Book for young readers by artist Peter Sis will be published January 2021. “This is really a story about people who are leaving home,” Sís said. “We all leave home. And we realize that we can never go back to the same home we left as a child. And it’s also about someone who is a reluctant hero, a reluctant rescuer. We’re all trying to pay tribute to this man—this generous, quiet, wonderful man.”
The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) said its ‘Kindertransport: Remembering and Rethinking’ looks at the legacy and contemporary relevance of the trains that carried Jewish children in Nazi-occupied lands to safety. AJR’s documentary podcast series uses its ‘Refugee Voices’ testimony archive, consisting of the recorded life stories of more than 250 Holocaust survivors and refugees, their first-person accounts weaved together.
The life of Sir Nicholas Winton, the Kindertransport hero who oversaw the rescue of hundreds of Jewish children, is set to be dramatised in a new Holocaust biopic. One Life will star 82-year-old actor Anthony Hopkins in the leading role alongside Johnny Flynn, 37, who will play the “British Schindler” at an earlier phase of his life. The film is reportedly set to arrive in UK cinemas next year.
Sir David Attenborough has spoken about the sisters from Berlin his family took in after they had fled Nazi Germany through the Kindertransport. The sisters, Irene and Helga Bejach, arrived in the UK just before war broke out. Their father was head of public health for a Berlin district – he was killed in Auschwitz in 1944. Their mother had died of tuberculosis. The girls spent the next seven years with the Attenboroughs, leaving after the war to join an uncle in New York.
The author, her husband, and Pricila, photo by Rachel Rubin Green
In July 2019, my husband Norm and I joined several members of the KTA on a commemorative tour of Europe for the 80th anniversary of Kindertransport… One indelible lesson from the trip was that many more European Jews, children and adults could have been saved had more countries allowed them entry.
Hannah Lessing, secretary general of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, lobbied to include more descendants – for example, of those who left Austria after the war. She applauded the law, while recognising its limits. “This law is an important step that says Austrian society is finally ready to welcome the families that it drove away,” she said. ‘However, like other gestures, it can never truly make amends for the Holocaust.”
Between 1939 and 1941 up to 200 young Jewish refugees were accommodated at the castle trying to cope with dilapidated buildings, inclement weather and first and foremost with their new lives as refugees. The story of the Kindertransport 1938/39 is often portrayed as a bit of a feelgood story. It is true that over 10,000 underage refugees escaped from Nazi Central Europe to the relative safety of the UK via the scheme. But they suffered trauma, hardship and heartbreak along the way.
After her father’s business was appropriated by the authorities, her parents made the heart-wrenching decision to send her on the Kindertransport to England where families had offered their homes to Jewish children fleeing the persecution. She was seven years old. Charlotte never saw her parents again…Only in 2018 did she learn the awful truth that her mother was killed in the gas chambers at Chelmo, in April 1942.
Playwright Jonathan Lichtenstein talks to us about his new book, The Berlin Shadow, which describes how he accompanied his father on a journey back to Berlin, retracing the steps he took in 1939 on the Kindertransport
The Labour peer, who fled the Nazis on the Kindertransport, called on home secretary to adopt a more welcoming stance towards migrants
This story is built around 50 delicate letters, most written on the back of German period piece postcards: including garden scenes of fairy tales gnomes, elfs, leprechauns, and teddy bears designed for children. The letters were by Max Lichtwitz, a Berlin lawyer, to his six-year-old son Heinz or Heini Lichtwitz, the future Henry Foner. They evoke love, longing, and irreparable loss. Max, a widower, sent his six-year son Heinz to England to live in Swansea, Wales with Morris and Winifred Foner.
A new book which sheds light on the experiences of children of Kindertransport and their families has been published.The book, called the Berlin Shadow, reveals how Hans Lichtenstein’s experience deeply affected his son, the author’s, own childhood and behaviour and shows how the journey helped both process the trauma which was ever-present in their lives.
Her father was a devout chasid in Vienna who somehow made a lot of money. On a December evening in 1938, weeks after the Kristallnacht torching of Jewish homes and synagogues, her father put her and her two sisters on a bus to catch a train, then a boat that took them to England to live with a host family. She was 9.
David Toren, who fled Poland with other Jewish children, passed away on April 19 as a result of COVID-19. On Kristallnacht, young David watched the destruction. The next morning, his father was imprisoned in Buchenwald. Upon his return, Toren’s father worked to arrange passage for his son on an August 1939 Kindertransport headed to Sweden, shortly before the Germans invaded Poland. It would be the last time Toren saw his parents.
Born Heinz Berthold Karplus in Berlin, Germany, to Sigmar Karplus and Rosa (née Anker) Karplus. Henry and his younger sister Hannah Elsa (Shamash) escaped Nazi Germany in 1939 on a Kindertransport train, arriving to safety in England.
Since 1943, German and Austrian Holocaust survivors have gathered in New York City for what is known as the Stammtisch…Marion is an elegant woman. Proudly, she still drives her car, enjoying the independence. She escaped from Berlin in May 1939, at the age of 16. She boarded a Kindertransport.
The core of the game is to serve as an educational tool for students, primarily those aged nine to 11. The developers were helped when crafting the story and game design by survivors and family members of those who went on the Kindertransport during the Holocaust. “They were consulted as part of the process and the fictitious character Leo is a composite of all of their real-life experiences”
News from Australia: A clothing company founded by a Kindertransport survivor is now making gowns and scrubs for use in hospitals and clinics.
Returning to Fränkisch-Crumbach, the village where she grew up in Hesse, Germany, almost 50 years after she had left for Britain on the Kindertransport, Ruth David saw the window of a house open. “Ruth Oppenheimer, is that you?” someone cried.
A WOMAN who escaped from Nazi Germany on a Kindertransport train has died peacefully at the age of 95. Eva Pinthus, a resident of Menston for 60 years, was 14 when she came to the UK in 1939. She was one of thousands of children brought to safety – many would never see their families again.