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My parents bought a large house in Golders Green and got married on 26 August 1939, a week before WW2 broke out. In 1940 a couple of officials called to ask my mother what she could do in the event of an invasion. 'I can speak German'. They looked at each other soggy jawed: to think of conversing with a victorious enemy!
When she visited Germany as an Oxford undergraduate in the mid 1930s she bought a book of political cartoons collected by the Ministry of Propaganda called Tat Gegen Tinte (Deeds against Words), seriously ridiculing the world's press.
When I was born in 1944 (her third child) she noticed that German Jewish refugees, buying their fruit and veg in English, added 'Katofeln, bitte' (?spelling). The shopkeeper disappeared into the back of the shop and returned with a closed brown paperbag. When my mother's turn came (an obvious Gentile) she too asked for potatoes in the language of the enemy, and got them!

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