Archive: 2022

One Life films in Prague and UK with Anthony Hopkins and Johnny Flynn

Posted on September 1, 2022

Production is underway on the biopic, One Life, which tells the story of Nicholas Winton and the Czech Kindertransport.

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KINDERTRANSPORT at the Adelson Theatre This November

Posted on September 1, 2022

Celebrated theatre artist, Jeanmarie Simpson, known for her beautifully innovative stagings of Shakespeare, contemporary plays, adaptations, and her own original works, is set to begin rehearsals September 6th in Las Vegas for a November 3rd opening.

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Trevor Chadwick: Statue of ‘Purbeck Schindler’ put up in Swanage

Posted on August 29, 2022

A statue has been erected of a British war hero compared with Oskar Schindler for his efforts to save hundreds of children destined for Nazi death camps.

Trevor Chadwick helped Sir Nicholas Winton rescue 669 youngsters from Czechoslovakia ahead of World War Two.

He was dubbed the “Purbeck Schindler” in reference to him being from Purbeck in Dorset, and the statue is being erected in his hometown of Swanage.

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Kindertransport at South London Theatre

Posted on August 28, 2022

Every child who came over as part of the Kindertransport initiative had a story to tell and in Diane Samuel’s 1993 play Kindertransport we’re told the story of Eva Schlesinger who’s taken in by Lil and moved to Manchester unable to speak the language of her new country of residence and confused by why she was sent away by the parents who loved her. The play, although fictitious, is based on some real Kindertransport children and their stories have been woven together to produce Kindertransport at the South London Theatre and is the debut production from Everything’s Rosie.

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Kindertransport: A Journey to Life

Posted on July 28, 2022

Kenneth Appel, grew up in Nazi Germany, was expelled from school when the Nazis rose to power, suffered at the hands of his former school friends, until he fled with the Kindertransport to Britain. Having arrived in Britain, he witnessed the London Blitz in 1940 and eventually put himself through university and began research at a laboratory that was working to develop penicillin.

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The NS Poem: Kindertransport

Posted on July 28, 2022

A new poem by Craig Raine.

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Alice Schick

Posted on July 11, 2022

Lisl was born in Vienna, Austria, on December 20, 1927. In 1938, Lisl’s parents made the difficult decision to put her and her brother Walter on the “Kindertransport” – a British rescue operation that saved 10,000 Jewish children. Despite a seven year separation, this decision saved their lives.

After reuniting with her parents in NYC, Lisl met and married her husband who had also escaped from Vienna. In 1959 they moved to Clearwater.

While active in numerous community organizations, it was the Florida Holocaust that was her passion.

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Local volunteer and Holocaust survivor Alice ‘Lisl’ Schick

Posted on June 30, 2022

Schick’s story begins when she was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1927 to Paul and Charlotte Porges, according to a news release. During the Nazis’ occupation of Austria, her parents put Schick and her brother, Walter, on a rescue train called the Kindertransport. The rescue train offered refuge to almost 10,000 Jewish children ages seven to 11 in England.

“My parents gave birth to me twice. Once when I was born and once when they put me on the Kindertransport,” Schick said in the release.

After moving to Florida, Schick worked with The Florida Holocaust Museum to ensure the Holocaust would never be forgotten and to teach its crucial life lessons.

 

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Dr. Judith Grunfeld: The ‘Queen’ Who Was a Surrogate Mother to Many of the Kindertransport

Posted on June 24, 2022

The British government had decided that if it entered the war, it would evacuate children from London (which was bound to be the target of enemy bombs) to the safety of the English countryside.

Grunfeld knew how traumatic it would be for these children, who had recently been torn away from their parents. Many would never see them again, although at that time, the kids all still harbored hopes that their parents would arrive at any minute. Now she would have to take them away from their foster families and settle them in yet another strange house.

The code word for the evacuation, which Grunfeld hoped she would never hear, was “Pied Piper tomorrow,” which would mean that all schools had to prepare the children for evacuation the following day.

The code word was broadcast on the radio on Thursday, Aug. 31, 1939. The following day, Grunfeld boarded one of the eight buses filled by the pupils of her school. Only when they were all on board did the officer in charge tell her she was headed to Shefford. This was the first indication she had of where she and 400 Jewish children would be spending their lives until the end of the war.

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Kindertransport statue to mark refugees’ arrival in Essex from Germany

Posted on June 21, 2022

A memorial is being created for a UK port where thousands of children began arriving after they fled Nazi Germany before World War Two broke out.

The Kindertransport to Harwich, Essex, started after the anti-Jewish violence of Kristallnacht in November 1938.

The first children arrived by ferry at Harwich, on 2 December 1938, with some taken to London and others to local holiday camps such as Dovercourt Bay.

The bronze statue will be unveiled on Harwich quayside in September.

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Plaque honours Gloucester couple who gave Jewish boys refuge

Posted on June 20, 2022

A plaque has been unveiled in tribute to a family who took in 10 Jewish boys fleeing the Nazis.

Thousands of children escaped to the UK on what was known as the Kindertransport during the 1930s as Adolf Hitler rose in influence.

Paul and Edith Arnstein cared for the boys at their home in Gloucester.

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The 25 Best World War 2 Movies To Watch Right now

Posted on June 17, 2022

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000)

Several tales about world war ii concentrate on the war’s tragedies and depravity. “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport,” on either side, celebrates humanity’s love, charity, and steadfastness in several of history’s biggest catastrophes.

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The surprising true origin of Paddington Bear

Posted on June 6, 2022

This weekend, two British institutions — Queen Elizabeth and Paddington Bear — charmed the world in a surprise skit that kicked off the Platinum Party at the Palace tribute concert outside Buckingham Palace.

But many viewers might not have known the real origins of the ursine celebrity who hails from “darkest Peru” — yet was actually inspired by Jewish refugee children.

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Former child of Kindertransport who became a judge

Posted on May 30, 2022

Inge Goldrein never saw her father again after she was put on a train in Vienna – but her adoptive English parents encouraged her to study at a time when it was rare and she went all the way to become a judge

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The Kindertransport in Literature: Reimagining Experience’, is officially published and available to order

Posted on May 23, 2022

«In this insightful book, Stephanie Homer interrogates how different genre conventions influence the representation of the Kindertransport. Homer’s contribution to the study of the reception history of the Kindertransport is important and timely.» (Bill Niven, Professor of Contemporary German History, Nottingham Trent University)

«An immensely valuable intervention into studies of Kindertransport representations, this book invites readers into the ambiguities of memory. With clarity and confidence, the book explores the liberating creative potential of autobiographical fiction and polyphonic fictional voices which have reimagined the places and perspectives on Kindertransport as a migratory experience and literary compulsion.» (Dr Simone Gigliotti, Senior Lecturer in Holocaust Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London)

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BBC The Repair Shop viewers applaud ‘brilliant’ guest

Posted on May 19, 2022

The Repair Shop viewers have applauded a “brilliant” guest who had them in tears within minutes after sharing his family’s experiences during the Holocaust. Gary Fischer brought in a Jewish prayer book to the shop experts, telling them, “it’s falling apart.”

He hoped book-binder Christopher Shaw could help secure it and restore what could be restored. The prayer book belonged to his Jewish grandparents, who lived in Vienna at the outbreak of the Second World War.

Mr Fischer told Shaw and presenter Jay Blades that his father Harry was sent to the UK on a Kindertransport in 1938 – the evacuation routes designed to save children from persecution by the Nazis, but the children had to leave their whole family behind.

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City of Cambridge Annual Commemoration of the Holocaust

Posted on May 18, 2022

Recalling all who perished during the Holocaust, this year’s virtual program features music, greetings, and remarks from Eva Paddock, who survived the Holocaust by being sent on the “Kindertransport” from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to London at the age of 3. 

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Don’t fall for myths about welcoming refugees

Posted on May 16, 2022

The overwhelming support for Ukrainian refugees appears almost in defiance of the government’s delay in issuing visas. Rabbi Jonathan Romain, who launched his “Ukrainetransport” in March, says he has “stopped counting” after receiving offers from nearly 1,000 households to host families.

But it begs the question: were British families always so welcoming to refugees? Did the refugees from Nazi Europe, including the 10,000 Kindertransport children in the late 1930s, receive an equally warm response?

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Connections

Posted on May 13, 2022

MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — A few years ago an enterprising resident of the suburb where I live, just outside Jerusalem, initiated and organized an association providing social and cultural activities for the growing number of retired persons living here.

In a recent class we talked about the Kindertransport, the acceptance by England of ten thousand unaccompanied children under the age of eighteen just before the Second World War broke out. One of the pupils, Zeev, who also grew up in England (the others all grew up in Israel) expressed particular interest in the subject, though he himself did not get to England under that scheme. To the next lesson I brought and lent him the book of essays about the experiences of Kindertransport children in England, No Longer a Stranger, edited by Inge Sadan.

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Holocaust survivor shares story of his escape to Scotland with school pupils

Posted on May 10, 2022

A HOLOCAUST survivor returned to the train station where he first arrived in Scotland after escaping Nazi Germany to share his story with secondary school pupils.

Henry Wuga, 98, joined Poppyscotland and Gathering the Voices to help launch new lessons for Scottish schools, based on his story and that of other young refugees during the Second World War.

Wuga escaped Nazi Germany in 1939, aged just 15, leaving his parents behind in Nuremberg, and came to Glasgow on the Kindertransport.

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