Archive: 2021

Reform Judaism says government’s immigration plans breach international law

Posted on May 6, 2021

Reform Judaism evoked [sic] the Kindertransport as it warned that the Home Office’s tougher new immigration plans would breach international law. “The Reform Movement’s argument is heartfelt because under the Home Office proposals Jewish refugees who fled to the UK from mainland Europe in the 1930s, including the Kindertransport, would in 2021 not be protected,” the movement said on Thursday.

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Statue of unsung hero seen for the first time

Posted on May 4, 2021

Trevor Chadwick, nicknamed the ‘Purbeck Schindler’, helped Sir Nicholas Winton rescue 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia before the Second World War.

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‘Vitality of Suffolk and Essex cultural life’ shown in Great British Railwa

Posted on May 4, 2021

BBC’s Great Railway Journeys have highlighted “the vitality of cultural life” in Suffolk and north Essex in its latest series. The railway history show sees Michael Portillo travel from Saxmundham down to Dedham. Mr Portillo takes the Great Anglia service to Ipswich so he can change for Felixstowe and catch the ferry to Harwich, and explore the Kindertransport that allowed Jewish refugees to flee the Nazis.

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Dr. Ruth given honorary doctorate

Posted on April 28, 2021

Born in Germany into a religious Jewish household in 1928, Westheimer was sent to Switzerland on the Kindertransport at age 10. Westheimer became a household name after she launched her radio show in 1980.

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Kindertransport Association donates to TACT

Posted on April 28, 2021

The KTA has a threefold mission: To Connect Kindertransport Survivors and the next generations, to Educate about the Kindertransport and Holocaust History, and to Support children at risk today. The funds will go towards ensuring that the unaccompanied asylum seeking children in our care are fully supported and appropriately matched with knowledgeable, well-trained and compassionate carers.

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Holocaust Survivor Recounts Escape On Yom Hashoa

Posted on April 9, 2021

Joe Hess, who was born in 1932, is a survivor. He escaped Nazi Germany via the Kindertransport at the young age of 6 after being separated from his parents. Hess, who now lives at the Village at Northridge Senior Living Facility, said his journey took him from Germany to London, and ultimately the United States.

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Popular events in Harwich given extra funding boost

Posted on April 9, 2021

TOWN favourite events have been boosted by grants. Harwich Kindertransport Memorial Project was awarded £1,000 to help keep up the important work of commemorating the town’s crucial role in caring for the evacuated children during World War II. “Harwich’s role in the Kindertransport is something we should be very proud of and Harwich Town Council is delighted to be part of this fantastic project.”

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Holocaust survivor recounts leaving her family

Posted on April 8, 2021

On this Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, 98-year-old survivor Anita Weisbord recounted the painful decision her mother made to send Anita at age 16 by herself to England.

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Kindertransport organizer’s kin stresses helping others

Posted on April 8, 2021

Barbara Winton, the daughter of Czech and Slovak Kindertransport organizer Sir Nicholas Winton, urged a virtual crowd of 285 to help others in need like her father did during the Jewish Federation of Cleveland and Kol Israel Foundation’s annual Yom Hashoah V’Hagvurah event April 7.

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Jewish cartoonists who fled the Nazis

Posted on April 8, 2021

A new exhibition in New York features artworks by three Jewish artists who fled Vienna during the Anschluss. The artists are Lily Renée, Bil Spira and Paul Peter Porges, whose comic books, drawings, cartoons and caricatures are on view Lily Renée, an artist born in 1921 who celebrates her 100th birthday this year, got out through the Kindertransport. Peter Porges created political cartoons for Mad Magazine and the New Yorker. Like Renée, he escaped Vienna through the Kindertransport

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The Push to Vaccinate 20,000 Holocaust Survivors in New York

Posted on April 1, 2021

A year spent hiding at home from the coronavirus has given Anne Bertolino, 96, a lot of time to dwell on the past: the anti-Semitic abuse she suffered on the streets of Hamburg as a child; the grandparents who pushed for her and her sister to leave the country for their own safety; and her mother, a widow who was killed in Auschwitz. Anne was on a Kindertransport to Sweden.

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The scars of Kindertransport children

Posted on April 1, 2021

“Many children who went to foster families in Britain were treated as little more than domestics,” notes Dr. Elisheva van der Hal, a psychotherapist. “Most of the kinder lost their entire family. Many suffered in the foster homes,” she continues, adding that it also took some time for the authorities to extend sorely needed help to the survivors. “It is only recently, not even 10 years, that the kinder were officially recognized as Holocaust survivors.”

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Yom Hashoah to feature Kindertransport founder’s daughter

Posted on March 29, 2021

The Jewish Federation of Cleveland will spotlight Barbara Winton, the daughter of Sir Nicholas Winton, who saved hundreds of children from the Nazis through his organization of the Czech and Slovak Kindertransport, during its annual Yom Hashoah V’Hagvurah event from 7 to 8 p.m. April 7. This year’s Holocaust remembrance event will function under the theme “rescuers,” and it will pay homage to the individuals who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.

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Tributes to ‘wonderful, jovial’ kinder who inspired survivors to make aliya

Posted on March 8, 2021

Heartfelt tributes have been paid to a remarkable kindertransport refugee who supported survivors of Belsen. Herbert Haberberg, 96, who used his Yiddish to convince destitute victims of the Nazis to move to the young Jewish state. Herbert was advised by World Jewish Relief that he was more useful to them in Germany than Israel, and stayed there until he was demobilised in 1948. He got married and became a successful metal trader — as did his brother, Manfred, living in Cockfosters.

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Turning 100 ‘nothing big’ for this Toronto man

Posted on March 7, 2021

John Carson, then known as Hans Walfried, was evacuated from Berlin to England as part of the Kindertransport. Carson, at 17, was technically too old for the Kindertransport, so his age was recorded as 15. His name was changed and he left Germany on Dec. 1, 1938. After the war, Carson got married and worked in England as a town planner. He moved with his family to Toronto in 1959 and worked for the city as a planner.

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‘All learning together, no matter where we are in the world’

Posted on March 3, 2021

World history teacher Faith Shotts-Flikkema led a unit this year focused on the Kindertransport, a roughly nine-month effort that rescued and relocated from Germany to the United Kingdom 10,000 mostly Jewish children before the start of World War II and the Holocaust. Shotts-Flikkema led the unit in collaboration with two other teachers, one in Virginia and one in Greece. The students participated in a two-week, in-depth study via live video discussions with those other students.

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Kindertransport survivor shares her story

Posted on February 25, 2021

Ruth Barnett MBE, a former teacher and psychotherapist, was evacuated from Berlin at the age of four in 1939, with her elder brother, leaving her parents behind. Her brother Martin and she spent their early years moving around the south of England, placed in several foster families and a boarding school for bombed-out children during World War II. Barnett explained that her parents wanted them to be brought up Christian to protect them from antisemitism.

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Francis Deutsch

Posted on February 22, 2021

Francis came to the UK from Austria on the Kindertransport at the age of 13, arriving in Harwich, Essex, speaking no English. At the age of 21, he went back to wartorn Europe for two years to help with the resettlement of German refugees in the International Voluntary Service. He was an outstanding radical lawyer and a pioneer of legal policy, whose life was driven by a sense of justice, belief in democracy and commitment to support the most vulnerable in society.

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Still in Love

Posted on February 9, 2021

A Kindertransport boy and his loving wife have celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. Hermi Rothman arrived in England as a Kindertransport refugee in 1939 and was placed at Gwrych Castle in North Wales, which made headlines this year when ITV’s I’m A Celebrity was filmed at the location. As soon as he was old enough, Mr Rothman joined the British Army out of gratitude to the country that had taken him in.

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A Remarkable Woman: Chaye Sara Jakobovits

Posted on February 9, 2021

Her ordeal began on December 1st, 1938, the day that ten year old Sessy was separated from her beloved mother. It was also the last day that she would ever see her, as her train slowly departed Berlin toward the groups trek to England. This was the first train of the Kindertransport, a rescue mission undertaken by British Jewish leaders on November 15th a few days after Kristallnacht. The first train had some 260 Jewish children, sixty of them from religious homes.

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