Walter was born in 1933 and lived in Munster, Germany. His mother was a professional athlete and ran a sports car which she “loaned” to the Nazi party so she could use it whenever she wanted. His father had an Iron Cross 1st Class from WW1. With the help of a Catholic priest they escaped … Read more
Suzanne was born in Budapest. At the start of the war, her parents were in London and they were separated for 7 years. She lived in a “starred house” for Jews for a while with her brothers and grandmother but was saved by being taken to a Wallenberg house. When the Russians invaded, they lived … Read more
Susan was born in Szekesfehervar, Hungary. Three months after the Germans occupied Hungary, in June 1944 she and her family were sent by cattle truck to Auschwitz. Chosen to live by the notorious Josef Mengele, Susan was the only member of her family to survive. She describes the horrors of life there and later in … Read more
Sonja was born in Berlin, where her mother ran a dry cleaning business. Unlike Jewish professionals who lost their jobs in Nazi Germany, her mother was able to work and helped support those who were no longer earning. Her Polish father left for Thailand ending up in Shanghai. Sonja and her mother escaped Germany at … Read more
Sidney was born in Landau, Germany. His father owned vineyards. On Kristallnacht his father was arrested and sent to Dachau and the family was forced to move to Mannheim. Sidney was sent to Britain on the Kindertransport but his parents were murdered in Auschwitz. He arrived in Dovercourt where a Glasgow family offered him a … Read more
Saskia was born in 1954 in a Displaced Persons camp outside Nuremberg. Her mother, Brigitte, suffered greatly under the Nazis as a Mischling (mixed ancestry), then under the Czechs as a Sudeten German, and finally as a refugee in a DP camp. Despite everything, Saskia and her mother made a life for themselves in Britain … Read more
Ruths’ journey took her from Germany to Switzerland, London, Scotland and finally back to Germany. After coming to Glasgow to do war work she married another German refugee in 1945. In 1958 Ruth, her husband and her daughter moved to Hamburg, Germany, where her husband joined his brother who owned a chocolate factory. Read More
Rosa was born in Berlin. She describes the devastating effects of the racial Nuremberg laws on the Jews. She came alone on the first Kindertransport. Amazingly, her mother and sister survived and joined her in Glasgow. She became an eminent paediatric nurse, wrote a widely used textbook, and was happily married to Joe for over … Read more
Rita came from Hannover, Germany and was only nine when she and her mother were arrested by the Nazis. Thanks to an aunt, she was released and came to Britain on the Kindertransport. She believed her mother would arrive soon, and did not know the truth of what had happened to her until years later. … Read more
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