Resources

Renie Inow was 10 years old when she travelled alone on the Kindertransport in 1939, leaving her parents behind in Germany. She continued to receive letters from them until 1939. Renie still has these letters, and some of them are shared here.

Eva Jirankova led a privileged life in Prague before the Nazi invasion. However in 1942 her husband Miloš Jiránek, a prominent Czech cultural figure, was arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp. He survived nearly three years of incarceration and a four month death march. Eva speaks about this in this testimony.

Jack Kagan grew up in Novogrodek, in modern day Belarus. He fought as part of the Jewish partisan resistance. Here, he talks about the Magen David from Novogrodek's synagogue, all that is left from a once thriving Jewish culture in the town.

Walter Kammerling fled Nazi-occupied Austria on the Kindertransport in 1939. In this moving interview with Dr Katy Radford from the Institute for Conflict Research, Walter reflects on his time in Northern Ireland, at Millisle Farm. This film was produced with support from Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Northern Ireland Executive Office.

HMDT Honorary President Sir Ben Helfgott grew up in Poland. He spent his formative years as a slave labourer, in a ghetto, and in several concentration camps. This educational life story describes Ben's experiences during the war, and his remarkable life after settling in the UK as a 15 year old.

In this podcast Kindertransportee Martin Kapel describes how his family was forced into Poland from Germany by the Nazis, and his journey on the Kindertransport by ship from Poland to England.

Susanne Kenton is a Kindertransport refugee. Born Susanne Flanter in Berlin, where she spent the first 13 years of her life, Susanne was driven to flee her country of birth by the rise of Nazism and the horrors of the November Pogrom (Kristallnacht).

Sir Nicholas Winton was born in Hampstead, London in 1909. For nine months in 1939 he rescued 669 children from Czechoslovakia, bringing them to the UK, thereby sparing them from the horrors of the Holocaust. Sir Nicholas died in July 2015, aged 106.

Ann Kirk was born in Berlin, Germany in 1928. In 1933 the Nazis came to power and everything changed for Ann and her family. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, when Ann was 10, she travelled to the UK alone on the Kindertransport.

Born in 1927, Otto Rosenberg grew up in Berlin with his grandmother and two siblings. His family were Sinti, a Romani population of central Europe. Otto remembers living on private rented ‘lots’ of land that his family shared with the caravans and houses of extended family and other members of the Sinti community.