Memoir

  • Types

  • Genres

A Boy in Your Situation

by Hannam, Charles (1977); Published by London: Andre Deutsch

Charles Hannam’s Kindertransport memoir. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

A Child Alone

by Blend, Martha (1996); Published by Edgware, England: Vallentine Mitchell Publishers

May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

A Garland For Ashes

by Zack Miley, Hanna (2013); Published by Outskirts Press

When little Hannelore (Hanna) Zack left Cologne, Germany, on a train bound for London age 7 on July 24, 1939, she had no way of knowing that she was part of the Kindertransport. Written over a four-year period beginning when Hanna was seventy-five years old, A Garland for Ashes is both a gripping detective story recounting the heartbreaking process of discovering her family’s fate and a poignant account of her journey from vengeful hatred to forgiveness and release from bitterness.

A Lesser Child

by Gershon, Karen (1993); Published by London: Peter Owen Publishers

An account, from the point of view of an adolescent girl, of life in Germany in the years leading up to her departure on the Kindertransport. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

A Scholar’s Tale: Intellectual Journey of a Displaced Child of Europe

by Hartman, Geoffrey (2007); Published by Fordham University Press

Geoffrey Hartman’s eloquent memoir takes us through the author’s five decades as a widely influential literary scholar. Geoffrey Hartman arrived in New York in 1945, at the age of 16, a young refugee from Hitler’s Germany. His mother had come here before the war, but he was sent on a Kindertransport to England, where he developed a feeling for both the English countryside and English literature. These discoveries came together in his lifelong love of Wordsworth’s poetry, the subject of his seminal book in 1964.

A Transported Life: Memories of Kindertransport

by Eden, Thea, Irene Reti and Valerie Jean Chase (1995); Published by Santa Cruz, California: Herbooks

May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

Adventures of a Chemist Collector

by Bader, Alfred (1995); Published by London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson

This is the autobiography of the distinguished chemist, art collector and philanthropist, Alfred Bader. Born in Vienna, Bader fled to England at the age of 14, on a Kindertransport ten months before the outbreak of World War II. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.Although a Jewish refugee from the Nazis, he was interned in 1940 and sent to a Canadian prisoner-of-war camp. In this book, he tells the story of his success through hard work and studies in the United States.

Against All Odds

by Hamlet, Eva (1994); Published by Citra, Florida: Crones' Cradle Conserve

May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

All in a Lifetime

by Westheimer, Ruth (1988); Published by New York: Warner Books

Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s account of her journey from Frankfurt am Main through a refugee girls hostel in Switzerland, to Israel, to her broadcasting success in the United States of America.

Almost an Englishman

by Hannam, Charles (1978); Published by London: Andre Deutsch

May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

Between the Lines: Letters from the Holocaust

by Fox, Ann (2005); Published by ComteQ Publishing

KTA member Anne Fox takes us behind the lines of her family’s experience in the Holocaust. She shares with us the sorrows of parents and children separated by war, as revealed in letters that came into her possession years later. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

By the Moon and the Stars

by Hayman, Eva (1992); Published by Auckland: Random Century New Zealand

In June 1939, 15-year-old Eva and her 11-year-old sister Vera were evacuated via Kindertransport from Czechoslovakia to Great Britain. They spent most of the war in Poole, Liverpool, Hastings and Monmouth. When writing letters to their parents became impossible, Eva kept a diary of events, not only of the war, but of a teenager grappling with spiritual questions, the rights and wrongs of patriotism as well as being a parent to her sister, the writer Vera Gissing. Suitable for teeenagers.

Chemistry & Art: Further Adventures of a Chemist Collector

by Bader, Alfred (2009); Published by Orion Publishing Group

In a fast-paced but incredibly detailed and honest description of his adventures, we learn of Bader’s four jobs: philanthropist,art collector, art dealer, and chemist. The book is a tale of high stakes in the art world and of deep friendships maintained over decades.It is a tale of great loss, and of great finds; of shabby treatment, and of incredible sharing and generosity; a tale of a great love, and a great family. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

Child of Our Time: A Young Girl’s Flight From the Holocaust

by David, Ruth L. (2002); Published by London: I.B. Tauris

May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

Dancing on a Powder Keg: The Intimate Voice of a Young Mother and Author, Her Letters Composed in The Lengthening Shadow of Hitler’s Third Reich, Her Poems from the Theresienstadt Ghetto

by Weber, Ilse (2017); Published by Bunim & Bannigan Ltd. in association with Yad Vashem

Ilse’s letters, written from 1933 to 1944, serve not just as an autobiography, but as a timeline of catastrophic events. Most of the letters are written to her Swedish friend, Lilian von Lowenadler, Lilian’s mother, Gertrude, and to her dear son, Hanus. Hanus was placed on a Sir Nicholas Winton transport to England and was then taken to Sweden by Lilian.

Dark Clouds Don’t Stay Forever: Memoirs of a Jewish German Boy in the 1930s and 1940s

by Neuburger, Werner (2006); Published by Maryland: PublishAmerica

Neuburger recounts growing up in Germany, his relocation in England as part of the Kindertransport, his emigration to the United States and military service during World War II, and his life after the war. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center

Die leisen Abschiede: Geschichte einer Flucht

by Friedler, Ya'acov (1994); Published by R. Padligur (Hagen)

Friedler became a journalist well known for his work for the Jerusalem Post and the Israeli radio network. As a Jewish school boy in a small Ruhr Valley town, he was transported to Holland and placed with other refugee children into an old orphanage where the treatment reminds the reader of Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”. On the day of Holland’s capitulation he was able to escape to the UK on an old freighter which was strafed at sea by the Luftwaffe. In this book, we follow Friedler from childhood through his life today. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center

Dig World War 2: The Millisle Farm Story

by Snow, Dan and Litvack, Leon (2013); Published by BBC One Television

Dan Snow interviews Leon Litvack about the Millisle Farm Project.

Escape From the Holocaust 1939

by Moratz, Ralph (2015)

Ralph Moratz writes of his childhood journey from Berlin, via Kindertransport to France, and in September 1941 to New York. One of his childhood companions was concert promoter Bill Graham.

Farewell to Prague

by Darvas, Miriam (2001); Published by San Francisco: MacAdam/Cage Publishing