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Renate was born in Cologne in 1931. She talks about her mother’s premature death, her father’s arrest and the reason she was adopted by her mother’s sister and her husband. Her new ‘father’ was the eminent astronomer Erwin Finlay Freundlich. Initially she moved with them to Turkey and then Prague. Then she came to Scotland … Read more

Pat (Beate) was born in 1916 in Kriegshaber, Bavaria, Germany and lived a normal village life with loving parents who were cattle dealers. After Kristallnacht, her parents sent her to Bradford in Yorkshire where she worked as a children’s nanny. After being interned on the Isle of Man, Pat worked in a clothing factory before … Read more

Moniek was born in Wolozin, which was mostly Jewish. By the end of the war, 95% had been killed, including his father. At age 15, Moniek defaced a poster of Stalin and was sent to a concentration camp in Siberia, which saved his life. He then joined the Polish army and travelled widely before settling … Read more

Martin was born in 1909 in Leutershausen, Bavaria, Germany. The town became very anti-Jewish in the early 1920s. He describes his activities in the anti-Nazi movement Reichsbanner and their fight to keep Germany democratic. In great detail Martin describes the Stormtroopers assaulting the family on Kristallnacht and his imprisonment in Dachau, before managing to emigrate … Read more

Marion was born into a wealthy family in Krakow. Her family fled the fighting east into Russia, where they were interned as Poles and sent to a logging camp in Siberia. After they were released from there, they travelled through Kazakhstan and ended up in Uzbekistan for the rest of the war. In 1946, she … Read more

Marianne was born in Hungary. When the war came her family was sent to Vienna as slave labourers. She worked to clear the roads from snow and debris from bombs. She stayed in Hungary and married, but had to escape after the 1956 uprising. She moved round the country as her doctor husband had several … Read more

Marianne was born in Prague. Her daughter, Geraldine, speaks of her mother’s comfortable life, her love of art, which eventually helped her to survive, and the German invasion in 1939. Two years later Marianne and her mother were sent to Theresienstadt, then to Auschwitz, later to a slave labour camp and finally to Bergen-Belsen, where … Read more

Lore actually came to Britain twice, in 1936 and just before the war. Her sister had arrived earlier but unfortunately she and her mother went back to Holland to join her father the day war broke out and were trapped. She never saw them again. Lore did war work and married during the war. This … Read more

Leo, one of five children born in Berlin, came to Scotland with two siblings on the Kindertransport (see Isi Metzstein, his brother). His father, a Communist, was killed in 1933. He first lived with a Quaker family, then in a hostel in Skelmorlie. Failing his “11 Plus” exam by one mark meant that he did … Read more

Kathy was born in Hungary in 1942. Her father was taken away when she was one year old and she and her mother were taken to the Munkacs ghetto in 1944. She was smuggled out to her grandmother’s in Budapest just before the ghetto was liquidated. She emigrated to Israel in 1959 and stayed on … Read more