Showing posts with label Kindertransport. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kindertransport. Show all posts
06 January 2013
Fur Das Kind II
05 January 2013
02 December 2008
Richard Attenborough and the Kinder
Sunday Times carried the story of two Kindertransport children, Irene and Helga Bejach who were part of his family for over six years and who remained close until their deaths.
In August 1939, two scared children 10-year-old Helga and Irene, aged 12, were picked up by Attenboroughs’s mother Mary at a train station in London to start the last leg of their three-day journey from Berlin. Their Jewish father was facing internment and would later be killed at Auschwitz; their mother had already died of consumption. The plan was for the girls to stay with a family in the UK before continuing their journey to America, where they had relatives.
Attenborough, then 15, remembers noticing that they looked sad and ill – after weeks of privations in Nazi Berlin. “They were also nervous wrecks. Their house in Germany had been smashed by Nazis with guns and their father taken away.” The girls’ presence was accepted as a matter of course. It was not the first time that the family had offered a temporary home to refugee children: several Basque boys and girls had stayed for a few weeks two years before, in flight from the Spanish civil war.
Two waifs from what was known as the Kindertransport programme became part of the Attenborough family. Helga and Irene Bejach ended up living with the Attenboroughs for nearly seven years, going to the local girls’ grammar school and becoming much-loved “sisters” to the boys.
For Richard, who went on to make films about oppression in India and South Africa, the relationship was particularly formative. “It gave me an understanding of what it was to be Jewish, and taught me to loathe prejudice and persecution,” he says. “Frankly, I would never have been interested in making both Gandhi and Cry Freedom without that experience of the girls. They were just like our sisters,” remembers David Attenborough. “They simply became part of the family. We had some tensions, of course, but that’s family life for you. They ate their meals with us and went on holidays with us to Skegness and north Wales .
When they had arrived, Helga spoke a tiny bit of English, while Irene had just a smattering of French. Both cried a great deal in the early days, and wet their beds. As time went on, David gravitated towards Irene, who was academic, while Richard formed a close bond with Helga, who loved ballet and other forms of dance. As the war continued, the girls became increasingly anxious for news of their father. In fact, he had been taken first to Theresienstadt internment camp, and then to Auschwitz. “But it was only after the war, when the girls were still with us, that letters came to tell them that their father had died there,” recalls David.
In 1946 the sisters left to join their relatives in the United States, where they both settled and eventually married. Until they died – Helga three years ago and Irene in 1992 – they remained close to their “brothers. The sisters had also grown to love the boys’ parents (whom they called “Uncle” and “Auntie”.) “I would talk on the phone to both of them – at least once a month, certainly for the first 20 years after the war,” says Richard. “We would regularly send letters and cards for birthdays and Christmas,” recalls David.
Helga and Irene returned occasionally to England, though not quite as often. One incident in late 1959 sums up just how close they were to “Uncle” and “Auntie”. Samuel Goudsmit, who had become one of America’s most distinguished scientists since leaving his native Holland in 1927 for the US, had fallen in love with Irene and asked her to be his wife. Before agreeing, however, she insisted that he fly to England to ask Frederick for his permission to marry her. “It was as if the governor was her father,” recalls David.
In August 1939, two scared children 10-year-old Helga and Irene, aged 12, were picked up by Attenboroughs’s mother Mary at a train station in London to start the last leg of their three-day journey from Berlin. Their Jewish father was facing internment and would later be killed at Auschwitz; their mother had already died of consumption. The plan was for the girls to stay with a family in the UK before continuing their journey to America, where they had relatives.
Attenborough, then 15, remembers noticing that they looked sad and ill – after weeks of privations in Nazi Berlin. “They were also nervous wrecks. Their house in Germany had been smashed by Nazis with guns and their father taken away.” The girls’ presence was accepted as a matter of course. It was not the first time that the family had offered a temporary home to refugee children: several Basque boys and girls had stayed for a few weeks two years before, in flight from the Spanish civil war.
Two waifs from what was known as the Kindertransport programme became part of the Attenborough family. Helga and Irene Bejach ended up living with the Attenboroughs for nearly seven years, going to the local girls’ grammar school and becoming much-loved “sisters” to the boys.
For Richard, who went on to make films about oppression in India and South Africa, the relationship was particularly formative. “It gave me an understanding of what it was to be Jewish, and taught me to loathe prejudice and persecution,” he says. “Frankly, I would never have been interested in making both Gandhi and Cry Freedom without that experience of the girls. They were just like our sisters,” remembers David Attenborough. “They simply became part of the family. We had some tensions, of course, but that’s family life for you. They ate their meals with us and went on holidays with us to Skegness and north Wales .
When they had arrived, Helga spoke a tiny bit of English, while Irene had just a smattering of French. Both cried a great deal in the early days, and wet their beds. As time went on, David gravitated towards Irene, who was academic, while Richard formed a close bond with Helga, who loved ballet and other forms of dance. As the war continued, the girls became increasingly anxious for news of their father. In fact, he had been taken first to Theresienstadt internment camp, and then to Auschwitz. “But it was only after the war, when the girls were still with us, that letters came to tell them that their father had died there,” recalls David.
In 1946 the sisters left to join their relatives in the United States, where they both settled and eventually married. Until they died – Helga three years ago and Irene in 1992 – they remained close to their “brothers. The sisters had also grown to love the boys’ parents (whom they called “Uncle” and “Auntie”.) “I would talk on the phone to both of them – at least once a month, certainly for the first 20 years after the war,” says Richard. “We would regularly send letters and cards for birthdays and Christmas,” recalls David.
Helga and Irene returned occasionally to England, though not quite as often. One incident in late 1959 sums up just how close they were to “Uncle” and “Auntie”. Samuel Goudsmit, who had become one of America’s most distinguished scientists since leaving his native Holland in 1927 for the US, had fallen in love with Irene and asked her to be his wife. Before agreeing, however, she insisted that he fly to England to ask Frederick for his permission to marry her. “It was as if the governor was her father,” recalls David.
01 December 2008
Kindertransport - December 1938
Tomorrow is the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the first Kindertransport children in the UK. The story of this remarkable rescue fascinates me, partly because I pass a memorial outside Liverpool street every day and partly because of the actions of a local resident, the late Bill Barazetti, one of the Righteous among the Nations
In 2003 a superb memorial, featuring a sculpture by artist Flor Kent was erected Liverpool St station. “Fur das Kind” commemorated the Kindertransport (Wikipedia reference), a rescue mission that saved around 10,000 mainly Jewish children from Nazi occupied areas just before the outbreak of WWII. Unveiled by Sir Nicholas Winton the memorial consisted of a statue of a small girl beside a transparent suitcase filled with memorabilia brought by the children, including books, toys and, poignantly, photographs of family members who almost certainly perished during the Holocaust. Sadly the design was not as successful as planned and the memorabilia was returned to the Imperial War Museum. It was replaced in late 2006 by a new memorial called simply The Children of the Kindertransport
The story of the Kindertransport rescue has been overshadowed by the Holocaust. However, it was an astonishing feat the first transport arrived in England 70 years ago on December 2, 1938, bringing 196 children from a Berlin Jewish orphanage torched by the Nazis the previous month. The work continued until the outbreak of war, although in 1940 a final transport brought 80 children from earlier transports that had stayed in Holland on the day it fell to the Nazis. The freighter itself was strafed by German warplanes.
Around 10,000 children were saved, most of them Jews, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. None were accompanied by parents.
In an effort to deal with the “refugee problem” a conference proposed by President Roosevelt was held in the French resort town of Evian in July 1938, but despite grand words, the conference was ineffectual, as most countries continued to refuse to accept new immigrants.
Following events in Germany and Austria refuge aid committees in Britain swayed the government to permit an unspecified number of children under the age of 17 to enter the United Kingdom. Jews, Quakers, and Christians of many denominations worked together to rescue the children. Many great people rose to the moment, including Nicholas Winton, who saved nearly 700 Czech children; and Truus Wijsmuller-Meyer was a Dutch Christian who faced down Eichmann in Vienna and brought out 600 children on one train,
The Children who had prearranged sponsors were sent to London, arriving at Liverpool Street station. The unsponsored children waited in transient camps until individual families came forward to take them. The children were dispersed to many parts of the British Isles. Those over 14, unless they were fortunate enough to be sponsored by individuals and set to boarding schools or taken into foster care, were frequently absorbed into the country’s labour force after a few weeks of training, mainly in agriculture or domestic service. But many families, Jewish and non-Jewish, opened their homes to take in these children.
In 1940, more than 1,000 Kindertransportees over 16 were interred on the Isle of Man and other sites. Some boys, including Walter Kohn (later a Nobel Laureate) were transported to Canada. Many young men and women who had stayed in Britain, Kindertransportees later joined the army when it accepted “enemy aliens”.
Most of the Kinder survived the war, and a small percentage was reunited with parents who had either spent the war in hiding or endured the Nazi camps. The majority of children, however, had to face the reality that home and family were lost forever.
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