The Association of Jewish Refugees represented Britain at last week’s inauguration of a Kindertransport statue in Hamburg, Germany. Sir Erich Reich, Andrea Goodmaker and Carol Rossen from AJR were among the first to see the bronze sculpture, called The Last Farewell, by internationally acclaimed artist Frank Meisler, himself a Kind.
In the five-year run of Dandelions Flowers and Gifts’ “Eugene’s Favorite Mom” award, there had never been a nomination letter quite like it. Written by brothers Sidney and Kenneth Brown, the essay described the remarkable life story of their mother, Charlotte Brown, who turned 90 on April 2.
Walter Kohn
Nobel laureate and professor emeritus of physics at USCB, KTA member Walter Kohn recalls life under the Austrian Nazi regime, the death of his parents at Auschwitz and the good people who rescued him. On Dec. 2, 1938, a train pulled into Harwich, England. On board were 196 children from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin that had been destroyed during Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Part of the first “Kindertransport,” the children were on their way to foster homes in Britain.
The Kindertransport will be the focus of several events in May in Utica and Rome, NY. At 2 p.m. on May 18, Karl Buchholz, a Kindertransport survivor, will speak at the Jewish Community Center in Utica. The play by Diane Samuels, “Kindertransport,” will be presented at 7:30 p.m. June 5-7 at Rome Community Theater, with a 2:30 p.m. matinee June 8. The Kindertransport Association Exhibition Panels will be on display at the theater.
n observance of Yom HaShoah, congregants at Beth Hillel Congregation Bnai Emunah, Wilmette gathered for a special memorial service on Sunday evening, April 27. The program highlighted children of the Holocaust. Each person attending lit a candle in memory of those that perished. Two hidden children and one individual that was part of the Kindertransport shared their emotional and unforgettable stories of survival.
Briton Nicholas Winton helped save hundreds of mostly Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the war. “Saving the Children”aired on April 27, 2014 on CBS news program 60 Mnutes. Bob Simon is the correspondent. Harry Radliffe and Vanessa Fica, producers. Watch the video and read the transcript online: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/saving-the-children-during-world-war-11-60-minutes/
The story of how KTA member Alice Eberstark and her two sisters made it onto one of Winton’s trains is the subject of this week’s 60 Minutes Overtime feature. “Alice has one of the most heart-wrenching stories to tell,” says Radliffe. “She remembers very clearly, before they left home, her father sitting on the edge of the bed, sobbing uncontrollably. They clearly had debated whether this was the right thing or not.”
Notizen aus England: Zug ins Ungewisse Eine Reise ins Ungewisse: Eltern und Kinder wussten nicht, ob sie einander jemals wiedersehen würden. 75 Jahre nach dem ersten Kindertransport erzählen drei Deutsche von dieser Reise und ihrem Leben danach. Und der Dokumentarfilmer Sir David Attenborough erinnert sich an die beiden deutschen Mädchen, die in seiner Familie aufgenommen wurden.
Otto Decker, saved by the Kindertransport rescue mission before World War II broke out, shared his story of survival during a recent Forum discussion group meeting in West Delray’s Vizcaya community. Decker, 84 and a Boca Raton resident, was born in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was one of a group of 50 Jewish children who were sent to Frankfurt by their German parents in 1938 to live together in safety.
My sister Bertl doesn’t call herself a Holocaust survivor, says Starobin, 76, taking her red glasses off. She won’t put them on again until she has finished telling her story almost two hours later. “She says we weren’t in a camp. But you know what? I lost my parents. I lost my home. I was resettled without having a say in it. That seems to me as pretty much being a survivor.”
Esther Starobin is interviewed by Lilly Maier.
Marga Forester with her great-grandson, Tapan Parker Wearn, in 2010.
Marga Forester, 90, of Wynnewood, a Holocaust survivor who escaped from Nazi Germany to England on the famous Kindertransport, died Sunday, Feb. 9, of a heart attack at home. Mrs. Forester, the former Marga Levy, was married to fellow Kindertransport survivor Frank Forester who died of respiratory failure Dec. 3, also at home in Wynnewood. He was 88. They were together 69 years.
The Florida Holocaust Museum could not have selected two more appropriate co-chairs for its upcoming “To Life: To Children” gala on Thursday, Feb. 27 in St. Petersburg when it honors those whose lives were saved by the Kindertransport. Co-chairs Lisl Schick of Largo and Marietta Drucker of Seminole were both saved by what has become known as the Kindertransport – riding a train, then crossing the English Channel in a ship, as they escaped from Vienna, Austria, to London, England, in 1939.
Christiane Amanpour’s story on World Kindertransport Day, the seventy fifth anniversary of the Kindertransports, is viewable online, on youtube.
Lotti Blumenthal holds a photo that includes her, 5th from left, back row, at Burges Hill, Sussex, England. Howard Lipin
When Lotti Blumenthal was 13 years old in 1938, she packed some heavy sweaters, a Hebrew song book and two teddy bears named Eggi and Nüngi in a small suitcase, waved goodbye to her family and boarded a westbound train from Germany’s Hamburg station, never to return. Blumenthal was a child of the Kindertransport. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it,” said Blumenthal, now 88 and a widow. “It was a terrible experience, but I survived, and Hitler had one less child to kill.”
Uli Herzberg at 12 . He was one of about 2000 German Jewish children sent to the Netherlands in the late 1930s to escape the Nazis. He was captured in 1943. COURTESY OF MIRIAM KEESING
Dutch pianist Miriam Keesing never expected to research Jewish emigrant children who fled Germany for the Netherlands between 1938 and 1940. It began when she found a photo of a young boy in her family attic while looking for clues about her grandfather, whom she’d never met. Her aunt told her the boy was Uli, a German-Jewish refugee.
Simon Shaw
An exhibition to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Kindertransport and Holocaust Memorial Day uses the artist’s own family’s involvement for inspiration. Artist and teacher Simon Shaw, of Winterbourne Dauntsey, started working on his pieces about nine years ago using photographs from his father Otto’s childhood. For more information, studio address and hours: http://www.studio53space.co.uk/
Holocaust survivor and Dallas resident Magie Furst, by David Woo/Staff Photographer
For almost 75 years, Magie Furst has owed her very survival to the kindness of strangers. She and her brother were among about 10,000 German Jewish children who survived the Holocaust because of a British rescue effort known as the “kindertransport.” For many years, she’s helped the Dallas Holocaust Museum keep the events of that era alive by sharing her memories with students and other visitors. In an exhibit that begins Wednesday, her story and the kindertransports will be featured.
Alexander Wilde, now 90 years old. Photo: Glenn Russell, The Burlington (Vt.) Free Press)
His father had been taken to Dachau but wrote to tell his mother ‘to get the child out.’ First he was kicked out of school. Then Alexander Wilde’s family was kicked out of their home, he watched soldiers take his father away, his mother put him on a train to safety and he was unsure whether he would ever see her again. Article and video from USA Today and the Burlington VT Free Press.
Seventy-five years ago, 7-year-old Susanne Goldsmith watched her father wave goodbye, clutching a handkerchief in a crowd of people at a railroad station in Vienna, Austria. Burbank residents Goldsmith, 82, and David Meyerhof, whose mother was on the Kindertransport from Berlin, shared their stories at the Burbank Town Center Monday in commemoration of World Kindertransport Day and the 75th anniversary of the mission.
(Tim Berger / Staff Photographer / December 2, 2013)
A group photo of Kinder, with members of the Burbank City Council and the Temple Beth Emet President Ira L. Goldstein and organizer and KT2 David Meyerhof at recognition of the 75th anniversary of the first Kindertransport at the Burbank Town Center on Monday, December 2, 2013. Kindertransport moved as many as 10,000 Jewish refugee children to safety from the Nazis by train and ship, mostly to England, from Vienna, Berlin, Prague and other major cities.