Testimonies
Alice Malcolm
Alice Malcolm was born in Vienna. She witnessed the rise of the Nazis in Austria as early as 1936, when her mother left her to go to England. She escaped to England and served as a kitchen maid and general help in a grand country house. She ended up in Scotland and became a nurse. Read More
Bob Kutner
Bob was born in Germany into a Polish Jewish family. They moved to France and then Italy after Hitler came to power in 1933. There, Bob helped his brother spy for France. His brother was caught but not Bob. He escaped as a tourist to England where he joined the army and became an interrogator of POWs. He became a clothing agent and married Barbara. Read More
Bob Mackenzie
Bob was born in Chemnitz, Germany, of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother. He was not brought up Jewish. After his father was sent briefly to a concentration camp, he was sent on the Kindertransport to Scotland. He was brought up by a Scottish family and changed his name to theirs in gratitude. His parents both survived the war but ended up in East Germany so it was very difficult for them to meet again. Read More
Dany Metzstein
Dany Metzstein (Danielle Kahn) was born in Montpellier, France in 1942. Her parents were in hiding and her father was involved with the Maquis. They survived the war in France, but after her father died, Dany had to stay in an orphanage and then a boarding school. She came to live in Motherwell, Scotland with mother, stepfather and brother and later met the love of her life, Isi, and had three children. Read More
Dorothea Brander
Dorothea was born in Berlin. Her father was a chemist and was sent to work in Istanbul to escape from Germany. She describes her life in Turkey. Her brother organised support for non-Nazi Germans who were interned during the war in villages by the Turks. Dorothea married on V.E. Day and came to Glasgow, which did not impress her at all! Thereafter she travelled widely with her husband when he worked for the British Council. Read More
Dorrith M. Sim
Dorrith was born in Kassel, Germany. She witnessed Kristallnacht, when her own home was vandalised, so her parents decided she should go to Britain on the Kindertransport. She describes how she taught herself English by saying everything was “in my pocket” and wrote a children’s book with that name on the experience of being a refugee. She settled in Scotland and founded SAROK, the Scottish Annual Reunion of Kinder. Read More
Edith Forrester
Edith was born in Nordhausen, Germany. She describes what happened when the Gestapo arrived at her home and arrested her father. She speaks of her departure from her family when she joined the Kindertransport and her mother’s failure to escape. She emphasises her love of Britain, her pride in being Jewish and her Christian faith. Read More
Erna Grace
Erna Grace (Rabner) was born in Dortmund, Germany in 1930. Erna came on the Kindertransport when she was only eight years old. She had diphtheria while living in the reception camp in Harwich. She was taken in by Nurse Livingstone and her family In Glasgow with whom she lived with till she married. Sadly, she never saw her parents again. Erna was a hairdresser and married Jack. Read More
Esperance David
Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Esperance describes life there and the challenge being Jewish brought to her family especially after the rise of Hitler. She speaks about the Farhad, the pogrom against the Jews of Baghdad in 1941. She explains what happened to her Iraqi family in 1948 and thereafter, and her later experiences in Britain. Read More
Eva Miller
Eva Miller is the only child of Richard and Gertrude Kuttner and was born in Berlin. Her mother died in childbirth and her father died in Auschwitz. Eva came to the UK on the Kindertransport and lived with Alf and Doreen Collins and their son in Glasgow. She settled in, married and had three children. She ran the Deli for many years in Glasgow.
