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
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