Peter T. White was a National Geographic writer who slogged through tropical rain forests, hiked the Tyrolean Alps, examined addictive and therapeutic uses of the opium poppy and wrote about tribes in the Brazilian jungle who ate their dead as a gesture of respect. Peter Theodor Futterweit was born May 11,1925,in Vienna. His father, a Jewish World War I veteran decorated for bravery, was killed by a bomb tossed into his shop in June 1933 during an anti-Semitic outburst of violence.
The musical narrative tells the story of the Czech ‘Kindertransport’, a rescue operation for Jewish children set up in Prague by the late Sir Nicholas Winton, who lived in Maidenhead. Sir Nicholas, who has a statue at Maidenhead Train Station, helped transport and find foster families for more than 600 Czech children. The music was written by renowned composer Carl Davis who lives in Windsor.
North West Surrey Synagogue (NWSS) held its annual Yom HaShoah commemoration on Sunday 23 April. The theme was ‘Recalling the Journey through Folk Art’, focusing on the Kindertransport. The Traveling Exhibition of Memory Quilts, created by the Kindertransport Association was on display, visiting the UK for the first time ever. Anita Grosz, who facilitated the Memory Quilt Project, was the featured speaker.
MUSKEGON, MI – Renata Laxova was one of 669 children to escape Czechoslovakia on the Kindertransport, which took children to foster homes in Britain from 1938-1939, prior to the start World War II. Eight transports were organized by Sir Nicholas George Winton from Prague, Czechoslovakia, to Britain. She will tell her story and answer questions at three presentations in Muskegon and Ludington from Sunday, April 23-Tuesday, April 25.
The annual Holocaust Commemoration Program at Temple Sinai on Highland Avenue in Middletown will be from 7-9 p.m. April 23. It will begin with the solemn lighting of six candles, honoring the memory of 6 million men, women and children who perished in the Holocaust.
Ellen Umansky’s debut novel The Fortunate Ones traces a stolen work of art from World War II Vienna to contemporary Los Angeles. The painting is “The Bellhop,” a fictional reimagining of the real-life painter Chaim Soutine‘s portraits of bellboys and porters. “The Bellhop” is stolen from Rose’s apartment after Nazis invade Vienna. Rose’s life has been uprooted – she and her brother have been sent from Austria to England via Kindertransport.
Vera Coppard-Leibovic had a cause, to educate others about the horrors of the Holocaust, and nothing would stop her from sharing her own experiences, as one of about 10,000 children to escape the Nazis on the Kindertransport trains.
Ivan Backer is the author of “My Train to Freedom: A Jewish Boy’s Journey from Nazi Europe to a Life of Activism.” Backer was able to flee Nazi Europe on the Kindertransport, the “children’s trains,” organized by Sir Nicholas Winton who almost single-handedly rescued 669 children. Other Kindertransports from Europe were supported by British charities and moved thousands of children to safety in England.
Gustav Metzger, one of the most provocative and politically-minded anti-artists of the late 20th century, died last week in London, the city where he arrived as a 13-year-old in 1939 on a Kindertransport from Nazi Germany.
There is a ‘real will’ to find homes for child refugees in the UK, campaigners have said, despite a Parliamentary defeat on the issue. On Tuesday, MPs knocked back an attempt to revive a scheme to provide shelter for unaccompanied youngsters fleeing warzones in Syria. Known as the Dubs Amendment, it was inspired by Lord Alf Dubs, who was brought to Britain with the Kindertransport organised by Maidenhead’s Sir Nicholas Winton on the eve of the Second World War.
In 1939, a refugee ban kept 20,000 Jewish children out of the U.S. Our rejection of refugees is an inextricable part of the American story, and Trump’s ban hews to that narrative more than we’d prefer to recall. One such black spot on our history mirrors the present moment particularly closely. In the late 1930s, the United States had a chance to save 20,000 Jewish children fleeing Nazi persecution, by means of a program that would have mirrored the British Kindertransport.
The life story of a woman who escaped the Nazis on one of the last Kindertransport trains has been published six months after her death. Sylvia’s first book, Laugh or Cry about her childhood growing up in Nazi Germany was published in 2015 and she died as her second book Cry or Laugh was being completed.
At the age of four, Mrs Barnett and her seven-year-old brother travelled across Germany and Holland by train with hundreds of other children from Berlin and arrived in the British port of Harwich. Having been moved several times around South-East England between various foster families, she was finally able to settle in London after the end of the Second World War.
On February 13, over 200 Kindertransport survivors and descendants sent a letter to President Trump, urging him to keep America’s doors open to today’s refugees. Noting that “more than 10 million of today’s 21 million refugees are children,” the letter urges President Trump to keep America’s doors open to refugees. It reads, in part:
Theresa May’s Conservative government has reneged on any commitment to provide asylum in the UK to lone child refugees languishing in desperate conditions near the port of Calais in France.
Herta Stanton, from Windlesham Manor in Crowborough, has turned 100.
A Crowborough woman who fled the Nazis as the escort of a young boy on the Kindertransport before the start of the Second World War has celebrated her 100th birthday.
Several times a week for the past decade, as I have left Liverpool Street Station from the Ipswich train, I walk past a bronze statue of an anxious-looking boy and girl with their suitcases. The statues, part of a series in the station commemorating the Kindertransport and its leader, Sir Nicholas Winton, are a reminder of the heroes who faced down fascism.
Lord Dubs, who was a Kindertransport refugee himself, is launching a fund to help bring children fleeing war and persecution to Britain, the JC can reveal. The Jewish Labour peer and 10 of his fellow Kinder have set up the Alf Dubs Children’s Fund and donated between £500 and £1,000 each. They say they were inspired Sir Nicholas Winton, the man who rescued them.
A refugee rights campaigner has said he is ‘bitterly disappointed’ by the government’s decision to stop providing sanctuary for lone child refugees. Lord Dubs, who came to the UK shortly before the Second World War as part of the Kindertransport organised by Maidenhead’s Sir Nicholas Winton, blasted the announcement from the Home Office on Wednesday, February 8, that the scheme is to end.
Jewish Holocaust survivors who fled Nazi Germany and other countries as children have a request for President Donald Trump: “Keep the doors open to refugees.” In a letter to Trump released Monday, more than 200 family members and survivors of the Kindertransport a program that sent around 10,000 Jewish child refugees to Britain from Nazi Germany and other European nations urged Trump to continue to resettle refugees, especially children, in America.