatkin: diary and papers, 1921-1949, (Wiener Library)
