Born in the city of Brno in 1893 where she grew up in the home of her grandfather, the Moravian chief rabbi Baruch Placzek, Valerie married into a prosperous local family that manufactured carpets and other textiles. The wedding took place in the lavish parkside mansion built by her father-in-law, Moriz Fuhrmann, the eponymous founder of the family business, which operated factories in Brno and the town of Hlinsko. It's now a publicly owned museum -- the Löw-Beer Villa, so-named after a subsequent owner -- with a permanent exhibition highlighting the history of Jews in Moravia.
Aline, the daughter of Sir Percy Mackinnon, former chairman of Lloyd's of London, worked with British MP Eleanor Rathbone to rescue Jews from Nazi Austria and Czechoslovakia. She also co-ordinated with the Czech Refugee Trust Fund, an organisation created by the British government to support Czech refugees in the U.K.
Two and a half months after the chance meeting in Saalbach, Germany annexed Austria. Dorrit, then an art student in Vienna, was advised by a professor to get out of Austria while she was still able to do so. She fled to London on May 18, 1938, her 21st birthday, carrying a letter of introduction from her professor to the Reimann School of Art and Design.
Some time later in Brno, a newspaper item caught my grandmother's attention. Aline Mackinnon "had put a large appeal, to help get people out, into the Guardian, which by pure chance I saw in a coffee house," she told me. With her personal connection to Aline, she grasped at the opportunity.
"I then wrote to Aline to look after Dorrit, which she did.” The refugee trust fund would later pay Dorrit three pounds a week for living expenses, while the Reimann school covered her tuition.
Dorrit went on to have a successful postwar career as a London-based graphic designer under the name Dorrit Dekk.
Dorrit as a Wren during the Second World War[Missing Credit]
Her father, Hans Fuhrmann, had opposed her emigration to Britain on the grounds that there would be no war or danger to Czech Jews. He would end up murdered in Auschwitz.
Valerie escaped from Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, on a train from Prague – just as Nazi troops invaded the country. Her son managed to get out some four months later, arriving in Harwich, England, on July 22. Aline Mackinnon was instrumental in getting the necessary visas for both of them, my grandmother told me. (She changed her surname to Forman in the UK)
Aline also made it possible for several of Valerie's acquaintances to find refuge in Britain.
Immediately after arriving in the UK, Valerie went to work as a secretary for Aline, living in Sir Percy's country house in Kent.
"I did the German correspondence for the refugee trust fund, and handled contacts with non-English-speaking arrivals who got jobs as domestics, gardeners etc. Everyone needed a guarantor, and all their (Mackinnon's) family and Liberal friends took one on. I could get many people out through her work."
In 1943 Valerie got a job in the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office, translating and analysing captured German documents. When the war ended she moved to the Prisoners of War Division of the Foreign Office, joining the editorial staff of the Wochenpost, a weekly newspaper read by PoWs in Britain.
"The paper was supposed to teach them democratic thinking. ... A total waste of time, money and effort to get Naziism out of their system," she told me.
She also worked as a book censor, inspecting volumes from the German army that had occupied the Channel Islands. "We had to judge the influence on their mentality as Nazis.” Letters written by her Foreign Office superiors detailing her government work, which ended in 1948, are held by the Wiener Holocaust Library in London.
Both of her children were also involved in the war effort. As a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service assigned to intelligence, Dorrit -- then newly widowed, her husband, physicist Leonard Klatzow, having died just two years after they married -- was posted to the Isle of Wight and other coastal sites where she monitored radio signals from German naval vessels. Her brother, meanwhile, joined up with other exiles in the Czechoslovak armed forces that fought with Western allies.
He returned to Czechoslovakia after the war, determined to resume operation of the Fuhrmann textile business -- only to see it nationalised after the Communist coup in 1948. He fled with his wife and son (my older brother), to Canada soon after.
Robert Fuhrmann in London in 1943. During the war he served with the Czech armed forces that fought with Western Allies.[Missing Credit]
Valerie counted 20 members of her extended family – including her mother, brother and numerous cousins – who perished in the Holocaust. She remained in London until her death in 1993 at age 99.
Of the Mackinnon family to whom she owed her long life, and to whom the descendants of Robert Fuhrmann – all of whom live in Canada – may well owe their existence, she said in a letter to me in 1989: "The family remained my friends – also now some grandchildren keep in touch. They were marvellous people, public-spirited, simple in spite of having four maids and gardeners, a chauffeur, etc."
Štetl Fest will be held Aug. 26-30 in Brno. For details: stetl.cz/en/stetl-fest/2026
