While Germany’s Reichsbahn is most infamous for carrying Jews to their final destination, the national rail system was also used to transport 10,000 Jewish children to safe haven in the UK. “My mother had a choice. She could save me, or one of my brothers. Only one of us could go to England, and she thought it would be easier for a girl to be placed in a family. I was lucky.” That’s how the three-year-old Ruth Auerbach ended up at Berlin’s Friedrichstraße station on February 2, 1939.
She survived the horrors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, where most of her family were murdered by the Nazis. But it was on the County Down coast that Rachel Levy began to recover from the Holocaust. She was among a small number of Jewish orphans brought to live in a farm near Millisle in the immediate aftermath of World War Two.
World Jewish Relief is creating an exceptional new cycle challenge to commemorate 80 years since they, as the Central British Fund for German Jewry (CBF), orchestrated the Kindertransport and brought 10,000 children to safety. This unique six day cycle will emulate the journey taken by the children on the first Kindertransport train, departing Berlin and travelling to London Liverpool St, via Holland and the ferry to Harwich.
Ken Appel, 90, spoke to Watford Rotary Club about being beaten by his former friends and eventually being expelled from school for being Jewish during the rise of the Nazi Party.