INT: After that did your parents decide that they had to leave or you had to leave, what happened then
KR: Well, they didn’t, yes they decided then, that my uncle in America who had been pleading for them to come and send us, [they] decided that we had to go, my sister and I. So arrangements were [made]. My mother started shopping for clothes [that] would last us for years to come and we were sent to… I had relations, an aunt, uncle and cousin in London, they were living there already and so arrangements were made for us to go there.
PR: It was the Kindertransport
INT: The last train from the Rhineland.
KR: The last train that stopped at Düsseldorf, yes.
INT: I see, so you were very lucky to escape?
KR: Very lucky indeed, yes.
INT: And your parents I assume could not get visas to escape?
KR: That was a complicated affair, my father, they tried all sorts of things, but we lived opposite the Gauleiter that means one of the leaders of the Nazi group and he was determined that my parents should not go. Because my father applied for various papers and so on, but they delayed and delayed and delayed.
INT: And did this Gauleiter know your father or just wanted to stop him going because he was Jewish?
KR: Well, I mean, they lived opposite us.
INT: So he knew him as a neighbour?
KR: Yeah, but we had no relations with those neighbours.
INT: Right
KR: They were very anti-Semitic and that was part of the trouble. If he hadn’t lived there my parents would have got out, but he saw to it that they didn’t get their papers.
INT: That’s terrible.
KR: So they went to a Ghetto at first and my father died there and what happened to my mother we never knew quite.
PR: But there was quite a long interval between your leaving and your parents continued in the house, but not in the full house, they were brought up in the garret.
KR: Yes, I mean the house, we had the big part of the house, but I don’t know if they sold it or whether it was taken over, but they moved into the attic.
INT: So you were able to write to them for a little I suppose from Britain?
KR: Oh yes, yes, there were Red Cross letters.
PR: You went out of Germany when?
INT: On the Kindertransport train.
PR: But what date?
INT: May 39.
KR: 39, yeah.
PR: And your parents were not deported from Düsseldorf until two years later, they survived in Düsseldorf for two years?
KR: What?
PR: Your parents.
KR: What about?
PR: Did they not stay on in Düsseldorf, they could not get out, they weren’t allowed visas and papers though they made every effort and several times they got nearly there.
KR: Yeah, but the chap opposite, the Gauleiter
PR: Yeah, but they finally were deported in 1942.
KR: 42
