My mother, Ingrid Sahai, who has died aged 89, was a nurse and magistrate whose formative childhood experiences in wartime Germany gave her a lifelong desire to reduce suffering and to contribute to a just society.
Born in Dessau, Ingrid was the daughter of Hedwig (nee von der Heide) and Victor Darré. In 1939, at the beginning of the second world war, Victor, an engineer, was required to work at a power station, and the family moved to Tetschen-Bodenbach in what was then the Sudetenland (now Děčín in the Czech Republic). When the Russians arrived in 1945, Ingrid and her family were displaced as refugees and headed back towards Dessau, frequently on foot and at the point of Russian guns.
They settled near Quedlinburg, about 50km west of Dessau, in what became East Germany, or the DDR. Aged 13, Ingrid was identified as malnourished by social workers and sent away as a Ferienkind (“holiday child”) to live and work at a farm where food was more readily available. She had various tasks helping with the animals, and developed an affinity with them and the surrounding forest. After a few months her health began to improve, and she returned to her family.
After completing school at Gutsmuths Schule, in Quedlinburg, Ingrid trained as a nurse, initially in Torgau and Havelberg in the DDR. In 1954 she obtained a pass to work in Hamburg, West Germany, where she was obliged to repeat much of her training before specialising as a surgical nurse. In 1959 she moved to London, where she worked with the pioneering obstetrician Sir George Pinker at St Mary’s hospital, followed by St Mary Abbots hospital and the Samaritan Hospital for Women.
She met Virén Sahai, an architect, in a chance encounter on a Channel ferry, and they married in 1966. Virén encouraged Ingrid to study further, and in 1969 she obtained a degree in German from Bedford College, University of London followed by a postgraduate diploma in linguistics at Soas University of London. Subsequently she worked as a lexicographer on Harrap’s Standard German and English Dictionary, and as a translator.
I was born in 1973, and two years later our family settled in Abbot’s Leigh, near Bristol, for 12 years, before moving to Barton in Cambridgeshire. Even as life became comfortable, Ingrid remained committed to giving back to society. She served as a magistrate on the Bristol and Cambridge benches and continued to work part-time as a community nurse.
She also expanded her views of healing, in the 1990s qualifying as a reflexologist and setting up a small practice. The reunification of Germany in 1990 led to the joy of reconnecting with schoolfriends from Quedlinburg not seen for half a century.
My father suffered a stroke in 2013, and my mother’s devotion in caring for him and positivity in the face of her own health challenges were inspiring.
Virén died in 2014. Ingrid is survived by me and two grandchildren, Liam and Zara.
