News & Resources

Rector's Message Request a Prospectus E-newsletter Bus routes and directions

Posted: Friday 20 May 2011

S3 Pupils hear an extraordinary tale of survival

Mrs Claire Singerman, History teacher at Hutchesons', reports on an extraordinary tale of survival during the Second World War.

S3 historians and their teachers were privileged to listen to a talk from Mrs Marion Camrass who described to us her experiences during the Second World War and explained why she ended up here as a proud Glaswegian. All listened with great concentration and awe as we learned of her journey from privileged childhood in a comfortable middle class household to exile in Siberia and then escape to an orphanage in Bukhara in Uzbekistan.

Mrs Camrass told her story quietly and calmly without a single note yet it was obvious the events she lived through were seared into her memory. We learnt about her life in a former Soviet Gulag in Siberia where the snow was so deep that in winter the only way out of the house was by digging a tunnel. She made us all smile when she described her tiny mother dragging a hare she had found in the forest home for dinner only to drop it and run for her life when she realised she was surrounded by the wolves who had killed the hare and were preparing to take it back.

Listening to Mrs Camrass brought to life a period that we have been studying. Hitler's attack on Poland and the events that followed it were known to all present yet their meaning became much clearer when described by someone who was there and survived.

We all realised how lucky we are to live in a peaceful Scotland and how great historical events do not occur in a vacuum, but affect ordinary people in extraordinary ways.

 

 

Tags: History

<  Return to news