Nitra, Slovakia, September 1944: Miriam Freedman, her sister, mother, cousin & uncle & aunt go into hiding in a flat:

"At nighttime, the caretaker used to bring us food. We sat there, never able to talk, no toys or books or anything. Things becoming all the time worse…"

1/21 "The caretaker was fantastic. Sometimes Germans came in looking accommodation for the officers. So what did the caretaker do? He changed the lock of the flat & said the owners were away & nobody can use this flat. He was very clever, the caretaker. He changed the locks…"

2/21

Ruth Jackson came to Britain on a 1939 #Kindertransport & attended Red Oaks boarding school.

"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…"

1/22 "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…"

Ruth Jackson, Eberswalde, early 1930s:

"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. It made a terrible impression on me & I asked my mother why had he done that, it seemed a bit stupid…"

1/18 "She said he had been in a sort of prison, that he didn’t very much like the Nazis & he’d spoken against them & he was taken into a prison & they put it in there so that he would always remember that. That made a big impression on me. In early 1933, Hitler came to Eberswalde…"

Marianne Summerfield BEM, Breslau, Nov 93, 1938:

"My father was asked to report to Nazi headquarters. Stupidly, although my mother told him not to, he just walked into it. My mother lost her milk immediately. She was feeding me & immediately lost her milk. The shock…"

1/13
"He was sent to Buchenwald. My mother got very bad asthma. She's convinced it happened because of the upset with Kristallnacht & everything that was going on. My father had terrible nightmares for years & years afterwards. But when my daughter was born on the 9th of November…"

New on the site: Gerta Regensburger, who came to Britain in 1939 via a Belgium #Kindertransport.

"I have no feelings & not many memories. I’m not a very retrospective person. It always amazes me that so many people remember every—cross every 't' & dot every 'i'. Not me…"

1/13 "Opposite our flat in Berlin was a children’s playground with a sandpit. I do remember clearly they had yellow benches where Jews were not allowed to sit."

Gerta's father died in 1933: "I don’t know anything apart from the fact that he took his life. Let’s leave it at that…"

Mirjam Finkelstein (age 11) spent 13 months in Bergen-Belsen camp with her mother & 2 sisters:

"By January 1945 there were rumours. People got quite excited. There was a wooden table, we had to walk past the camp doctor. He decided who would go to wherever we were going…"

1/17

"I don’t think anybody really knew. My mother managed—I don’t know how—to walk upright past him, & we were chosen to go on this transport. Immediately then & there we were taken to the railway tracks nearby. There was a bathhouse. We were told to strip & have a shower…"

2/17

Henry Wuga MBE, who died yesterday, came to Britain on a #Kindertransport, settled in Glasgow & was a great chef:

"Ingrid & I got married on December 26 1944. In the middle of the war. We were in love & there was nothing to wait for, not really. We were 20…"

1/15 "We had the wedding in the synagogue & the function in Ingrid’s parents’ flat. A very nice party. I got one of the chefs from the hotel to do the cooking while we were at the synagogue &, well, again, we tried to do it differently. The menu is still hanging up out in the hall…"

France, 1943: Betty Bloom (13) escapes to Switzerland. Her sister Ruth (17) stays behind with the Resistance:

"She was told by her committee there's a Jewish child in Grenoble left by her parents, an infant under a year old, in an orphanage, & the Gestapo had found out…"

1/11

"The Gestapo were coming to arrest this baby. Somehow, news got out to Ruth's committee. They wondered what can we do for this child? So, she dressed up; my sister dressed up as a German officer. With her good Berliner accent, in her 'Berlinerisch' [Berlin dialect]…"

2/11

Lviv, 1942: Lili Pohlmann's seamstress mother Cecylia persuades her Nazi civil servant client to hide Lili & Cecylia in her flat.

"My mother said 'We are in a very desperate situation. If I go back to the ghetto with this child, we will be taken away…"

1/14
#fragilityoffreedom

@TheAJR_ "'My son perished with my husband, but this is my other child. Please take us for the duration of this selection. The moment it’s over, we’ll go back to the ghetto'. It was November, quite dark. We followed her, not just to the German district, but to the SS & police district…"

March 1939: Freddy Kosten & sister Claire arrive in Britain on a #Kindertransport.

"I said to my sister, 'I bet the people who are going to receive us have a car.' They had a Rolls Bentley! I was very pleased. We were very, very lucky with the people who looked after us…"

1/13

"This is the extraordinary story of how my father managed to get us to England. He could speak English. In 1907 his employer said: 'A colleague is coming from England who doesn’t know any German. I want you to take him on, teach him some German, show him Vienna.' So he did…"

Hannah Wurzburger (5) came to Britain on a #Kindertransport:

"First I lived in a house where my aunt Betty was a domestic. At six I was put in a children's home in Hemel Hempstead called The Chestnuts due to the trees. 40 children altogether. It was a very bad place…"

1/12 "Only a few were refugees. We were the ones who did most of the housework: cleaning, making beds before school. They used us for all their domestic needs. Punishments & hitting. I had two friends. One was a lovely young woman of 18 who befriended me. On my birthday she'd leave…"

Lia Lesser, 1939:

"Because my mother had the foresight to send me on #Kindertransport I was the only survivor of my family. This very sad day when we went to the main station in Prague & my parents saw me off & my father was very, very upset & he didn't want me to go…"

1/12

"The whole platform was full of grieving parents. I was 8 but there were babies in arms & younger children there as well. A devastating scene. I don't remember very much about the journey & I never knew I’d never see my parents again. My mother was going to follow me…"

2/12

John Izbicki, Berlin, 1930s:

"I used to go to a park nearby, close to what is now the Freie Universität. There was a sandpit, I used to play with sandcastles. One day I was approached by some boys—not my age—& offered a part to play in their game…"

1/9 "They were playing Cowboys & Indians. I was to be an Indian. They as cowboys would capture me, which they did. They tied me—quite firmly—to a tree. There was a small forest at the end of the park. They said they'd come back & rescue me later. They galloped away on their horses…"

Ann Callender, Berlin, 1938:

"My mother had a sister who was a bit bohemian. She had a lot of lovers & so on. But on #Kristallnacht she committed suicide. My father had gone to see her in Munich because my mother was worried about her. So he was caught up in Kristallnacht."

1/9 After the November Pogrom (Kristallnacht) Ann's father was imprisoned Dachau for 5 months.

"I knew he’d been somewhere horrible but he–he didn't talk about it."

Ann was already at college in Switzerland.

"I heard things sort of 2nd-hand. Phone calls were something exotic.…"

Leipzig, late 1920s: Fred Jonas's older brother Horst joins the Communist party:

"Jewish people, including my father, argued with my brother for hours on end. My brother warned them: 'the Social Democratic system you have now inevitably leads to fascism & Nazism…"

1/9 "Because they got no other way out. They can’t hand over power to the left, they have to hand power over to the right.” My father insisted, like 9/10 of the Jewish people did, it would never happen to them. But Horst was right. First he joined the Jewish Scouts boy movement…"

Ruth Rogoff, Prague, August 1939:

"I can hardy believe how my mother got us out because it sounds so bizarre, nobody would believe it. My mother was a very put together woman. Competent, intelligent, brave. Never went to pieces. She managed very well…"

1/13

"When my father left in a hurry she stood in queues at every embassy she could, trying to get an exit & entry visa. If you knew the right people, you had more chance. But she was just a young woman with two very small children. She stood in queues & didn’t get anywhere…"

2/13

Rolf Penzias, Munich, June 1938:

"The biggest synagogue in Munich was a beautiful building, right behind the places in Munich where all the government places were. Hitler said, 'I want that down'. I was in the Jewish vocational school then, being taught for emigrating…"

1/7

"Hitler gave us time to go over the synagogue, take all the Sefer Torah [scrolls] & books out, take some of the beautiful things inside. The synagogue was very beautiful, like those synagogues in Budapest & Berlin. In the Herzogstraße, where now there's a plaque of remembrance…"

January 1945: Gerta Vrbova walks 200km from Budapest to Szeged:

"It was terrible. I remember I had such frostbites. I just wanted to get away from the front. From besieged Budapest. We partly walked & partly got lifts from the Russian lorries. It was quite dangerous…"

1/9 "I was 18. Another girl was 15. They were always trying to rape her. So, it was terrible. You could talk yourself out of it: I could speak Russian quite well, & I could tell them that I’m on their side, that my boyfriend is a partisan & is fighting. It wasn’t always easy…"

2/9

Helga Ederer, Prague, postwar:

"My mother had to fight to get things returned to her. She hid quite a lot of things with Aryan friends & she didn’t get more than half back. I went with her to some people who looked after the furniture of our dining room…"

1/10 "They said, 'Yes we have it & it’s very nice. But we got used to it! What are we going to do?' So my mother had to buy them new, plain furniture so they'd would return furniture to her! She didn’t take me on other things. I was too young & stormy. Some people welcomed us…"

2/10

Izak Wiesenfeld: Przeworsk, Poland, 1939:

"When the Germans came in the afternoon, they burnt the Shul & the Beis Hamedrash & all the Jewish houses. Everything was burnt. We had to run out. Some people had already escaped, so we broke into their houses & lived there…"

1/9 "In the Synagogue there was a special Sefer Torah, only given to extraordinary guests. Precious, & even that was burned. Four weeks later the Germans called us all out into a market place & said 'We don’t want you here. Go over to the Russian side'. We took whatever we could…"

Ibolya Ginsburg, Pásztó, Hungary, 1944:

"I will tell you exactly: the Germans came in the day after Pesach & we arrived in Auschwitz the first day of #Shavuot, so that was six weeks. In six weeks they came in, they put us in the ghetto & they took us out…"

1/12 "We went out on horse & cart. The station was emptied of all inhabitants. These long cattle wagons were standing next to the platform. They were open & there was nothing in them, on the floor, the corner was partitioned off with blankets & there were buckets for our needs…"