GVL / Hannah Mico. The main character of “Kindertransport,” Eva, is played by Marllory Caillaud-Jones.
For most people, it’s an accepted fact that six million Jews died in concentration camps during the Holocaust. But what is not widely discussed is the 10,000 children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia who were saved via the Kindertransport. Grand Valley State University senior Amanda Furstenberg was interested in doing a play about the Holocaust for her senior honors project, so she approached professor and director Karen Libman. The two decided to share the story of the children.
GERMANY: ‘Goldschmidts Kinder – Überleben in Hitlers Schatten’ – November 4th, 2013 at 23:30 on ARD Television, Germany. – November 5th, 2013 at 03:25 on ARD Television. – November 7th, 2013 at 20:15 on tagesschau24. USA: “The Teacher who Defied Hitler’ – November 16th, 2013 at 08:00pm (ET/PT) on Smithsonian Channel. – November 16th, 2013 at 11:00pm (ET/PT) on Smithsonian Channel. – November 19th, 2013 at 10:00am (ET/PT) on Smithsonian Channel.
Hanus Grosz with Kindertransport Quilts
For more than five decades, Hanus Grosz did not know the name of the man who saved him from the Nazis. He did not know who had arranged to whisk him and nearly 700 other children out of Czechoslavakia and into new homes in England. Seemingly chance encounters and fleeting moments of kindness may govern the course of many lives.
During World War II thousands of children, most of whom were Jewish, had to leave their parents and travel to the UK to escape persecution. Survivors – like Ursula Rosenfield – were kept safe by the kindertransport mission. Now railway stations across Britain will be the setting for a theatre production telling their story. Executive producer of Suitcase, and KT2, Jane Merkin, spoke to BBC about her show.
Otto Deutsch at the site where his parents and sister were killed
Two survivors who experienced first-hand the destruction, intimidation and violence during Kristallnacht give extraordinary accounts of their time surviving the ordeal and their eventual rescue by the British mission known as the Kindertransport.
75 years ago, train stations across Britain filled with child refugees arriving from Nazi-occupied Europe, at the start of what became known as the Kindertransport. Now, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the rescue mission, which saved more than 9,500 children, a theatre company is touring station platforms across the UK, with a production portraying the experience of those children. Suitcase is a theatre piece that fuses a site-specific promenade performance with live music.
“I walked by our synagogue. Hordes of people were standing in front of it and throwing stones through the beautiful stained-glass windows. They had gone into the synagogue, ransacked it and threw the Torah scrolls into the streets,” Neumann recalled. As soon as she arrived at school, her teacher said, “Something horrible happened last night. Your parents have been alerted, and they will come pick you up.”
The 85-year-old former Kindertransport child and Haganah sniper is still talking sex in the media and making waves. By Debra Nussbaum Cohen In the Haaretz newspaper (you must register and sign in to read the full article)
A refugee from Nazi Germany has published a book for children to counter prejudice against Gypsies. Ruth Barnett, who came here on a Kindertransport from Berlin at the age of 4 in 1939, draws parallels between the Jewish and Gypsy experience. “I have been going into schools for Holocaust education to tell my Kindertransport story for over a decade,” she explained, “and I don’t think it has its full value unless I link it with what we are allowing to happen today.
Edith Goldberg, Leeds, UK
11-year-old Edith Michel arrived in Leeds with her younger sister Irmgard – both found safe havens with Jewish families. Born in Kaiserslautern on May 13, 1928, she grew up in a little village, population of around 200, of whom only 20 were Jewish. Edith was one of the Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association’s greatest supporters. It was only in the past five years that she began to speak in schools, to children who were the same age as she was when she left her homeland.
Henrietta Franks (L-R), Margot Showman, Henry Gruen, Lore Robinson, Hellfried Heilbutt and Ernest Kolman stand in front of photos from their childhood. EPA/Oliver Berg
Cologne, Germany – Survivors of “Kindertransport,” reunited this week at a commemorative exhibit. The exhibit is open 16 October – 24 November, 2013. 90 year-old Henrietta Franks was 15 when she left Cologne, and “My sister was 12, crying for a whole year.” Franks’ parents fled to southern France, but her father was picked up by the Nazis, telling her mother, “I’ll see you in England.” That was the last her family heard from her father.
Short video broadcast on ZDF featuring Kind Bernd Koschland and rescuer Sir Nicholas Winton.
One of the youngest children on the Kindertransport, Paul Alexander leads a successful life; his only regret is that he never hit a six in cricket. Perhaps the true heroes in Paul Alexander’s extraordinary story are his parents who, in 1939, sent their 16-month-old only child on a Kindertransport from their Leipzig home to safe haven in England. Today he lives in Ra’anana with his Israeli wife, Nili, works as a lawyer and leads a satisfying and pleasant life.
On boarding a packed train out of Nazi-occupied Prague in June 1939, nine-year-old John Karlik and his younger sister Vera didn’t realise they were waving goodbye to their father for the final time. The pair escaped after Moravian clergyman Bishop Shaw, who was on a visit to Prague, arranged for them to catch what turned out to be the last train out of the city and offered them refuge at his home in Fulneck, Pudsey.
Hamden Hall Country Day School’s community lecture series features a documentary that tells the inspirational story of the Czech Kindertransport that rescued 669 children in the early days of Nazi occupation. Nicky’s Family will screen in Hamden Hall’s Taylor Performing Arts Center Tuesday, Oct. 22, 6:30 p.m. Following the screening, Mr. Ivan Backer will discuss his personal experience on the Kindertransport. Mr. Backer’s mother put him on a train in Prague bound for London in May 1939.
‘If you look at anyone’s life, it’s pretty crazy. That you don’t end up on the rocks somewhere is just a miracle’ … director Michael Roemer. Photograph: Harold Shapiro.
He fled the Nazis for a British boarding school – then made a shocking drama about segregation in the deep south. Michael Roemer talks fate, family and sadistic governesses In the last 10 days, I have seen three films by Roemer: two documentaries and Nothing But a Man, his first feature, shot in 1963…if I could reach out and grab your collar I would: do whatever you can to see these films.
Mr Foner has always kept the postcards sent by his father after he was sent to Wales as a child
A grandfather has revealed the heartbreaking postcards his father sent him from Nazi Germany before he died in Auschwitz. Henry Foner, 81, was just six when his parents sent him to Britain to escape the growing persecution of Jews in 1938. His father Max sent him dozens of brightly coloured postcards filled with fatherly love that Mr Foner has treasured for the last 75 years. Mr Foner has published the moving correspondence in a book titled Postcards to a Little Boy.
Sig, bottom left, and Zilla Koppold were very young when they arrived in England. Dana Binke, left, was their guarantor, at left cousins Edith and Paula, also on the Kindertransport
You live in Leipzig. It is 1939. The world is imploding. It is exploding. Nothing is safe. Nothing makes sense. Because of your family connections, you have a chance to save your children. It would mean putting them on a train — yes, all of them, even the baby — and sending them far away. You will not be able to protect them once they arrive, and you might never see them again. You have very little time to make the decision. What do you do?
Nicky’s Family, out July 19, shows how the “British Schindler” saved hundreds of children from Hitler’s forces, including Masters’ own mom. My grandmother’s name was Sidonia, and she lived with my grandfather Salamon in the remote mountain village of Trstena, then part of Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia). They had three little girls, among them my mother, Alice. For most of my mother’s childhood, they lived in a couple of rooms in a house with no electricity or running water.
Nicholas Winton is someone whose life is a worthy subject. He was an English Holocaust rescuer who was the primary moving force behind the Kindertransport program that rescued Czech Jewish children from the Nazis. Unfortunately, each of Minac’s three films on Winton is preachy, bathetic and clumsily manipulative. Nicky’s Family, the latest film is certainly the best of the three, but that is a relative judgment.