Gathering The Voices Scotland

Testimonies of Holocaust survivors who settled in Scotland

The Holocaust Timeline

The Gathering The Voices exhibition focuses on the history of the Holocaust, chronicling the years from 1933 to 1940.

It contains a wealth of fascinating images and visual material that helps to brings to life the experiences of the people who came to Scotland to escape the Holocaust.

Below is a digital timeline version of our Gathering the Voices exhibition.

We will be adding more information over the next few weeks where you will be able to interact and explore the history of the Holocaust

From January 1933 to August 1938

January 1933

Ruth Fraser

Life Before the War

Ran a kosher butcher shop and this kosher butcher shop until 1933 when the Nazis came to power. The shop had to be closed….. They had no income.

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January 1933

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Adolf Hitler Becomes Chancellor of Germany

‘Yes, well, Hitler came to power in January l933, by April l933, somewhere around ll or l2 o’clock, …, the Storm Troopers appeared in our business, declared all of us, my father, our relative ……my cousin …..my business partner, and myself as ….having to be taken into what they called “schutzhaft” or protective custody

Extract from Martin Anson’s testimony

March 1933

Dachau Concentration Camp Opens

I think it was Block l6, where we were allocated. It was huts which were constructed to hold probably between 70 and 100 people, and there were about 250-300 people in each hut, so we were sleeping, partly on bunks, partly on the floor, on straw, so obviously, there was not much sleeping at night, because we were lying across each other.

Extracted from Martin Anson – Arrested on Kristallnacht and Imprisonment In Dachau Concentration Camp

March 1933

Enabling Act is passed Hitler given dictatorial powers

To the best of my recollection, remember I was 9 years old, 10 years old; and Polish Jews, foreign Jews knew they were in for a hard time under Hitler who had come to power in ’33

Extract from Bob Kutner – Life Before the War

1933

Well, I remember that the SA [Sturmabteilung or Brownshirts, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi party]. It used to be on a Sunday morning march through the street and people always stood and watched and so on and [shouted] Heil Hitler and all that. And the young people of my own age, they joined in singing and it was all very jolly, but I mean, for them.  So … usually, we kept out of the way when they marched through.

Extract from Bob Kutner – Life Before the War

May 1933

Public Burning of “un-German” books.

including works by Robert Burns

September 1935

Nuremberg Race Laws are passed

So my mother’s grandmother was Jewish and her mother, Paula Lamb, was christened into the Catholic faith, which I think was fairly common when people married into a different religion…….

…..The Nazis had introduced with the Nuremberg laws in 1935 I think it was. Some sort of pseudo scientific methodology to decide how much of a Jew you are in blood. And it depended on how many…INT: What was it they called this? They had a special name didn’t they? For such people. Is it mischling?

Extract from Saskia Tepe – Life before War

March 1938

Gretl Shapiro

Before the War – German Army marches into Austria

You know, I remember coming home from school and seeing an old man having to scrub the floor, the pavement and a whole lot of brownshirts, you know the Nazis, standing round poking him with rifles and oh everybody laughing and jeering.

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August 1938

Adolf Eichmann establishes the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna

Go to November 1938