This is a series of geocaches set up by students on Newmarket Academy in memory of a group of Jewish Refugee’s who lived in Newmarket at Palace House Stables to escape Nazi persecution during the Second World War. Each Cache will be dedicated to one of the refugee’s and each location has been chosen as it has been specifically mentioned in a memoir written by one of the Fritz Ball, one of the refugees housed at Palace House.
This project would not have been possible without the hard work of the students and the dedicated support of the brilliant team from Suffolk Archives who had completed the original research to get this project off the ground.
This Geocache is dedicated to Fritz and Eva Ball: Fritz was born on 19 July 1893 in Berlin into a wealthy Jewish family. His father, Ernst, was a high-flying lawyer. His mother was Bianca Ball née Mendelssohn. (There is no evidence that his mother was related to Mendelssohn, the composer.)
Fritz became a lawyer and joined his father and brother at the family firm in central Berlin. He married Eva Gutfeld in 1921 in Berlin and they had three sons – Hans Peter (b. 1923), Ernst Dieter (b. 1927) and Thomas (b. 1929). However, under new Nazi anti-Semitic laws, Fritz lost his licence to practise law in 1933. In March of that year, he was imprisoned overnight in Papestrasse Prison in Berlin, one of the first Nazi concentration camps. The family had to close the law firm. Fritz sold soap to earn some sort of a living.
Fritz and Eva arrived in London on 17 May 1939. They were travelling on a transit visa and planned to reunite the family in USA as soon as possible. While Dieter and Thomas were evacuated to the south of England, Fritz and Eva were placed at Palace House Stables in Newmarket. They were nearly 150 miles apart. The boys were only 12 and 10 years old.
Throughout his time in Newmarket (1939-1942), Fritz performed in public concerts, sometimes as a soloist, sometimes in a small group or with an orchestra. He often played with the other musicians in the house (Kate Fischler, a pianist, and Freda Harstein, a singer). They always got excellent reviews.
We have chosen to locate this geocache here as in his Memoir Fritz mentions how strange it was for large green spaces to be given over to recreation, in Germany it would have been unheard of for people to be walking on grass spaces as these were off limits. We do not know for sure that it is the Severalls that Fritz is discussing however as a large green space near to Palace House where the refugees were housed we felt this was a fitting place to locate a geocache.