Ilse Eton papers

Ilse Eton papers 

Ilse Julie Eton was born as Ilse Julie Ursell 25 February 1922 in Düsseldorf. She had to leave school in 1938 and enrolled on and English course at the Jawne School in Cologne from Easter to December 1938 to prepare for English school exams. Her brother Fritz had fled to England in 1936, so Ilse and her parents Siegfried and Helene Ursell escaped to England in January 1939. Ilse initially went to school in Bournemouth and then studied at Reading University from 1940 - 1943. She worked for the BBC and from 1945 - 1951 as a secretary for the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL) in Cambridge. She married Bruce Eton (also a German Jewish Refugee, formerly Bruno Einhorn) in 1954. Bruce became a successful gynaecologist and obstetrician in Cambridge and in 1961 the couple moved to St. Leonhards, as Bruce became a consultant in Hastings. Ilse Eton took on the role as his secretary and personal assistant. They had two children. From the mid 1980s onwards, Ilse Eton became involved with Holocaust rememberance groups, particularly from Düsseldorf and around the Jawne School in Cologne. She traveled with her husband to Germany multiple times to visit friends and to attend memorial events in Germany. Bruce Eton was born Bruno Einhorn on 16 January 1914 in Berlin. He left Germany in 1933 for Italy and then Switzerland and finally England in 1939. After brief internment in 1940 and service in the Pioneer Corps, he finally qualified in 1943 and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1944. On the advice of the War Office, he changed his name to Bruce Eton before serving in mainland Europe. In June 1945 he went to Berlin to find his father (Leo Einhorn), who had been living illegally in Berlin between 1940 and 1945. Bruce Eton stayed in Berlin for nine months where he looked after his severely malnourished father, who followed to London in late 1946. On demobilisation in 1946 he trained as an obstetrician and became senior registrar in 1952 in Cambridge. He took up a consultant position in Hastings in 1961, where he worked until he retired in 1979. He was awarded the Hastings Order of 1066 in 2002 and the MBE in 2004. In retirement he worked for the local Blind Association and sang with Opera South East. He died on 28 October 2007. 

Ilse Eton papers