Peter Gray collection

Peter Frederick Gray was born Friedrich Wolfgang Graetzer in Charlottenburg, Berlin, on 14 July 1921. He changed his name by deed poll on 30 April 1946. His parents were Franz Ludwig Graetzer (b. Berlin, 23 September 1884; d. 1942), a lawyer, and Lotte Graetzer née Guttmann. Peter’s sister Erika was born on 17 May 1925.

Franz was the son of Friedrich, born on 23 June 1846 in Blazeowitz (Błażejowice), Kreis Gleiwitz (Gliwice). Friedrich’s parents were Samuel (1789-1868), a landowner, and Nanni Graetzer née Pleissner. Lotte’s parents were Friedrich, a distiller, and Adavand Guttmann.

Peter arrived in Britain in 1937; he attended Bunce Court from April 1937 to July 1938. He then studied architecture at the Northern Polytechnic, Holloway, in 1938/39, leaving because of the termination of his allowance; between 1939 and 1940, he worked in a London architect’s office. In July 1940, he was placed on the H.M.T. Dunera for transportation to Australia.

From 8 April 1942 to 18 February 1946, Peter served in the Australian army’s 8th Employment Company, an unarmed unit involved in essential labouring tasks; it was sometimes known as the “Dunera Boys” because so many of its members had come to Australia on that ship. He was stationed for a time in the Tocumwal work camp. It is possible that in this time he got to know the photographer Helmut Newton, another German-Jewish refugee transported to Australia who served in the 6th Employment Company, also based in Victoria; there are pictures of Peter taken by Newton in 1944/45.

After the war, he continued his training as an architect at the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1950. He became a naturalized British Subject of the Commonwealth of Australia on 25 February 1946. In  1951 or 1952, he returned to Britain, where he worked as an architect. He married Elizabeth in 1955. Their son was born in 1957 Peter Gray died on 11 April 2018.

Both Peter's mother Lotte and his sister Erika seem to have escaped to Britain, too. In 1952 Lotte was living in Bethnal Gardens as a housekeeper for a Quaker young working men’s hostel and in 1957 she was living in Clevedon, where she lived in a flat owned by Olive Ebling. Erika, Peter's sister, later married Olive's son John Ebling. He was a professor of zoology in Britsol, where Erika was a lab assistant.

Donated 16.3.2018

Donor: Elizabeth Gray