Testimonies
Eva Szirmai
Eva was an apprentice photographer in Budapest but could not be fully trained because she was Jewish. She lived in constant danger of deportation under the Nazis and her mother barely escaped. Eventually they lived in the ghetto, which by chance saved their lives. She then lived in Communist Hungary until her husband, who was a singer, found a job as a synagogue cantor in Glasgow. Read More
Evelyn Strang
Evelyn was born in Leipzig in 1933. Evelyn and her mother were deported to Poland in 1938 but managed to escape to Britain as her father had set up a factory. Her Polish grandparents did not survive. The other grandparents lived in Berlin throughout the war. Her father set up a furrier’s business in Glasgow. Evelyn worked in the business too then married and had children. Read More
Fred Weiss
FRIEDRICH (Fridyes in Hungarian) LOTHAR WEISS, better known as Fred Weiss, was born in Miskolc in Hungary on May 23rd 1921. He lived most of his adult life in Glasgow, Scotland and epitomised the ideal of how a poor young refugee could make good by hard work and strong will. Read More
Frieda Laird
Frieda’s father was a baker and she lived on a farm. Aged 18, she came to the UK as a domestic but lost all her family. She had a difficult marriage and had to raise 5 children on her own. She worked as a pedlar round Glasgow. Read More
George Taylor
George was born in East Prussia. His mother came to Glasgow first and then he joined her on the Kindertransport. He travelled from London on his own but his mother went to the wrong station in Glasgow and he had to be rescued by a Yiddish speaking taxi driver. He was very sporty and gave gymnastic displays at Maccabi sports centre. He was in the Territorial Army for a while and had several jobs as a driver and then in a bedding factory. Read More
Gerda Fulton (Grunewald)
Gerda was born in Beuthen, Upper Silesia, Germany, in 1919. In January 1939, she was forced to flee the Country arriving in the UK. Her parents were not so fortunate, They were transported to Auschwitz whence they perished. Gerda was subsequently dispersed, by the Jewish Committee, to Glasgow where she stayed the remainder of her life. In March 1941, she married the German Jewish Refugee Kurt (Charles) Fulton at South Portland Street Synagogue in the Gorbals. Read More
Gretl Shapiro
Gretl was born in Vienna and had a happy childhood until the Nazis came. She was sponsored by the Quakers to come on the Kindertransport to England, where her sister was working as a domestic. She originally stayed in Coventry but was evacuated several times because of the Blitz. She became an entomologist and moved to Glasgow where she married. She became a well known potter but said her greatest achievement was having children to spite Hitler. Read More
Halina Moss
Halina was born into a politically active family in Warsaw in 1929. Her father was a Bundist and imprisoned by the Tsar along with Trotsky’s wife. Her family escaped to Russia and ended up in Siberia in extreme conditions. After the war she came to Glasgow and trained as a science teacher but changed to maths because the chemical experiments were too dangerous. Read More
Henry Wuga
Henry grew up in Nuremberg and trained as a chef. He came to Scotland on the Kindertransport but due to a misunderstanding he was interned as a possible spy on the Isle of Man at age 16. He became the leading chef in the Glasgow Jewish community and received the MBE for work with disabled soldiers. He was married to Ingrid (see her testimony) for over 70 years. Read More
Ike Gibson
Ike, born in Hamburg, came from a very religious family. He remembered little of his journey to Britain on the Kindertransport. Once in the UK he quickly integrated. He describes his experiences in the Queen’s Scouts and in National Service. Ike became an academic specialising in bacterial and viral genetics. He fulfilled a life’s ambition when he retired to Ullapool. Read More
