Herman Hirschberger at a Holocaust Memorial Day event with pupils from Bentley Wood High School.
Herman Hirschberger, a Stanmore holocaust survivor on the New Year honours list says fighting for justice for Jewish refugees was the “best job I’ve ever done”. He will be given an MBE by the Queen for services to the Jewish Community and the Kindertransport evacuees.
The celebrated ‘Kindertransport’ project finds an echo in the noble decision by Digvijaysinhji, the maharaja of Nawanagar to take in Polish children from war-torn, occupied Poland and Soviet prison camps. He took personal risks to make the arrangements at a time when the world was at war, and when the exhausted refugees were denied entry at all ports. Digvijaysinhji, son of the legendary cricketer-prince Ranjitsinhji, built a camp for them beside his summer palace and made them feel at home.
Here The Horror was nurtured and exalted — at monster rallies between 1923-1939, where hundreds of thousands of Germans massed every summer to pledge fanatic fealty to “der Führer”… And here, in Courtroom 600 of the Palace of Justice, beginning in 1945, the perpetrators of The Horror were brought to account for their deeds by the Allies… Nuremberg: ground zero. Among the 200 honored guests in Courtroom 600 sat a diminutive 86-year-old German-born lady named Hedy Epstein.
The year is 1938. Betrayed at Munich by European countries desperate to appease Hitler — “Peace in our time,” infamously crowed Neville Chamberlain — Czechoslovakia is about to be invaded by Germany. Toronto poet and novelist Alison Pick dissects this national tragedy in a multilayered narrative, a tale of betrayals large and small, that focuses on the fates of the Bauers, secular Czech Jews.
Marion Marston, 85, of Stanmore, lost 22 members of her family in the Holocaust. She came to Britain on the Kindertransport. She struggles to afford any luxuries. “I have four hours’ paid homecare a week from the AJR, and the Holocaust Survivors’ Centre in Hendon is a lifeline for me. But I would be very happy to have more help.”
Kingston celebrated interfaith week with a Faith Fest allowing different groups to share their food and artefacts. The week ran until Sunday, November 28, and included a talk by a survivor of the kinder transport from Nazi Germany at Kingston Liberal Synagogue.
Mr Hirschberger, a refugee from Nazi Germany who came to the UK in 1939 on the Kindertransport, reminded us that we must not discriminate against anybody on the grounds of race or colour or religion. That is such an important lesson that we can take forward from this Mitzvah Marathon.
Lotte Kramer came to England in 1939 with the Kindertransport. Her 13th volume, Turning the Key (Rockingham Press, £7.99) is made up of a compelling quantity of toughly pared-down lyrics. One instantly sees why she cherishes an unassumingly grey-toned necklace though . . . not prone to ornaments./It was the simple beauty of design/That spoke to me, the thinness of the chain,/The tiny pearls like petit-pois.
Melissa Hacker, eine New Yorker Filmemacherin hat sich der Geschichte ihrer Familie angenommen. Im NU-Gesprach erzahlt sie uber ihre Mutter Ruth Morley, eine beruhmte Filmdesignerin, die als Kind aus Wien fluchten konnte und uber ihren Grossvater Mordechai Birnholz, den Besitzer einer beruhmten Exlibris-Sammlung, die von den Nazis gestohlen wurde. -Scroll down page to ARTIKEL and clic on Zerbrochene Kindheit –
Alison Pick’s Holocaust novel, Far To Go, puts a new spin on moral compromise and, especially, the experience of young children living in Jewish households where the growing terror becomes unbearable. It’s 1939, and Czech secular Jews Pavel and Annaliese Bauer’s comfortable life is slowly slipping away. As Hitler makes inroads into the country, they have to make some decisions.
Ruth Barnett gave her testimony to 200 students at Bishop Gore School in Swansea, as part of a visit organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust. The aim of the visit is to ensure pupils learn the lessons of the Holocaust — which led to the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis. London-based Ruth first came to Britain back in 1939, along with her seven-year-old brother.
Wolf was born in Karlsruhe, Germany on December 18,1926. In 1939, at age 12, he was sent to England as part of the last Kindertransport. He spent the war years attending school at Eastbourne College, and then teaching younger students at a school which had been relocated to northern Wales. As a young man, he immigrated to the United States where in 1946 he finally reunited with his parents in New York City.
Later this month singer Max Raabe will bring his 12-piece Palast Orchester ensemble here from Germany, for the first time, for four performances of their Heute Nacht Oder Nie (Tonight or Never) show in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa. Raabe and the band’s repertoire is based on songs that were popular in Germany during the 1920s and early ’30s, “up to 1933,” as Raabe is keen to point out. Hits from America, which also made it big in Europe at the time, also feature in the show.
Lithe and still a head-turner at 85, Phillips, a former model, questioned me about my history before detailing her escape in 1939 to England from Vienna, and her New York reunion with her parents. An artist since childhood, Phillips recalled the “sexual harassment” she endured as the only woman illustrator at the comic book publisher Fiction House.
Meditations: Eva Hesse, featuring Heather L. Tyler, is at Highways Performance Space this weekend.
Eva Hesse was an artist known for both her pioneering work with materials such as plastics, fiberglass and latex, as well as her short, tragic career and life. This weekend in Los Angeles, two opening art exhibitions and a new play focus on Hesse’s life and work. Born in Germany in 1936, Hesse and her sister escaped on one of the last kindertransport trains.
Share4 By Robyn Rosen, September 21, 2010 Sir Nicholas Winton, known as the British Schindler after he rescued 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia, has been honoured with the unveiling of a life-size statue of himself. Sir Nicholas, who is 101, attended the unveiling of the bronze statue, created by sculptor Lydia Karpinska, on the Reading-bound platform at Maidenhead railway station at the weekend.
An Interview with Austrian Consul General Ernst-Peter Brezovszky Editor’s Note: Daniel Retter’s father, Marcus Retter, z”l, escaped from Vienna to England in 1938 on the Kindertransport.He says that since his father should have been the one asking some of the following questions, the interview is dedicated to his memory.
Gretel Beer, who has died aged 89, was a Kindertransport refugee from Austria and became a highly successful writer of cook books; her Classic Austrian Cooking (1954) remains the standard work in English. It was the first in a series on cooking in her homeland, and introduced a British public still dogged by postwar austerity and rationing to the exotic delights of thick soups, Wiener schnitzel, veal goulash, as well as famous Austrian desserts such as dumplings, nut cakes and Sachertortes.
Looking Towards Mornington Crescent Station
Considered one of Britain’s greatest living artists, Frank Auerbach has been based in North London for his entire career, spanning over fifty years. Auerbach was born in Berlin in 1931, to Jewish parents. In 1939 they sent him to England to escape the Nazis as part of the Kindertransport programme, where he has lived ever since. His parents died in a concentration camp.
I’ve always thought of Devorah (Gertrude) Jerichower as a true yekke. Born in Hamburg, she was sent to England in 1938 with her elder brother on the second Kindertransport, her parents perished in Auschwitz. There are others like Devorah, indomitable, motivated, proud Jews and human beings. Their lives have lessons to teach about purpose, courage and endurance in an era when too many are confused, rudderless and weak. We can, if we choose, learn them.