One of the weekly letters Alan wrote to his parents, December 19, 1944
In my strong desire to conform and be fully assimilated, I quickly took all my changes in stride. My speech for example, became very upper class English and while I never denied my background, I did not exactly advertise it either.
I cannot honestly say that I missed my parents or the rest of my family, and my new life was clearly superior to my old life, with or without Hitler.
I was out of touch with my parents for about a year. With the outbreak of the war in September 1939, correspondence ceased and I heard no more about the fate of my parents until much later. My mother had joined my father in Milan after war was declared and they somehow managed to get on the last ship from Trieste to Haifa before Italy joined the war in 1940. Sometime later I heard from them again and we were able to correspond regularly by means of aerograms, which were micro-filmed one page letters, later printed at the point of destination. My mother kept all mine and I now have them to this day.
My parents were absolutely destitute upon arrival in British Palestine and I faithfully saved my meager pocket money until I had saved a pound sterling and I was able to send them a postal order for that amount. In time they were able to get on their feet and do reasonably well and keep body and soul together. But they never forgot my filial devotion up to the end of their days and talked about it to anyone who would listen. I only dwell on this because I did this at the time as a matter of course, without any prompting from anybody and never thought of it as a big deal.
I remember being quite worried about them when Rommel’s Afrika Korps stood at the Gates of Cairo, seemingly with nothing to stop their further advance. At that time one thought of the Germans as more rational and one expected them to go for the Iraqi oil, but subsequent events may make that more doubtful. But I also remember being most optimistic about the eventual outcome and never doubted for a moment that the allies would be victorious.
I had no family members or friends other than my two school friends with whom I was in touch throughout my stay in England before, during or after the war.
I was totally driven to make something of myself and this overriding motivation did not allow time to feel lonely or anxious or even for a feeling of relief. It did not take me very long to realize that in Britain I would always be an outsider, despite a college degree, a King’s commission and a flawless upper class English accent. I felt less settled when I came back to England after three years in Europe in the Army than ever before.
