The author, her husband, and Pricila, photo by Rachel Rubin Green
In July 2019, my husband Norm and I joined several members of the KTA on a commemorative tour of Europe for the 80th anniversary of Kindertransport… One indelible lesson from the trip was that many more European Jews, children and adults could have been saved had more countries allowed them entry.
Hannah Lessing, secretary general of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, lobbied to include more descendants – for example, of those who left Austria after the war. She applauded the law, while recognising its limits. “This law is an important step that says Austrian society is finally ready to welcome the families that it drove away,” she said. ‘However, like other gestures, it can never truly make amends for the Holocaust.”
Between 1939 and 1941 up to 200 young Jewish refugees were accommodated at the castle trying to cope with dilapidated buildings, inclement weather and first and foremost with their new lives as refugees. The story of the Kindertransport 1938/39 is often portrayed as a bit of a feelgood story. It is true that over 10,000 underage refugees escaped from Nazi Central Europe to the relative safety of the UK via the scheme. But they suffered trauma, hardship and heartbreak along the way.
After her father’s business was appropriated by the authorities, her parents made the heart-wrenching decision to send her on the Kindertransport to England where families had offered their homes to Jewish children fleeing the persecution. She was seven years old. Charlotte never saw her parents again…Only in 2018 did she learn the awful truth that her mother was killed in the gas chambers at Chelmo, in April 1942.
Playwright Jonathan Lichtenstein talks to us about his new book, The Berlin Shadow, which describes how he accompanied his father on a journey back to Berlin, retracing the steps he took in 1939 on the Kindertransport
The Labour peer, who fled the Nazis on the Kindertransport, called on home secretary to adopt a more welcoming stance towards migrants
This story is built around 50 delicate letters, most written on the back of German period piece postcards: including garden scenes of fairy tales gnomes, elfs, leprechauns, and teddy bears designed for children. The letters were by Max Lichtwitz, a Berlin lawyer, to his six-year-old son Heinz or Heini Lichtwitz, the future Henry Foner. They evoke love, longing, and irreparable loss. Max, a widower, sent his six-year son Heinz to England to live in Swansea, Wales with Morris and Winifred Foner.
A new book which sheds light on the experiences of children of Kindertransport and their families has been published.The book, called the Berlin Shadow, reveals how Hans Lichtenstein’s experience deeply affected his son, the author’s, own childhood and behaviour and shows how the journey helped both process the trauma which was ever-present in their lives.
Her father was a devout chasid in Vienna who somehow made a lot of money. On a December evening in 1938, weeks after the Kristallnacht torching of Jewish homes and synagogues, her father put her and her two sisters on a bus to catch a train, then a boat that took them to England to live with a host family. She was 9.
David Toren, who fled Poland with other Jewish children, passed away on April 19 as a result of COVID-19. On Kristallnacht, young David watched the destruction. The next morning, his father was imprisoned in Buchenwald. Upon his return, Toren’s father worked to arrange passage for his son on an August 1939 Kindertransport headed to Sweden, shortly before the Germans invaded Poland. It would be the last time Toren saw his parents.
Born Heinz Berthold Karplus in Berlin, Germany, to Sigmar Karplus and Rosa (née Anker) Karplus. Henry and his younger sister Hannah Elsa (Shamash) escaped Nazi Germany in 1939 on a Kindertransport train, arriving to safety in England.
Since 1943, German and Austrian Holocaust survivors have gathered in New York City for what is known as the Stammtisch…Marion is an elegant woman. Proudly, she still drives her car, enjoying the independence. She escaped from Berlin in May 1939, at the age of 16. She boarded a Kindertransport.
The core of the game is to serve as an educational tool for students, primarily those aged nine to 11. The developers were helped when crafting the story and game design by survivors and family members of those who went on the Kindertransport during the Holocaust. “They were consulted as part of the process and the fictitious character Leo is a composite of all of their real-life experiences”
News from Australia: A clothing company founded by a Kindertransport survivor is now making gowns and scrubs for use in hospitals and clinics.
Returning to Fränkisch-Crumbach, the village where she grew up in Hesse, Germany, almost 50 years after she had left for Britain on the Kindertransport, Ruth David saw the window of a house open. “Ruth Oppenheimer, is that you?” someone cried.
A WOMAN who escaped from Nazi Germany on a Kindertransport train has died peacefully at the age of 95. Eva Pinthus, a resident of Menston for 60 years, was 14 when she came to the UK in 1939. She was one of thousands of children brought to safety – many would never see their families again.
An “unsung hero” who helped save hundreds of children destined for Nazi concentration camps is to be honoured with a statue in his hometown. Trevor Chadwick, dubbed the “Purbeck Schindler”, helped Sir Nicholas Winton rescue 669 children from Czechoslovakia ahead of World War Two. The Trevor Chadwick Memorial Trust is raising £80,000 for a statue to be placed in Swanage, Dorset.
Nicholas Winton’s 111th Birthday
The Google Doodle on 19 May marks what would have been the 111th birthday of Sir Nicholas Winton, who single-handedly saved 669 Jewish children from the Holocaust. Five years after his death in 2015, Google marked Sir Winton’s 19 May birthday with a Doodle showing children at a train station to represent the escape of primarily Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia in the lead up to World War II.
The 75th anniversary of VE Day was made extra special for 250 older residents of Leeds Jewish Housing Association (LJHA) when they received bumper gift boxes to mark the occasion. One recipient was 94-year-old Gilly Rawson, a Holocaust survivor. At the age of 13, she was one of the Kindertransport children taken from Vienna to Liverpool to escape Nazi persecution. Her late husband also travelled on the Kindertransport scheme from Gdansk, and later served with the Royal Air Force in Burma.
Ruth David was 10 when the Kindertransport — which helped 10,000 children escape from Nazi-controlled parts of Europe just before the outbreak of World War II — saved her from what likely would have been death in a concentration camp. She would go on to translate the tragedies of the Holocaust into two books. She fashioned a life of teaching and speaking internationally on what it meant to survive the reign of terror that left millions, including her parents, dead.