My grandmother, Elisabeth Evans, was a refugee from the Nazis during the second world war who found sanctuary in Britain. An only child, she lost most of her family during the conflict and went on to have eight children of her own.
Elisabeth, who has died aged 96, was born in Pottenstein, Austria, to Rose (nee Fanta), who was Jewish, and Ludwig Achtner, a Lutheran lawyer who worked for Jewish clients in Vienna.
Her later childhood was marked by the rise of Adolf Hitler, whose long speeches Elisabeth had to endure at compulsory youth rallies. By the eve of war, the family were in danger and Ludwig took his own life.
Virtually all of her maternal family perished, murdered in ghettos and camps. She never fully recovered from the heartbreak of losing her grandparents and father.
In the summer of 1939, Elisabeth and her mother arrived in London, the Quakers having helped arrange safe passage. Rose went into domestic service and Elisabeth was accepted into the celebrated Bunce Court school in Kent, run by Anna Essinger for children escaping from the Nazis. Elisabeth excelled at school and made lifelong friendships.
By the mid-1940s she was living with Jewish friends and activists in what she described as a “London kibbutz” in Highgate. The property was destroyed one evening by German bombing, killing her friends, with Elisabeth surviving because her room lay above the rubble.
A political person, astute and progressive, she met her husband, William Evans, an architect, when they were both active in the Labour party in Paddington. They married in 1948 and Elisabeth converted to Catholicism. She went on to have eight children, and later explained that she had been denied birth control.
Her years as a busy mother and wife supportive of her husband’s career masked her own abilities. She was a talented pianist and mathematician.
She was nonetheless devoted to her family. Always forgiving and loyal, she loved music, played the piano, read extensively, and was always informed (and usually angry) about politics. She smoked like a chimney for decades, until suddenly stopping in solidarity with one of her sons who was trying to quit. She did not drink, but had a taste for fine food, especially Austrian dishes.
It was a blow to her when in the 1980s her marriage broke up, though she and William never divorced.
Elisabeth is survived by seven of her eight children, 13 grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren.
