The exhibit “Kindertransport — Rescuing Children on the Brink of War” (a project of the Yeshiva University Museum and the Leo Baeck Institute) tells the story. The American Swedish Institute (ASI) is hosting the exhibit through October in partnership with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas and the Greenberg Family Fund for Holocaust Awareness at Beth El Synagogue.
The children arrived at the castle in Abergele in 1939 as part of the 10,000 Jewish refugees who escaped to the UK from Nazi-occupied countries and at the time, only refugees aged 17 or under were allowed into Britain. Among those were teenagers Herthel and Gerhard, who met at the castle at age 14 before starting new lives in London and later getting married and having two children.
Erika’s father was a decorated First World War veteran who, along with his wife, had converted from Judaism to Catholicism. Her parents shielded Erika from her Jewish ancestry and sent her to a convent school. Then, in May 1939, Erika’s parents told her the family were emigrating but that she would have to go in advance while they put their affairs in order. Erika, then 10, did not realise she was being placed in Kindertransport. Neither did she realise she would never see her parents again.
Article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine on the new Kindertransport memorial and exhibit opening in Frankfurt.
In 1989, a couple of dozen people assembled at the Carlton Hotel in Bradford. Many had not seen each other for half a century. They had all been invited by Albert Waxman, a textile magnate. Exactly 50 years before their gathering, shortly before the Second World War, they had all met as child refugees in what was then called the Bradford Kindertransport Hostel.
An exhibition at the American Swedish Institute – actually two exhibitions, but related – asks us to look back more than 80 years to another time when children were separated from their parents, who believed they had no choice but to let them go.
Barbara Winton, daughter of the late Sir Nicholas Winton who organised the Kindertransport, draws parallels between the plight of Afghan refugees and those fleeing the Nazis
For nearly four decades, Hella Pick, the doyenne of British diplomatic correspondents, had a front-row seat at the events that shaped the postwar age. But in her newly published memoirs, “Invisible Walls: A Journalist in Search of Her Life,” the pioneering female reporter reveals her constant and continuing struggle with feelings of insecurity about her identity. Pick traces that sense of herself as an outsider back to March 1939 when she arrived in London on the Kindertransport.
The Hi-de-Hi! display is part of an exhibition showcasing the history of the Warners holiday camp at Dovercourt that hosted thousands of kindertransport children who fled the Nazis to Britain and was transformed into a military base during World War Two.
A Kindertransport memorial is set to be erected in the Essex port town of Harwich to commemorate the child refugees who came to the town. The planned statue, which is in construction by artist Ian Wolter, will show five children descending from a ship’s gangplank. Also planned is a town trail, audio bench and new information boards which will be strategically placed around the town. However, it will only be realised if £140,000 is raised – with around £70,000 already raised so far.
The long wall at the back of the gallery is covered with blank cardboard tags. They’re the same size as tags pinned to more than 10,000 Jewish children who escaped Nazi Germany through the Kindertransport. The image is one piece in the “Kindertransport — Rescuing Children on the Brink of War” exhibit that runs through Oct. 31 at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis. A suitcase, favorite toys, a knitted scarf, books tell stories of the children’s lives.
A Kindertransport refugee who was educated in Shropshire and went on to become a ground-breaking global IT entrepreneur is set to be honoured. Dame Stephanie (Steve) Shirley Companion of Honour will return to Oswestry on August 26 to unveil a blue plaque commemorating her outstanding contribution to British life and formative years in Oswestry. Dame Stephanie arrived in the UK on one of the last Kindertransport trains out of Vienna. In 1962 she started her software business from home.
Benno Black is the last known person in Minnesota who participated in the kindertransport. In July 1939, he boarded a train with other Jewish children bound for England, carrying a leather suitcase with his school notebook, pressed flowers from his mother, family photos and a few other mementos. He was 13. Eighty-two years later, the contents of that suitcase and Black’s poignant journey are part of a new exhibit at the American Swedish Institute.
Faraway Home is a tragic yet beautiful story, the journey of two young Jewish children sent by their parents away from Nazi-occupied Austria during World War Two on the Kindertransport to London, where they finally end up at a Jewish refugee farm in Northern Ireland. Based on true events, it is a story that finds hope and even laughter in the midst of great pain.
A wall of blank tags fills the side of the Osher Gallery at the American Swedish Institute, each one representing the tag worn by a child who was transported out of Nazi-occupied territory before World War II. It’s half of the American Swedish Institute’s two-part exhibition on the most successful organized effort to rescue Jewish children before the Holocaust: “Kindertransport”.
Born in Berlin, Germany on June 3rd 1933 and died at the age of 88 in Boca Raton, FL. Anita immigrated to the US after escaping the Holocaust and a few years in England. Anita was raised by her grandparents in Vineland, NJ. Anita had been saved by the kindertransport and found her connection when she became a part of the organization. She served as President of the South Florida chapter of the Kindertransport Association for many years.
Born in Vienna, Austria, Lucy Lang travelled on the Kindertransport, with her sister, Erica Jesselson. She was featured in “Kindertransport–Rescuing Children on the Brink of War,” a 2018 exhibition, and spoke at the opening. She was also a participant in Names, Not Numbers, a Holocaust documentary film project in which high school students interview survivors about their experience. The Yeshiva University community joins in mourning the loss of an extraordinary, elegant and generous woman
Members of Livermore Shakespeare Festival (LSF) will reopen the doors for a staged reading of Diane Samuel’s “Kindertransport” at 7 p.m. July 22. “Kindertransport” follows the story of fictional Eva Schlessinger, who is transported away from her parents in Germany to live with a foster family in England, with events based on real life stories of Kindertransport children.
From the kindertransports to the arms of JFK, meet the pioneering writer, Hella Pick, that blazed a trail few could follow (subscription required)
Famed sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer is trying to get a one-woman show about her life, “Becoming Dr. Ruth,” to Broadway. The play follows Westheimer’s life from her childhood as part of a Kindertransport in 1939, which brought German children to an orphanage in Switzerland, through her move to the States and meteoric rise to world-famous sex therapist.