Archive: 2014

Vienna to host Kindertransport museum

Posted on December 7, 2014

Vienna will be the home of what organizers are calling the world’s first permanent museum dedicated to the story of the Kindertransport. The memorial museum “For the Child” is set to open in the center of the Austrian capital on Wednesday. The Dec. 10 opening is on the 76th anniversary of the departure of the first group of Jewish children from Vienna as part of the Kindertransport — the German-language name for the organized shipment of Jewish children, to save them from the Holocaust.

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World Kindertransport Day in Burbank, CA

Posted on December 6, 2014

Ruth Moll speaks at the second World Kindertransport Day at the Burbank Town Center on Tuesday, December 2, 2014. Tim Berger / Staff Photographer

Kindertransport survivors share their stories. Burbank Town Center talk remembers 76th anniversary of Kindertransport. Ruth Moll and Hilda Fogelson remember packing their life’s belongings into a single suitcase, the tearful goodbyes, not knowing when they would see family again — if ever — and the language barrier when they arrived in a new country.

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Paddington Bear inspired by Kindertransports

Posted on December 3, 2014

Paddington’s 88-year-old creator, Michael Bond reveals his inspiration for the kindly bear: the Jewish evacuee children he remembered seeing in the train stations of London during the Kindertransport of the late 1930s. “They all had a label round their neck with their name and address on and a little case or package containing all their treasured possessions…”

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‘British Schindler’ Nicholas Winton: I wasn’t heroic. I was never in danger

Posted on November 9, 2014

Now 105, the man who helped more than 600 Jewish children escape the Nazis before the second war war has been hailed as a hero around the world. He tells a different story …

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Hard work pays off as Kindertransport Farm gets listed status

Posted on September 5, 2014

The Kindertransport Farm in Millisle, Northern Ireland has secured listed status, after leading a long campaign to ensure the historic site was properly protected. Kindertransport Farm is closely linked to the Holocaust and Northern Ireland’s own war history, especially the past it played in saving the lives of so many Jewish Children.

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The KTA Letter regarding unaccompanied child immigrants to the US

Posted on August 17, 2014

The Kindertransport Association, which represents many of the surviving “children” (now American citizens in their 80s) and their descendants, urges that the unaccompanied children arriving in the United States today receive the respect, protection and support that they require in order to rebuild their lives. To read, download and send the complete letter: https://www.sendspace.com/file/1vxuac

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Stage Door: The Pianist of Willesden Lane

Posted on July 24, 2014

Mona Golabek’s tribute to her mother’s experience in the Kindertransport, a rescue mission that sent Jewish children to Britain prior to WWII, is mesmerizing. The Pianist of Willesden Lane, a story of bravery and survival now at 59E59 Theaters, should be required viewing.

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Britain’s Schindler, a Reluctant Hero

Posted on July 10, 2014

Sir Nicholas Winton, Petr David Josek/Associated Press

In 1988, the BBC program “That’s Life!” aired an episode dedicated to Sir Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker who rescued 669 mostly Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939. In the wake of Sir Nicholas’s 105th birthday last May, a segment from that episode went viral.

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BORDENTOWN: Middle school hosts Holocaust survivor

Posted on June 25, 2014

“What was the hardest part of your experience during the Kindertransport?” and “How do you feel about Germany today?” are just two of the questions Bordentown Regional Middle School students asked of Holocaust survivor Norbert Bikales during his visit to the school on May 30. Mr. Bikales told the audience of 180 eighth-graders, teaching staff, and administrators, how, as a 9-year-old in Berlin, he heard that his father and 17-year-old brother had been arrested.

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Lindenbaum Bicycle Odyssey – Returning After 76 Years

Posted on June 21, 2014

This is a story which started 76 years ago when the Nazis kicked my family out of our home in Unna. My brother Siegfried and I were refugee children who survived while my parents and sister did not. Today, I am retracing the story back to my home town with my wife, three children, their spouses, and my grandchildren. I am excited to embark on this journey and would love to share it with you. Please follow my odyssey at odyssey76.com where we will be uploading daily updates.

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Escaping the Nazis, with a hero’s help

Posted on June 2, 2014

In late April, the CBS program “60 Minutes” aired an extraordinary report titled “Saving the Children,” about Sir Nicholas Winton, an Englishman who in 1939 helped 669 children, mostly Jews, escape Nazi persecution in Czechoslovakia. Renata Laxova was one of those kids. Laxova, 82, is an emeritus professor of genetics at UW-Madison. Last week, she sat at a shaded table in the backyard of her North Side home and recalled the year when she was 8 years old, and the whole world changed.

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Escaping Hitler Kindertransport: From Austria to England

Posted on May 27, 2014

Every spring, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, those who died under Nazi persecution are honored in ceremonies throughout the world; and those who survived it recall what they experienced. Anita Weisbord is among them. When Hitler’s army annexed Austria to the German Reich in March of 1938, Weisbord’s homeland suddenly became unrecognizable. “That was the end of my childhood as I knew it,” recalls Weisbord today, “Overnight, Jews became non-persons. We lost all our rights.”

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Nicholas Winton, the ‘British Schindler’, honoured by Czechs

Posted on May 21, 2014

Nicholas Winton with one of the children he rescued. Courtesy Bee’s Knees Productions

A man nicknamed the British Oskar Schindler, who saved hundreds of Jewish children from the Nazis before the second world war and on Monday celebrated his 105th birthday, is to receive the highest honour in the Czech Republic. Sir Nicholas Winton enabled 669 children – mostly Jewish – to escape from the German-occupied country, and come to Britain just before war broke out in September 1939. Many of the children’s families were murdered in Nazi concentration camps.

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Man Who Saved 669 Kids From Nazis Turns 105, Gets Beautiful Birthday Honor

Posted on May 21, 2014

File photo taken 09 October 2007 shows British Sir Nicholas Winton in backstage of Prague’s Congress Center Hall before a meeting which paid tribute to him.

The story of Sir Nicholas Winton is one of the most profound tales of humanitarianism that you’ve probably never heard. After saving 669 children, most of them Jewish, from likely death at Nazi concentration camps at the onset of World War II, it was announced Monday — on Winton’s 105th birthday — that the heroic Englishman will be awarded the Order of the White Lion, the highest order in the Czech Republic. The award will be given to Winton this October.

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1939 letter found, Winton’s plea to FDR to save Jewish kids

Posted on May 18, 2014

An archivist makes a stunning find after a 60 Minutes story airs about Sir Nick Winton, the Londoner who saved 669 children from the Nazis. Last month, 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon told the remarkable story of Sir Nicholas Winton, a stockbroker in London who saved 669 Czech children from the Nazis during WWII. He said he had written a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, describing the plight of the Czech children and asking that America grant refuge to a number of them.

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Holocaust survivors demand help for Syrian refugees

Posted on May 17, 2014

A Berlin-based artists’ collective is pressuring the German government to take in more Syrian asylum seekers. It is supported by two Berlin Jews who survived the Holocaust thanks to asylum via the KIndertransport in the UK. Grateful for their fate, they now want to help Syrian children escape the civil war raging in their country.

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Inauguration of Kindertransport statue in Hamburg supported by UK refugees

Posted on May 13, 2014

The Association of Jewish Refugees represented Britain at last week’s inauguration of a Kindertransport statue in Hamburg, Germany. Sir Erich Reich, Andrea Goodmaker and Carol Rossen from AJR were among the first to see the bronze sculpture, called The Last Farewell, by internationally acclaimed artist Frank Meisler, himself a Kind.

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The sole survivor

Posted on May 11, 2014

In the five-year run of Dandelions Flowers and Gifts’ “Eugene’s Favorite Mom” award, there had never been a nomination letter quite like it. Written by brothers Sidney and Kenneth Brown, the essay described the remarkable life story of their mother, Charlotte Brown, who turned 90 on April 2.

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‘We Would Be Separated, Quite Likely Forever’

Posted on May 3, 2014

Walter Kohn

Nobel laureate and professor emeritus of physics at USCB, KTA member Walter Kohn recalls life under the Austrian Nazi regime, the death of his parents at Auschwitz and the good people who rescued him. On Dec. 2, 1938, a train pulled into Harwich, England. On board were 196 children from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin that had been destroyed during Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Part of the first “Kindertransport,” the children were on their way to foster homes in Britain.

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Several events to focus on Kindertransport mission

Posted on April 29, 2014

The Kindertransport will be the focus of several events in May in Utica and Rome, NY. At 2 p.m. on May 18, Karl Buchholz, a Kindertransport survivor, will speak at the Jewish Community Center in Utica. The play by Diane Samuels, “Kindertransport,” will be presented at 7:30 p.m. June 5-7 at Rome Community Theater, with a 2:30 p.m. matinee June 8. The Kindertransport Association Exhibition Panels will be on display at the theater.

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