Rosi as a young woman[Missing Credit]
The result is a frank memoir of Noughties London life (explored with 20 years of hindsight), combined with the story of Rosi’s life under the Nazis, her eventual escape to the UK as a supervising adult on the Kindertransport, and her subsequent marriage to an acclaimed jazz pianist. And, it turns out, both women were captivating diarists.
For Robinson’s part, only names have been changed. “That is absolutely me, warts and all on the page,” she says. “It feels quite vulnerable, because I’ve been very open. I’m showing not just the glossy side of myself but being very candid about family dynamics. I really had to ask my family whether that was OK with them. I don’t know how they’re going to feel when they actually see it in their hands.”
We’re speaking the night before her book launch. Robinson admits that “the train has left the station”; everything is now public, including some terrible exes, the casual antisemitism she experienced at auditions (“too Jewish”), and moments that a post-#Me Too vantage point sheds new light on.
“In some ways it feels powerful and I feel braver having been this honest rather than holding stuff back and trying to protect myself,” says Robinson. “If it can make anybody feel better about themselves or relate to it, that’s amazing. I was thinking the other day, I wish I’d read this book when I was 23. I wonder whether I would have got a bit of perspective or not felt so alone.”
In later life, says Robinson, Rosi was her biggest fan. “She would come to everything. She kept every little clipping – she had what she called a naches file. She was a very kind, generous, soft grandma.” But although Robinson clearly adored her acerbic, German-accented grandmother (if not her appalling cooking), the book is no hagiography. Robinson’s mother had a fraught relationship with Rosi, perhaps because she grew up with opportunities the Nazis took from her. And Rosi could be dismissive to those she loved.
Robinson struggled to reconcile the grandmother she knew with the passionate young woman on the page. “I fell in love with her,” she says. “I feel I re-met her and it was an amazing privilege to be able to look at the woman that she was growing up to be and what helped shape her into the formidable lady she became.”
In her diaries, Rosi was stoical, even hopeful, for the most part. But she also wrote about her looks, her frustrations, and, especially, about men (Robinson is still trying to decipher Rosi’s oft-used term PG; the best guess is it denoted “heavy petting”).
“I have decided: it is Strumfield. Sally Strumfield is the man for me…. Zalner is immature and Mendelson too young, but Strumfield is a man,” she writes in a gushing entry from June 1939.
For Robinson, it was astonishing to see her grandmother obsess over her love life even as storm clouds gathered over Europe. “It was so relatable,” she says. “For a while I was thinking, how can she be going on about boys when the world’s been turned upside down? And I think that was part of her clinging on to normality. And of course, you want to be safe and to be loved.”
Robinson recognises the importance of sharing these stories, particularly with fewer survivors left. “It is the best thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “As an actor and a performer, I’ve always been chasing applause to give me more self-esteem. And I finally feel like I’ve done something of note. Even though I’ve performed at the Albert Hall and been on TV, if I found out I was dying tomorrow, I’d be all right because I feel I’ve done something worthwhile.”
Having posted a series of snippets of Rosi’s diary on TikTok, her followers have gone through the roof. “I’ve spent years doing videos of me doing stupid voices and stuff I’ve really worked hard on, but what seems to have really captured everybody’s hearts is my grandma,” she laughs. “I love it and I’m also a bit annoyed. I’m just going to be riding on her coat-tails.”
Because she escaped before the war itself, Rosi never thought of herself as a Holocaust survivor. “She felt a fraud, that she had absolutely not suffered in the way so many people had,” says Robinson. And while she knew the outline of Rosi’s journey growing up, it was hazy. “I first knew that there was this history when we were sitting around the morning room table at her house and talking about the reparations grandma was getting from Germany,” she says. “I remember grandma writing a little cheque for her granddaughters, so we could go to Brent Cross, because she got a bit of money from Germany.”
What started the book off was Robinson’s quest to claim German citizenship and reclaim the heritage of which Rosi had been deprived. She hasn’t actually been to Germany yet – “I did go to Italy and went into the EU queue, but that was actually longer and my husband sailed through on his UK passport, so that backfired” – but is keen to do so. “I’m slightly nervous that when I present my German passport, the official will talk to me in German and I can’t speak it yet. And then I’ll look like a right idiot.”
Robinson hopes one day to retrace Rosi’s steps, going from Esslingen where Rosi so happily taught, across the border to Poland and then overseas to Britain. “I want to try the whole journey,” she says, adding jokily, “if somebody else could pay and film it, that would be great.”
Today, happily married and with career success, Robinson comes across as a different woman to the insecure 23-year-old she was. Writing the book was cathartic – she found diaries she had literally Sellotaped shut and with them memories she had repressed. “I realised that some of the beliefs I had in my early twenties, I was still holding on to,” she says. Citing some of the mistakes she made back then, she says she always felt she was a stupid person. “I don’t feel that now. And it’s made me have more self-respect. I feel like I’ve come of age. And I am ready to use my voice.”
Jess Robinson (Photo: Karla Gowlett)[Missing Credit]
One encounter stands out; Robinson, who was not brought up Jewish, recalls a Friday night dinner where she didn’t know the traditions and felt so embarrassed she left early. Today, she proudly lights a menorah on Chanukah and hopes the book will expose her to more opportunities to explore her Jewish heritage. One of her publishing team, Jewish and a similar age, told her he recognised the portrait of Rosi from his own grandparents. “I was amazed, because I just thought no one will be able to relate to this,” she says. “I’m so excited to have more of these conversations with Jewish people because I don’t really have a sense of what’s normal.”
While writing, she asked her aunt Stephie whether Rosi would mind personal details being published. “She said, I think it’s important and also grandma would say, I’m in the ground now, do what you like,” says Robinson.
Rosi died aged 102, having reunited with some of those she helped come over on the Kindertransport. It’s clear Robinson still misses her. But now she has 23-year-old Rosi to remember too.
What would one say to the other if they met at the same age? “I would ask her what PG meant,” smiles Robinson. “I think we would probably talk about boys we fancied and talk about our next moves. She would probably tell me to get into teaching. And I would probably get her a bit drunk. That’s what I like to imagine.”
Life is Rosi, by Jess Robinson, is published by Mudlark
