A TEACHER WITH FLAIR

In 1934, when Gerhard Hirschfeld and I arrived at St. Christopher School in England, invited to Sunday supper by the headmaster, Lyn Harris, we were received by some ten or fifteen boarders as heroes, having run away from another school. In the dining room we met the German teacher, Reginald Snell whose spare hair and high forehead made him seem especially wise, or smart. It turned out that Mr. Snell had a record player in his room, to which he would invite the new German-Jewish boys for German music and songs. These invitations helped Gerhard and me to feel at home in the strange environment and, over the next year or two his little room on the second floor became a sort of refuge.

At St. Christopher School we had, every school day, something called “morning talk”, during which we boarders and most of the day students would sit on the floor of the gym while Mr. Snell would sing German songs, or give an inspiring talk. For me, those mornings of music and quasi-religious addresses were a first introduction to the culture of a school so different from what I knew from Germany and they became, for me, a key to English life and thought.

The fact that Reginald Snell spoke German almost without an accent, and that he would speak to us refugee boys about the adventure of coming to England, made him very special. Today I still have a small, ten-page, booklet – a German/English dictionary of phrases - handwritten for me by him, that provided an entrée into daily life at the school for someone who had only rudimentary knowledge of the spoken language. Having recently rediscovered Mr. Snell’s “dictionary”, I am reminded of how much I owe him. He has remained in my memory as a teacher with flair and imagination.

H.D. Kirk

MY FIRST TASTE OF AMERICA

I arrived in America, sometime toward the end of August, or beginning of September, 1938, at the age of twenty.  After having failed the pre-med exams at the University of London my family, or rather my parents, were fed up with me and gave me the sum of $300 American and a steamboat ticket from London to New York. One of my earliest memories of my new country is of walking into a snack bar on Broadway where I had gone to buy a 25 cent sandwich. I had bought the one that most appealed to me, among the six or seven sandwiches portrayed near the ceiling. I had ordered the “#3” sandwich, swayed by its appearance of whole wheat bread and the healthy-looking lettuce peeking out of it.

I was very hungry and, taking that first large bite, I was shocked to find that my gums were completely stuck together. I rushed into the alley where I could be unobserved, put my finger in my mouth and frantically scraped the brown goo from my palate. Ever since that day I have been revolted by the smell and by the appearance of that disgusting brown paste - peanut butter!

In later years, sitting at table with my young children, I felt forced to suppress this disgust as they munched heartily on what they considered a delicious snack.

H.D. Kirk