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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
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| Margit Goodman obituary | Margit Goodman obituary |
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| My mother, Margit Goodman, who has died aged 95, came to Britain just before the second world war, after which she served as a social worker and Citizens Advice Bureau manager in north London for three decades. | My mother, Margit Goodman, who has died aged 95, came to Britain just before the second world war, after which she served as a social worker and Citizens Advice Bureau manager in north London for three decades. |
| Born in Mariánské Lázně, Czechoslovakia, into a middle-class Jewish family, Margit was the daughter of Irma (nee Pisinger) and Julius Freudenberg, who ran a grocery business. After the German occupation of her country, she was sent to Britain on one of Nicholas Winton’s Kindertransport trains in June 1939, and spent the second world war working in Glasgow hospitals. When she was prevented – as a foreigner – from qualifying as a nurse, she moved to work at a factory in Hertfordshire. | Born in Mariánské Lázně, Czechoslovakia, into a middle-class Jewish family, Margit was the daughter of Irma (nee Pisinger) and Julius Freudenberg, who ran a grocery business. After the German occupation of her country, she was sent to Britain on one of Nicholas Winton’s Kindertransport trains in June 1939, and spent the second world war working in Glasgow hospitals. When she was prevented – as a foreigner – from qualifying as a nurse, she moved to work at a factory in Hertfordshire. |
| In 1946 Margit returned to Czechoslovakia to find out what had happened to her family. Only her brother, Paul, and an uncle had survived. While in Prague she met the English journalist Geoffrey Goodman, who was there working for an army newspaper. He enlisted Margit’s help in a restaurant, where he needed the menu translated for him, and the next day she acted as interpreter at his meeting with the editor of the Communist party newspaper Rudé právo. Six months later they were married and living in the UK, and over the next six decades they became their own kind of leftwing power couple, first in the Communist party, then in the Labour party, entertaining, befriending and arguing with leading journalists, trade unionists and Labour politicians at the family home in Mill Hill, north London. | In 1946 Margit returned to Czechoslovakia to find out what had happened to her family. Only her brother, Paul, and an uncle had survived. While in Prague she met the English journalist Geoffrey Goodman, who was there working for an army newspaper. He enlisted Margit’s help in a restaurant, where he needed the menu translated for him, and the next day she acted as interpreter at his meeting with the editor of the Communist party newspaper Rudé právo. Six months later they were married and living in the UK, and over the next six decades they became their own kind of leftwing power couple, first in the Communist party, then in the Labour party, entertaining, befriending and arguing with leading journalists, trade unionists and Labour politicians at the family home in Mill Hill, north London. |
| In the late 1950s Margit enrolled at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster) in London, where she trained to become a social worker. After that she worked for many years at a family service unit in Barnet, north London, and ended her working life as manager of the Citizens Advice Bureau in Friern Barnet. She continued to live in Mill Hill, and after retirement in 1988 became a governor of a primary school there, giving German conversation lessons to the schoolchildren during their lunch break. She also helped to run the local old people’s welfare association and to keep the local Labour party show on the road. | In the late 1950s Margit enrolled at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster) in London, where she trained to become a social worker. After that she worked for many years at a family service unit in Barnet, north London, and ended her working life as manager of the Citizens Advice Bureau in Friern Barnet. She continued to live in Mill Hill, and after retirement in 1988 became a governor of a primary school there, giving German conversation lessons to the schoolchildren during their lunch break. She also helped to run the local old people’s welfare association and to keep the local Labour party show on the road. |
| Geoffrey died in 2013. She is survived by their two children, me and Karen, and by her four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. | Geoffrey died in 2013. She is survived by their two children, me and Karen, and by her four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. |
| Second world war | Second world war |
| Other lives | Other lives |
| Czechoslovakia | Czechoslovakia |
| Migration | Migration |
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