My mother, Irene Cotton, who has died aged 97, moved to the UK from Germany after the end of the second world war, having met and married an Englishman in the British-controlled sector of Berlin.
One of five children, she was born into a prosperous German farming family near Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), in what is now part of Russia. Her father, Fritz Szillat, had fought on the eastern front against Russia during the first world war, while her mother, Maria (nee Petrick), ran the farm with the help of Russian prisoners of war.
Still at school when the second world war started, Irene was upset by the arrival of the Nazis to their remote part of Germany. She also noticed the gradual disappearance of her Jewish friends, whom her mother had always tried to help. Towards the end of the war she was sent away by train just as the Russian army was closing in. Her mother was killed shortly afterwards by Russian shelling, but the rest of her family, one way or another, were able to survive.
Once in Berlin, Irene met Arthur Cotton, who was stationed there as one of the many soldiers in the Control Commission, running the British sector of Germany. They married in 1947 and had a daughter, Ilona, who died at the age of one of typhoid fever. Irene’s sister, Gerda, also ended up in Berlin and married a British soldier – and in 1949 they both moved to the UK, where they lived near to each other in Deal, Kent.
When Arthur left the army, our family lived in a small flat in London, until in 1960 we moved into a new council house. In 1965 we visited our relatives in what had become East Germany. At that time they seemed to have a similar standard of living to us, just less choice in what you could buy and where you could go.
While I was growing up, Irene worked as a part-time waitress, shop assistant and artists’ model, while Arthur drove lorries. They were married for 60 years and so got their congratulatory card from the Queen, of which they were very proud. They had 20 happy years of retirement together and, after Arthur died in 2008, Irene moved to live near me in Sidmouth, Devon.
She is survived by me and by a host of nieces, nephews and cousins in Germany, Belgium and France.
