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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Walter Kammerling was among 10,000 Jewish children who fled occupied Europe through the Kindertransport scheme. His sister, mother and father all died at Auschwitz. Over years of speaking at local schools, Mr Kammerling told thousands of children how he was put on a Kindertransport train in his native Vienna in December 1938, at the age of 15.
Heartfelt tributes have been paid to two Kindertransport refugees, Walter Kammerling and Marc Schatzberger, who have died in their mid-90s. Holocaust educators remembered the Vienna-born survivors, reflecting on their contributions to teaching about the Shoah and the trauma they went through, escaping after Kristallnacht.
Heartfelt tributes have been paid to two Kindertransport refugees, Walter Kammerling and Marc Schatzberger, who have died in their mid-90s. Holocaust educators remembered the Vienna-born survivors, reflecting on their contributions to teaching about the Shoah and the trauma they went through, escaping after Kristallnacht.
NPR Morning Edition: How old should kids be when they start learning about the Holocaust? While many educators believe the appropriate age is 10, a new book by Caldecott honoree and MacArthur fellow Peter Sís is recommended for children ages 6 to 9. Nicky & Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued tells the true story of the Englishman Nicholas “Nicky” Winton, who rescued 669 children from the Nazis, including Vera Gissing.
The widow of a Holocaust survivor sobs on The Repair Shop as the Kindertransport box belonging to her now late husband is restored.
Uncle Richard’s arrest changed everything. A Viennese banker, he had been deported to the Dachau concentration camp in 1938, for the crime of being a Jew. Three weeks after Richard’s arrest, his niece, my grandmother, a nine-year-old girl named Inge Rubner, boarded a Kindertransport west-bound to London, a journey that would save her life. She was one of the lucky few. Millions of others also boarded trains — cattle carts, at gunpoint — bound for the death camps of the east.
Designer of Kindertransport memorial at Liverpool Street Station died in 2018, and now his daughter Marit looks to the challenge of bringing ‘a young, new vision’ to his legacy
Book by Jonathan Lichtenstein (Little, Brown Spark, nonfiction, on sale Dec. 15) What it’s about: A father and son reconnect and repair their relationship by reliving the elder’s traumatizing experience as a child refugee on the Kindertransport.
The 92-year-old Bolsterstone man was born in 1928 into a family of wealthy German Jewish horse breeders. Then, as the continent of Europe hurtled towards the horrors of World War Two, he survived Kristallnacht to escape Germany on the Kindertransport, arriving in Sheffield in 1939. Later he was evacuated to a Nottinghamshire farm where he learned English, eventually meeting an English girl and living happily ever after in a South Yorkshire ‘log cabin’ for the next 70 years.