HISTORY


mains water connected eight years later so it was much easier to fill after that.”


Since having the pool installed, there have been plenty of stories to tell, such as the time Jacqueline found a streaker taking a swim one October.


Another time, Rolf phoned the police to report a miniature polar bear in the shallow end. “I was woken up at 2am one morning to the most frightening, howling noise like something from a horror film. The pool was covered up, but I could see this polar bear’s head poking out. When I phoned the police they asked me if I’d been drinking!


Rolf and daughter Nina “Rolf tells us that the paltry sum Herta ”


she’d accumulated far more than that original offer.”


Although it goes some way to softening the blow of losing their fortunes in Germany, Rolf tells us that the paltry sum Herta received for their home and land was made worse when a coal seam worth around £1.5m was found under the house after the war. The house is still there some 280 after it was built and now comprises of three three- bedroom flats, an antiques store, and ladies’ fashion boutique which goes to show the sheer size of it. With luck on his side and cash in his pocket, Rolf spent five years travelling the world with Jacqueline and enjoying time at home before realising you couldn’t retire at 32. He didn’t need to financially, but Rolf went back to work at 37 when he then retired for a second time aged 80.


Hitler has a lot to answer for in Rolf’s life, but he really was the answer when HMRC came knocking in the 1990s.


“I had a letter from the taxman calling for a meeting which set the alarm bells ringing. I’d been in business 30 years, so why now? I’d lost my mother a few years before and she left everything to me. Had my accountant forgot to inform them?


“Every answer I gave them was truthful, but I was whittling they were going to stump me. Then the lady


received for their home and land was made worse when a coal seam worth around £1.5m was found under the house after the war.


asked me if I had a swimming pool. How the hell did she know that? She wanted to know how long I’d had it and where it came from, so I told her. Then she asked me how I paid for it – in cash. And where did I get the cash from? One word. Hitler. Well, the look on her face.” No Rolf Heymann story is complete without a few laughs thrown in and the swimming pool saga is a stroke of genius. It was in the baking hot summer of 1976 that Rolf woke up one Sunday morning dripping in sweat and decided he needed a pool. A quick flick through the Yellow Pages and a man from Dore was at his house two hours later pricing it up. The house where Rolf lives is a two-mile long country lane with only 20 houses on, the first being half a mile up. But the builder said he could sort it, no problem. Well only one small problem.


“He asked me where the mains were for the water, so I pointed to the sky. We didn’t have any mains connection then. He looked at me like I was crazy – how can you have a pool with no water? But luckily for me there is a reservoir a javelin’s throw away from my house. “My old boss lent me a lorry with a 2.5-gallon tank on the back. But the pool is over seven-foot deep and needed 11,000 gallons to fill it. I fell in fully clothed at the end of the day I was that exhausted. We finally had


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“I went out in my pyjamas and approached this huge beast with a net on the end of a stick which it didn’t go for, so I got a bit closer and could see a collar with a tag on. I phoned the number and the owner answered the phone after one ring and said it wasn’t a polar bear but a 13-stone Pyrenean Mountain dog that had gone missing from Stocksbridge that afternoon. “He told me it wasn’t vicious and was daft as a brush. I was quite strong back then so I managed to get my arms under the dog’s shoulders and pull it out the pool but ended up with the thing laid on top of me. As if I wasn’t wet enough the dog then decided to shake itself off, covering me in water. His owner came to collect him shortly followed by a police car with an inspector in who had come to see the polar bear for himself. Even he agreed it could have been one!”


Rolf’s life reads much like a film script and many actors would be lining up to play the title role if Rolf’s


Rolf in the war film


story was turned into a biopic. But he’s also appeared on the silver screen in war film, of all things. While on holiday in Spain in 1989, Rolf was approached by a producer and director who were looking for a replacement for one of the actors had taken ill.


“I was half cut and thought one of my mates was winding me up. The next thing I knew I was being measured for an admiral’s uniform. Luckily for me one of the editors from Granada TV was staying in the same hotel and managed to document it with photos for a story or nobody would have believed me!” Unbelievable is one word to describe his life; from boy to man his journey has been incredible. Not only did he escape the Nazis as a young child, but he has also had another battle – this time against cancer – for the latter part of his life.


“I’m a very greedy person; I’ve had four different types of cancer. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer 25 years ago, and that didn’t kill me, so then it was non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma which they said was not curable but treatable which cheered me up a bit. Then one day they told me they couldn’t treat it anymore because I didn’t have it anymore. They’d somehow managed to cure it. Then I got skin cancer caused by stopping work at the first sight of sun. And last year I was diagnosed with lung cancer.


“Every time I go for my check up the nurses hug me. Not because they love me but because I’m still here. On my demise I joke with them that I’ll leave my body to the Hallamshire for science. They can even stuff it if they want.”


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