News

Lest We Forget

Posted on May 28, 2009

The Arlington Human Rights Commission sponsored a talk on the Holocaust by Kind Fred Manasse and Dr. Margot Segall-Blank. The two speakers were children when they saw their native Germany transform from familiar neighborhoods into a place they had to flee.

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Imperial War Museum to Open Exhibition on Build-up to WWII

Posted on May 28, 2009

When plans to evacuate civilians from towns and cities were put into action on 31 August 1939, millions of children’s lives were immediately changed. Outbreak 1939 will incorporate the stories and exhibits of a number of those children, including a teddy bear belonging to a little girl evacuated on 3 September 1939; and an exercise book kept by Celia Horwitz, a German Jewish girl, who arrived in the UK in December 1938 as part of the Kindertransport and was later evacuated to Norfolk.

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The real Inglourious Basterds: Britain’s secret Jewish commandos

Posted on May 22, 2009

The troop was recruited from the tens of thousands of refugees who had fled to Britain from the Nazi persecution of the Jewish population before the war. When war began, they were classified as enemy aliens amid fears of infiltration by fifth columnists, and interned. But as time went by, distrust eased and men of fighting age were freed to join the British Army. These men, including several Kinder, were serious and brave soldiers who risked more than most in World War II.

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Major retrospective of artist Gustav Metzger

Posted on May 18, 2009

Born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1926 to Polish-Jewish parents, Gustav Metzger was evacuated to England with his brother Max/Mendel as part of the Kindertransport in 1939. This overview presented by the Serpentine Gallery represents the influential artist and activist Gustav Metzger’s life-long exploration of politics, ecology and the destructive powers of 20th-century industrialised societies. Destruction, creation and transformation lie at the heart of much of Metzger’s art.

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Inglorious? No. Bastards? Never. Meet the real Tarantino war heroes

Posted on May 17, 2009

Like the soldiers portrayed on screen, the men of 3 Troop, 10 Commando, a unit of the British Army that was almost entirely composed of German-speaking Jewish refugees, were motivated by a hatred of Nazism and were sent on secret missions, often behind enemy lines. But any similarities end there. At the age of Max Dickson arrived in England on a Kindertransport. He never saw his parents again – they died in the Warsaw ghetto. Mr Dickson retains vivid memories of his wartime experiences.

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Point of view: The teenager who arrested Himmler

Posted on May 14, 2009

Holocaust survivor Guy Bishop passed away on Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 21, 2008. Few people know that he arrested Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi responsible for the mass murder of 6 million Jews. Guy Bishop was born Günther Brüg on April 9, 1926, in Germany and was sent to England on the Kindertransport, in July 1939. With no one to greet him in England, Günther was sent to a refugee camp.

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Human Rights Commission to host Holocaust remembrance event

Posted on May 10, 2009

Arlington, Mass. – The Arlington Human Rights Commission is honored to host “Lest We Forget: Memories and Lessons from the Holocaust” on Thursday, May 21. Dr. Fred K. Manasse, a child survivor of the Holocaust who witnessed the burning of his synagogue during Kristallnacht, will describe his wartime experiences. He was sent on a Kindertransport to Brussels where he was placed in an orphanage. He escaped to France and over the Pyrenees to Spain and eventually to New York.

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Polish city gets memorial to kids who fled Nazis

Posted on May 6, 2009

A monument was unveiled Wednesday in the Polish port city of Gdansk remembering 10,000 Jewish children evacuated to Britain to save them from the Nazis. The bronze memorial went up in front of the main train station in Gdansk, a city on the Baltic Sea coast that at the time was Danzig, a free city lost to Germany after World War I.

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A Child’s Perspective on the Holocaust, Then and Now

Posted on April 30, 2009

Though Sam Barriskell is nearly 70 years younger than Lilly Drukker, the 13-year-old was keenly aware that in a different time and place, her story could easily have been his. Drukker was only 11 when the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, and on Sunday, she held Barriskell and an intimate group of his peers rapt at attention as she related the story of her life under Nazi occupation before leaving Vienna and her family for London on a Kindertransport.

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Council leader’s family torn apart by Holocaust

Posted on April 28, 2009

My grandmother took my father to the platform, put him on a train and waved goodbye knowing it was likely to be the last time she would see her son,” said Rod Bluh. “That takes some kind of courage.” Rod is well-known throughout Swindon as the tough-talking leader of the borough council. Yet he tells the story of his grandmother and father with emotion in his voice and watery eyes. http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/4325160.Council_leader_s_family_torn_apart_by_Holocaust/ 0
66 2009-04-29 00:00:00 Unlikely Trio Uncover Tales of Wartime Rescues The feature documentary, The Rescuers: Heroes of the Holocaust” which is due out next year, documents the incredible stories of 12 non-Jewish diplomats from 11 countries, who, against the orders of their governments, helped save an estimated 200,000 European Jews during World War II. The three principals in the project came together last November at the 70th reunion in London of the Kindertransport.

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Charity should be part of everyday life, says ambassador

Posted on April 26, 2009

Everybody in Britain should give some of their time or their money to charity as a routine part of life, according to the “ambassador” appointed by Gordon Brown to promote philanthropy. Dame Stephanie Shirley, a Kind from Austria,who was given the job last week, said philanthropy should be part of everyday life.

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Memorial service honors Holocaust victims, rescuers

Posted on April 23, 2009

Marianne Bern and her sister fled Nazi Germany for England in 1939 though the Kindertransport. On Tuesday, Bern participated in the third annual Holocaust Remembrance Day service in the Cedar Valley. She lit a candle in memory of victims of the Holocaust and read a self-authored poem about horrors suffered under Hitler’s rule.

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Holocaust survivor describes experience to students

Posted on April 14, 2009

Holocaust survivor Felix Weil, 81, tells his life story of survival to Mrs. DiCuirci fifth grade classroom at Xenia Christian School. In the late 1930s, Felix Weil’s life was spared from the Holocaust by the Kindertransport. And had it not been for a clerical mistake, Felix Weil of Clayton,Ohio, could not have been at Xenia Christian School this week to share his experiences with the 5th grade class. He probably would not have escaped Hitler’s clutches, the horror of the Holocaust, he said.

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Holocaust survivor tells of his terrible experience

Posted on April 14, 2009

A Holocaust survivor who escaped to Britain as a teenager has shared his tragic experiences with students at Wallington County Grammar School. Harry Bibring, 83, escaped Nazi-occupied Vienna on a Kindertransport train after his father’s menswear business was destroyed during Kristallnacht. His father later died of a heart attack after being robbed while buying travel tickets and his mother was deported to the Sobibor death camp in Poland in 1942.

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Aiken man tells his story of struggle

Posted on April 14, 2009

Friedel (Fred) Ransenberg was born in Wenneman, Germany, the second oldest of six children. His father, Jakob Ransenberg, an Iron Cross recipient and decorated sergeant in the German Army during World War I, supported his family as a butcher. Before the drastic rise of anti-Semitism, Ransenberg and his brothers played soccer on the local team alongside many Catholic Germans. Fred’s older brother was sent away on the Kindertransport. In 1943, at the age of 16, Fred arrived in Auschwitz.

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Parents’ Escape From Nazis Inspires Entrepreneur

Posted on April 11, 2009

National Public Radio interviews James Jacobson, a self-professed serial entrepreneur, who feels many life lessons stem from the lives of his parents, who fled Germany and the Nazis as young children, and eventually made their way to St. Louis, where they found each other and married. When his father was 7, he was put on a train with his sister in what later became known as the kindertransport.

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Czech consulate marks two historical events

Posted on April 8, 2009

In a sombre ceremony at the University of Toronto, the Czech Republic recently marked the 70th anniversary of two separate – but ultimately related – events. On March 14, 1939, the first rescue train of Jewish children, known as the kindertransport, pulled out of Prague, bound for Britain. One day later, the German army marched into Prague, the Czech capital, transforming a democratic nation into a protectorate of Nazi Germany and dooming its Jewish population.

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World War II refugee recalls ‘Schindler’s List’ of the prairie

Posted on April 8, 2009

Irmgard Rosenzweig got out of Germany in March 1939 on a Kindertransport to England. She lived in a foster home for more than a year while her parents secretly plotted their escape. With the help of the American Friends Service Committee, the family was reunited in New York City in the summer of 1940 and offered the opportunity to go to Scattergood,Iowa. “I was sure it was the Wild West,” Irmgard laughed.

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Sir Richard Attenborough remembers Kindertransport

Posted on April 3, 2009

The 85-year-old director remembers how Helga and Irene Bejach arrived in August 1939, when he was 15. They stayed with the Attenboroughs for seven years before moving to America. Irene died in 1992 and Helga in 2005.

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Interview with KTA member Dr. Heini Halberstam

Posted on March 31, 2009

Dr. Heini Halberstam, KTA member and retired faculty of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana participated in a post-show discussion following the March 30, 2009 performance of My Heart in a Suitcase. As a child, Dr. Halberstam traveled from former Czechoslovakia to England on the Kindertransport.

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