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984: The Attack On Our School Albert Lester Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Albert Lester was 11 & a boarder at a Jewish school in Esslingen during the November Pogrom, November 9, 1938: I was playing with a little car in the common room when there was this huge commotion, children were running, screaming. I opened the door & was swept away by the screaming children. I went down the corridor & into the dining room, down to the kitchen under the spiral staircase, over the kitchen garden, over the fence. There was a huge drop down to the pavement in front of a 3-foot high wall. I thought if I jump here, I’m going to break my neck [laughs] or my legs. Then I saw a little boy next to me hang himself on the top of the wall by the fingertips & let himself drop & I did the same. So, I got out, got down all right. Then a lot of the children ran down towards the town, Esslingen. Some of us ran up to a little wood. We sat down on some broken tree stumps & didn’t know what was going on. We just sat down & waited. Then we decided after about quarter of an hour, you know, we can’t sit here all day, so one of the girls—there were about maybe six or seven of us—there was one girl & we sent her back to school to do some reconnaissance. We thought a girl wouldn't be harmed, while a boy might. Anyway, she went & came back & told us, yes, she spoke to somebody & we all have to go back. So we all trooped back, didn't know what was going on. Then we saw really what happened. In the playground stood men with clubs & sticks. The front door, this beautiful oak door, was ripped off its hinges, all the windows were smashed. There was a beautiful marble imitation statue of Michelangelo’s Moses. The head was chopped off & it was rolling on the ground. All the bottom panels of the classroom doors were all kicked in & it was shambles. We were then told to go into a classroom where there were already something like 30 or 40 children whom they collected. There we were told to sit down & not talk, just sit there. We sat there, nobody cried, we were all terrified but we didn't know what was happening. Then I was looking at this big hole in the door. I really thought they're going to put a machine gun in & just let us have it. I was quite—I really thought that this would happen. There was a guy with a big club keeping us quiet. Then he left after about quarter of an hour & then the headmaster, Dr Rothschild, came in. He sat down on the desk in front & he put his head in his hands & began to weep. Then of course everybody began to cry. The floodgates just opened up. After he composed himself, he told us what had happened, that this German, von Rath was killed by a Polish youth in Paris & there was a big uprising of the German, the “Volkswut”, & they smashed all the synagogues & set synagogues alight & burst in Jewish shops & arrested all Jewish men, including our teachers. I don't know why he wasn’t arrested, maybe because he was an old man, about 60. He told us that the school would close & we’d all be sent home. The Jewish community in Stuttgart nearby heard that they raided the school, so they came in their cars to pick us up & take us home to look after us while arrangements were made to send us home. I was given a ticket & sent home with my suitcase. In Heilbronn I changed trains into a D-Zug. I sat in the compartment alone when the door flew open & there stood a man in full SS uniform. I thought, my God, you know, this is going to be bad, so I pretended to be asleep. I prayed: ‘please dear God, don't let him start talking to me’. You know, what's a little boy doing on his own on an express train. I pretended to be asleep & he sat there. He didn't say anything. Mercifully at the next stop he got up, got to the door, a ‘Heil Hitler’, & left. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Adapted from Albert Lester's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, January 2024 • Learn More → Albert Lester Destruction of Property Encounter With Nazi Officials November Pogrom / Kristallnacht Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Germany Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

992: Chickenpox Bridget Newman Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close July 1938: Bridget Newman's father, mother & brother move to Britain. Bridget, age 6, remains in Berlin with her grandmother. I was stuck. Then one day, the doorbell rang: a Gestapo. He came in, he was really rather nice. He had white hair & a big, white moustache & really quite kindly blue eyes. But he apologised, really, really apologised that he would now have to take this house & we would have to go. But we had to go quite quickly. I was in a bit of danger, because my father hadn't paid the Juden tax & they were looking for me. My grandmother couldn’t be with me anymore. She found a safe house for me, with a lady, Mrs Grünbaum. I’m sure she was a very good woman but I disliked her intensely. My grandmother had some flat or dwelling place near me. But we were only allowed to meet in the wood secretly. I had to eat potato soup with sausage in it. Nowadays I love it. In those days I hated it & I didn’t eat. I shared a room with other children & nearly every night the Gestapo were hammering at the doors of the house, looking for adults. Quite scary, a lot of noise & clatter. We were trying to sleep. My parents sent an Englishwoman over to try to help me. She found a place for me on a train bearing orphaned children to London. We had a day & everything. And on the day, I woke up, itching all over. What was the matter? I had chickenpox. Now, with any illness or disease, I would not have been allowed on the train. So, they clothed me with I don’t know how many layers of clothing, to cover all the spots [laughs]. And also, to take more clothes out, because I only had this small suitcase & and 10-shilling note & a big notice on my chest saying, ‘Both parents dead.’ I wouldn't have been allowed on the train otherwise. This was mid-December 1938. I said goodbye to my old nanny. We both cried bitterly and she said, ‘Why don’t you stay here with our lovely Hitler?’ I had no answer for that. I don't remember Kristallnacht. I just remember I got this teddy bear & was shoved to this safe house. The lady who came to arrange for me to go to England insisted I had to call her 'Auntie' & wear white gloves. She didn't come with me on the train. Nobody was allowed to travel with me. I had to say goodbye to my grandmother & this lady on the platform. My grandmother arranged for a little 11-year-old to look after me. I had chickenpox. I remember being on that ship & I itched, I couldn’t scratch. I couldn’t get anywhere. I was 6. I didn’t think I was happy; I think I cried a lot. But I had this little girl & she gave me a silver bracelet, which she said I should wear in her memory, which I did afterwards for many years. I didn’t know what happened to her. We went on to this boat at night. There was something soft on the floor. We all had to lie down as we were & told to go to sleep. I seem to remember just laying down, but itching. [Laughs] And then I don’t know if it’s true but I remember hearing frogs croak & chains rattle. Then I was shoved up the gangway to leave the ship. And there at the top of the gangway were my parents, & we cried & my mother cried. I said to her, ‘Why are you crying?’ She said, ‘Because I’m so happy.’ My parents were staying at the Cumberland Hotel in Marble Arch. My mother had a little gas ring on which she’d got a Schnitzel ready for me. And I can still smell the Schnitzel being fried & prepared for me. It was the first decent food I’d had for a long time. Then 14 days later my grandmother also arrived. We had a big celebration. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Adapted from Bridget Newman's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, October 2023 • Learn More → Bridget Newman Encounter With Nazi Officials Food In Hiding Staying With Strangers Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Germany Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

996: How To Hide In Berlin Hans Danziger Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Hans Danziger's Jewish parents survived the war in hiding in Berlin: My father had nerves of steel. Before the war, Jews were obliged to put ‘Israel’ in front of their names. My father refused. He said his name wasn't Israel & nobody was going to tell him what to do. So he was hauled up before the magistrates, who sentenced him to 3 weeks in Spandau. He went to prison. My mother was absolutely terrified of what they were doing to him inside, came to meet him at the prison gates with bags of sandwiches in case he’d been starved. He said, “Put those away. I couldn’t eat a thing more.” In the evenings, he said, the warders used to come round to his cell, & say, “Come on Danziger, tell us. What are these idiots doing to the Jews?" He told them what was going on & they were amazed. Another time, when they were hiding during the war, he'd been somewhere & was coming through the railway barriers. My mother was waiting for him & somebody jostled my father. My father turned around & offered to punch him in the face. My mother nearly died. They had no papers, nothing. My father said to her afterwards “If I'd cowered, they might have been saying, ‘Are you a Jew or something?’” He said, “As it was, nobody dared question it.” Another day, he was on the tram, having been to the country to fetch eggs & butter & so forth from a farmer. Black market. He was on the tram & some Nazi with a big swastika in his buttonhole said to him, “What have you got in your case?” My father said, “I've got butter, eggs, sugar, a bit of this, leg of chicken.” The chap says, “Yeah, yeah. In your dreams.” My father said, “Just shows you my son, always tell the truth.” This is how they first hid: my father was working in Daimler-Benz. One day, the Jews were told to stay behind. My father thought, well, this does not bode well. So he put his hat & coat on, & went. The gatekeeper said to him. “A bit early, isn't it?” My father said “I've got a dental appointment.” “OK, see you tomorrow.” He obviously hadn't been told to keep the Jews in. So my father went. God knows what happened to the rest. My father went straight to the underground, took off his yellow star, rode around, I don't know for how long. He then phoned some friends who said, “Yes, Lotti’s with us.” So he knew my mother was safe. Then he went to the house. Fischer, the porter, had made an arrangement with him. If there was trouble or the Nazis were upstairs, he would turn a cup upside down in his porters’ lodge. So my father went past & he saw the cup upside down. So he didn't go up. Then a couple of nights later, he went back again. There was nothing there. So he went upstairs. He broke the seal on the door, because the Gestapo had sealed the door. He started getting the boxes ready & the porter came rushing up & said, “What are you doing? Are you mad? Some people are saying there's a light on in the Danziger flat.” So they turned the lights off. My father said “Take what you want, just get the boxes to Goerner.” So they did up the boxes & manhandled them downstairs to the porter’s lodge. From there, they went to his friend Goerner’s place. These were all non-Jews. There were many people, all non-Jews who helped them, hid them, gave him false papers, took them out. I can't say enough about them. My father tried with Yad Vashem to get honours for certain people. One of them employed my father as a night watchman. So during the day, my father went out of the district where he was known & went to different places. At night, he had a safe place to go as a night watchman. By this time, my mother had been questioned by the Gestapo about where my father was. She could answer honestly saying she hadn't a clue. They left her alone. Then her friend Helli was working at an electrical plant, Siemens. The foreman there quite fancied her. When it was time, all the Jews stayed behind, he said to her “Look, I know you're not that keen, but do you want to go with them? Or do you want to come home?” She said, “I'll come home with you if my friend Lotti can come.” So he said, “Alright, bring your friend Lotti, but you’d better hurry.” So he got them to his house & put them up. There was an old railway carriage at the end of his garden with the chickens in. He threw out the chickens & installed Helli & my mother. He used to bring them little bits of felt to make hats, which he then sold in the factory. Nobody asked where he got the hats from. He was a bit of a drunk, & when he was drunk, he used to sing anti-Nazi songs. Not a good thing to do in those days. So, my mother got very frightened & said to Helli, “I don't think we ought to hang around here.” So my mother stayed with some other friends, one of whom was not Jewish. Had been married to a Jew, who had divorced him. He found my mother a job with some woman who had dementia & was some raving old Nazi. My mother didn't look very Jewish so that was OK. We have a photo of a Nazi officer in the photograph book. And we said, “What on earth’s he doing in there?!” You know. She said, “you don't judge a book by its cover”. She said she was somewhere at a party & this officer was there & he said to her, “I'm sure,” you know, “ask your husband's permission, but honoured Lady—gnädige Frau—if you would care to have my arm should you want to go out. I would always be—here's my phone number.” So she phoned him & he took her out. If she wanted to go shopping to some shop, where she wouldn't be allowed normally, he would take it to the shops. He knew she was Jewish. He didn't ask any questions; he didn't want to know. He never asked. He never said anything. But obviously, why should he bother, you know? Sadly, sadly, he was killed by the Russians at the end of the war & both his sons died on the Russian front—they were both doctors. Very sad. The ones who do good get killed. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Adapted from Hans Danziger's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, February 2021 • Learn More → Hans Danziger Arrested Encounter With Nazi Officials Helped By Non-Jews Hiding In Plain Sight In Hiding Near Escape Nerves of Steel Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Germany Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

976: Taking What Was Thrown At Me Hannah Wurzburger Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Hannah Wurzburger, age 5, was on the last Kindertransport from Berlin. She left on September 1, 1939, and arrived in Britain on September 2: It's a bottomless pit. So absolutely appalling. Children are so vulnerable. Especially when they're separated from their family. I don't know how they can do this. The whole thing is just a nightmare. Terrible. It took a long time to... accept the situation that I had gone through. Hannah's parents & most of her family were murdered in the Holocaust. I left Berlin when I was 5, so I don't have much recollection there. I do remember coming downstairs & saying, “Hello!” to my mother. And she said, “Oh you don’t have to say hello.” My father teaching me a few things in English: “Let me broom the kitchen”, for instance. I was on the last Kindertransport. It was September, a couple of days before they declared war here. I don't remember the journey. I seem to have a picture—whether it's made up or not—of being with lots of children. This train—I think I had actually a teddy bear. My mother I remember, I think, at the station. I don’t know how they got me there. It may be an imaginary thing. I don't know. What you think you remember is probably more important than what actually happened. I don't remember anything of the journey or arriving here. I had an aunt over here. A little while after I left Berlin there was a letter from my mother. A card perhaps with a photo. I can't remember exactly. But that was it. That was all. My aunt went regularly to the—was it the Home Office where you went, to inquire about refugees? Who had escaped & managed to come over? They had lists of names. She went there regularly. She was not worldly, she had such a struggle, she did really quite a lot. But she—she didn’t come up with any family names. I didn't understand my situation. I wasn't very worldly. I mean I just took everything that was thrown at me & there was quite a lot! You accepted it & relied on your fellow sufferers, if you like, for friendship & talking & so on. There was no... It all seemed to be very... narrowed down & concentrated…" If I hadn’t been forced to leave. I think I would have probably learned to play some musical instrument from my parents, both of them. It's fascinating to think about. My life would have been totally, totally different. No one's life follows a smooth path, does it? We're all going all over the place. But. My life certainly would have probably been more stable. I do think Britain should take more child refugees. They seem to have the size & space. But there's this backlash of native people who say, “We get all these refugees, all these bloody foreigners.” They're afraid they're going to impact on their lives, take away their jobs & whatever. But I think there's still room in this country for many more. They've just got to be gradually assimilated at the beginning. You can't just throw them in. But you have to remember, there's no such thing as blue-blooded Englishman, never has been. They've always had foreigners. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Edited from Hannah Wurzburger's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, March 2018 • Learn More → Hannah Wurzburger Kindertransport Not Remembering Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts England Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

986: The End of Łódź Ghetto Helen Aronson BEM Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Helen Aronson, Łódź Ghetto, 1944: In 1944, the ghetto was closed, everybody sent to camps. But the Germans decided: there's still some money to be made, so they chose a few hundred people to stay behind to clean the ghetto. My brother, myself & my mother, we were among them. Our job was to clean up the ghetto & still make a lot of money for the Germans, because you went into these rooms, dinner was on the table, nobody was in these rooms any more, so we had to segregate: the furniture separate, the crockery separate, everything in piles in the street and lorries—it was winter. Lorries used to come & collect it all & take it all to Germany. We knew that when this job was finished, we’ll follow the others to the camps. I had a job to clean the offices of the German officials. One of them was Gauleiter Biebow, Hans Biebow, who was in charge of the ghetto. I had to do the cleaning when no one was there, so it was very early in the morning or very late at night. At this time they put us into a different camp. I had a bed with my mother, we had a table & a little—like a Primus machine. We could cook a little bit. But every so often this Biebow, who was a drunk & whatever, used to have fun coming to the camp & few people could die or whatever. It was nothing. It was situated very near the Jewish cemetery. The driver of this Biebow, he was a Polish German. We made sort of friends with him & by money, we knew when he's due to go to the camp, so we used to stay in, don't go out, Biebow is coming, & so on. This chap, for money he was giving details & telling us. The right hand of this Biebow was a Mr Krumpf that I worked for. He quite liked me but I must not be seen, so I had to work at night, light fires, toilets, everything, or very early in the morning. So this went for a while. One day I’m cleaning the office of this Biebow secretary. There is a key in the drawer with a note: 'My name is Helena Schmidt. I’m not like Biebow. I will leave some food for you in my desk & here is the key, so just look at my desk.' Right, I opened the desk, there is some food & things. One day we decided to meet. Again, not allowed to be seen, behind some buildings. She said, 'well, I’m actually in love with one of your friends, a Jewish boy in the camp'. This boy said, well, I’m invited to her home in Łódź to a party. He was blond, Aryan-looking, perfect German, so we dressed him up in this leather coat & boots and thing, & off he went. He comes back after the weekend. We said, well? Well, how was it? He said: there were dignitaries in her home, SS men, & he spent the whole weekend with her. Okay. Then one day there's an air raid, & we were told that it’s done by Russian women or something. We were just standing laughing: oh, how wonderful to be killed by a bomb [laughs]. One day—some of the boys managed to have some sort of a radio & we've realised that something is happening with the Russian Army. So one day, I’m opening her desk & what do I see? A revolver. Her note said: Helen, I feel that the war is coming to an end & you might need that. I was scared [laughs]. I was scared to take this damned thing in my hand [laughs]. Then my cousin approached me and said, look, my husband was working on a bunker & tonight be ready with your family & we're going to that bunker, which was actually situated opposite the German Criminal Police. It was winter, 13° cold, we were ill-prepared for anything like this. We gathered our eiderdown, bit of dry food, & off we went. It was a hole made into ground with a desk, & there were maybe ten of us. We went, we sat, we covered ourselves with eiderdown. I can’t hear anything, nothing. Every so often my brother opens the thing, quiet, you can’t hear anything, can’t see anything. Before I went, I said to my boyfriend: 'We don't know what's going to happen but I am going. I'll be – if you are alive, look for me in this area. Anyhow, we're sitting there. We couldn't last longer than a week or so there because we had no food, no nothing. One day, we heard a lot of thumping, big boots. My mother said: I think I can hear Russian. Russian? You must be crazy. My brother very, very cautiously opens this entrance. I’m opening this thing & I’m face to face with a Russian soldier. He says: the war is over & you are free. [Gets emotional] How can you describe that? Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Adapted from Helen Aronson BEM's interview with Dr Bea Lewkowicz for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, July 2024 • Learn More → Helen Aronson BEM Encounter With Nazi Officials Ghetto Incarceration Helped By Non-Jews Liberation Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts Poland Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

998: Red Oaks Boarding School Ruth Jackson Credits & tags Home Memories People Places Experiences About Contact Menu Close Ruth Jackson, aged 13, came to Britain on a 1939 Kindertransport from Berlin & was sent to Red Oaks boarding school in Essex: I was led upstairs to an empty dormitory & told that the very end bed was mine & I should have a bath & come down to tea. I felt miserable. It was empty & cold & horrid-looking. There must have been 10 rows of beds on either side. I went to the bathroom & sat there in floods of tears & I thought what would my mother be doing now & how did she get back home, & is everyone alright & tears were just running down my face & there’s nobody to scrub my back. Then there was a knock on the door, ‘would I please hurry up & come down’. So I hastily got out of the water & my daydreaming, put clean clothes on, & a schoolgirl showed me the way down, there were a few girls still there, & we sat down to what was called High Tea. I was given my first cup of tea with milk which I thought was horrible. I couldn’t eat anything & they looked at me. Some of them tried to talk to me. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I felt a bit like an animal in the zoo. I wished they wouldn't talk to me at all. But, anyway, finally the meal was over and they all went home. I seemed to be left there & nobody else in this empty school for the summer holidays. Teachers had gone, there were a few domestic staff there. One of the maids showed me round the garden & showed me the library. The Headmistress then called for me & said I ought to write a letter home to say I’d got there alright, would I show her the letter before I sent it? So I did & I thought she probably doesn’t understand any German, but anyway I showed her the letter. I suppose she posted it. I had a look at the library, at the books about Australia, & I thought: maybe one day I’ll go there. Then I had to go to bed in this forlorn dormitory, & I couldn’t go to sleep, & I just lay there under the bedclothes sobbing away thinking why on earth did I have to come here, why did all this have to happen? Eventually I did fall asleep, only to be woken by one of the maids to say it was breakfast time & that there were some children coming from the East End of London, for the holidays. We got friendly, & somehow we could understand one another. It was good to have some children there. They took us to the pictures in Epping. I’d never been to the pictures before. It was Old Mother Riley, which I thought was terribly stupid, & Bandwagon. It wasn’t my sense of humour. But what impressed me was that in the interval little trays of tea went round & people had little cups of tea in the interval which I thought was amazing. What worried me was that the teacher had taken me to the cinema. Because I as a Jewess wasn’t allowed to go to the cinema in Germany. She kept saying yes it’s alright. I thought, I hope she doesn’t get into trouble, you know. It hadn’t left me. One day the Headmistress called for me to come to her. It must have been the beginning of September. We’d already been given gas masks. I didn’t like those because I couldn’t breathe in them. The Headmistress said: ‘I’ve got a letter here from your sister, she’s going to come to England soon’. All the letters had been opened beforehand. My sister had written to say that I’d only be alone for another few days because she’d got a visa & would be leaving Germany on the 4th of September. So I thought, Oh good, it’s only next Monday, I can just about cope until then. Then of course she called me in again on the Sunday morning & said in a very matter of fact way ‘Well your sister won’t be coming now because we are at war with Germany’. I felt; well, like somebody closing the door in my face. I just didn’t know what to think. I felt devastated. Then a week later, she called for me again & said ‘You’re to go to London, to another school. So pack your things & the maid will take you to the station" Ruth went to stay with the Yardley family in Letchworth. From the point of view of money, education, & everything else, I couldn’t grumble, I did much better than a lot of them. But the one thing that I needed was love. One day there was a football match going on in the fields beyond where we lived, & there was a policeman standing outside our gate, & I saw him. To me, he’d come for me. I knew he’d been posted there so I couldn’t leave the house. I didn’t think that he’d been posted there because of the crowds of people coming after the football match. Anyway, it was teatime, & Jean called me for tea. I stood behind the curtains watching that gate & I said I couldn’t come. So Mrs Yardley said go & drag her down to tea, see what’s the matter. She came up to my room & said ‘Mother says you are to come down to tea’. I said ‘I can’t’. Why can’t you? I looked out & said: he’s standing there, he’s going to come in for me. So she went down & told her mother. Then to my horror, Mrs Yardley went out of the front door, down the long drive, to the gate. She talked to the policeman & he came in with her. I thought: I thought she was a nice person, I thought she was on my side, & now she’s actually getting this policeman in, & making it easier for him to get me. So I certainly wouldn’t go downstairs. After a lot of persuasion I finally did go downstairs. They sat having a cup of tea. And Mrs Yardley said, ‘This is Inspector whatever’, & he gave his name, & I thought, well, that’s a funny thing. So he said ‘Well thank you very much, Mrs Yardley, for the tea, nice to have met you, Ruth, bye, bye. I’ve got to go out to make sure that we haven’t got too many people up in the fields misbehaving. I thought: how funny. And how clever Mrs Yardley had been, that she’d called him in to have a cup of tea. To show me that I needn’t be afraid of the police. Previous Memory Next Memory ← Previous Memory Credits & tags Adapted from Ruth Jackson's interview with Helen Lloyd for AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, August 2004 • Learn More → Ruth Jackson Boarder Food Homesick Kindertransport Not Allowed To Visit Cinemas Staying With Strangers Read AJR biography Next Memory → See Instagram & Facebook posts England Text adapted & edited by Susanna Kleeman See Locations Facebook & Instagram Posts

See Locations Austria Memories 994: Grass Snakes At The Beacon Lilly Lampert All I know: I wanted to come to England to be with my sister Gertie. I didn't know I wasn't going to see my parents again... 995: Father's Shop Harry Bibring BEM It was perfectly OK to try & obtain Jewish property by purchasing it at a peppercorn price... Vienna Locations Previous Country Next Country

See Locations Canada Memories 974: How To Recover Susan Pollack OBE It took a long time for me to strengthen my own needs. I made a friend & she made a very big, deep impression on me. A shared nightmare... Toronto Locations Previous Country Next Country

See Locations France Memories 981: 4th of the 4th, 1944 Jack Cynamon My first recollection is aeroplanes in the sky in Brussels. One morning the sky was full of aeroplanes. There must have been 60... La Bourboule Pyrenees Locations Previous Country Next Country

See Locations Germany Memories 976: Taking What Was Thrown At Me Hannah Wurzburger It's a bottomless pit. So absolutely appalling. Children are so vulnerable. Especially when they're separated from their family... 978: Hitler On The Loudspeakers Simon Jochnowitz I remember Hitler on all the loudspeakers everywhere. You couldn’t escape it. I remember being in bed & saying “Oh I can’t sleep, I can't sleep... 980: Getting Streetwise Margot Harris When we were packing for England, the Gestapo came & went through all the cutlery drawers & took the silver cutlery & this & that... 984: The Attack On Our School Albert Lester I was playing with a little car in the common room when there was this huge commotion, children were running, screaming... 987: Father's Deportation Betty Bloom Unfortunately, at 6am, there was a knock on the door & two Gestapo officers marched in & arrested my father... 989: Buying Sauerkraut & Soap Eva Mendelsson When you're a child, when nasty things happen, you remember. It makes a tremendous impression, even if you don’t quite understand... 990: The Shock Marianne Summerfield BEM My father was asked to report to Nazi headquarters. Stupidly, although my mother told him not to, he just walked into it... 991: My Ransacked School Ruth Jackson For the Nazis, you didn’t have to do anything wrong, you just had to be Jewish. On the day before Kristallnacht, the Nazi Youth went round... 992: Chickenpox Bridget Newman I was stuck. Then one day, the doorbell rang: a Gestapo. He came in, he was really rather nice. He had white hair & a big, white moustache... 993: Jews Not Welcome Ruth Jackson One thing stands out in my mind. I went shopping with my mother & saw a man in front of me with a swastika burnt into his skull... 996: How To Hide In Berlin Hans Danziger My father had nerves of steel. Before the war, Jews were obliged to put ‘Israel’ in front of their names. My father refused... Berlin Breslau Buchenwald Eberswalde Esslingen Fulda Hamburg Kassel Offenburg Locations Previous Country Next Country

See Locations Poland Memories 975: Life In A Siberian Labour Camp Izak Wiesenfeld We were taken by lorries into the forest, to a huge barrack. The first speech: “You will never get out of here, here you will die..." 983: The Struggle To Stay Alive Helen Aronson BEM We were taken to a disused prison. People were crying & hungry, not knowing anything. In the morning, Chaim Rumkowski came... 986: The End of Łódź Ghetto Helen Aronson BEM In 1944, the ghetto was closed, everybody sent to camps. But the Germans decided: there's still some money to be made... 988: Getting Up From The Dust Ivor Perl BEM I was only 12 when I was taken to Auschwitz. I feel very, very hurt that I haven’t got many memories of my family... 1000: Idzia Mala Tribich MBE Rumours started circulating that there's going to be a deportation. So people were in panic, trying to find ways of saving themselves... Auschwitz Częstochowa Marysin Piotrków Trybunalski Łódź Locations Previous Country Next Country

See Locations Belgium Memories 981: 4th of the 4th, 1944 Jack Cynamon My first recollection is aeroplanes in the sky in Brussels. One morning the sky was full of aeroplanes. There must have been 60... 982: Not Dwelling On Things Gerta Regensburger I have no feelings & not many memories. I’m not a very retrospective person. It always amazes me that so many people remember... Brussels Locations Previous Country Next Country