Dame Stephanie Shirley said the modern response doesn’t compare to how ‘Christian and Jewish activists got 10,000 children out’ Dame Stephanie Shirley arrived in Britain in 1939 as one of 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees who fled the Nazis. She spoke as she received her damehood at Buckingham Palace for services to IT and philanthropy.
Aafter Hitler came to power in 1933, Lore, then 9, remembers standing in the street watching the brownshirts marching and singing. She wanted to join in until she realized they were singing, “When the Jewish blood flows from the knife, we’ll all be better off.”
Angelika Rieber, a historian and life-long educator from Frankfurt, Germany, presented research she has done on the program and the stories she’s heard from those saved by it. Rieber began her presentation by explaining the kindertransport, a system by which Jewish children in Germany, specifically Frankfurt for her research, would escape the tightening grasp of Nazi rule before the onset of World War II by applying for transport to England, France or the U.S.
I’m saying to Theresa May: you know about child refugees, you know Nicholas Winton who organised the Kindertransport from Prague which saved my life; before he died he was a constituent of yours.You used to meet him. Please remember what he did. Please remember that as a country we’re humanitarian. Surely, surely, we can do better for child refugees than we’re now doing. Please think again. Watch video
Playwright Diane Samuels said: “My play does focus on a particular happening at a particular time, yet it also taps into a universal human experience, that of a mother’s separation from her child. Most of all my focus when writing the play is to probe the inner life where memory is shaped by trauma, history meets story, in order to gain psychological and emotional insight into how a damaged psyche can survive, possibly recover, and whether there might ever be an opportunity to thrive.”
Paul Mandelbaum writes of his experiences at the November 2016 World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust/Kindertransport Association/Generations of the Shoah International Conference, GENERATIONS TOGETHER, in Southern California.
Lord Dubs, who escaped the Nazis on a Kindertransport from Prague in the summer of 1939 when he was just six years old, said the Labour leader is now “doing okay” at tackling anti-Semitism. But as a new row over the problem threatened to overshadow the party’s conference in Brighton, the Labour peer warned “you’ve got to nip these things in the bud immediately”, noting “the Holocaust began with words”.
Lord Dubs, the Jewish-born peer whose life was saved by the Kindertransport as a child of six, this week paid fulsome tribute to the synagogues in the UK for their work on helping refugees and asylum seekers. Speaking at a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference in Brighton organised by the Jewish Labour Movement and the Jewish Campaign for Racial Equality, Lord Dubs urged everyone in the audience to challenge their local MPs and councils to take child refugees into the UK.
Aimed at students aged between 10 an 13, the project is based on The Children of Willesden Lane, a book which tells the story of Lisa Jura who was brought to England on the Kindertransport. The Trust is urging schools to make the project part of their curriculum in 2018 in order to encourage wider reflection on the story of the 10,000 Jewish children whose lives were saved thanks to their safe passage to the UK.
Like the stage adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary, Diane Samuels’ play Kindertransport views the Holocaust through the eyes of a child. Unlike that of Anne Frank, its story extends beyond the Nazi era and into the present.
Magie Furst, a Kindertransport survivor in Dallas, Texas knows first hand that hatred corrupts. As a Jewish child in Germany when the Nazis came to power, she saw her life begin to unravel, when even venturing into the streets was hazardous. “Hitler Youth were there to make the Jewish children’s lives as miserable as possible,” recalled Furst while speaking to visitors Wednesday at a planned talk at the Dallas Holocaust Museum. “My brother and I could not go out without getting beat up.”
A British-Israeli journalist who made aliyah in 2004 has been awarded a Guinness World Record as the oldest radio talk show host at the age of 93. Walter Bingham was acknowledged as Israel’s oldest field journalist in 2015, and is honoured by the Guinness Book of Records for his radio show ‘Walter’s World.’ His remarkable life saw him witness Nazi book burnings before escaping to England on the Kindertransport, where he lived in a kibbutz-type community before joining the war effort.
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.