I was fourteen years old when I left Berlin on the first Kindertransport.

The Nazis had already arrested my father, but Mother came to wave goodbye. With a group of other children, we went by train from Berlin to the Hook of Holland and then, on the second of December 1938- a very stormy night, we were sent by boat to Harwich in England.

We were taken to a holiday camp (which was not in use at that time because it was winter) at Dover Court Bay where we stayed for a few weeks. While we were there we were taken to see the movie Snow White, but we could not understand English. After a few weeks at Dover Court Bay, I was sent with several other children, to Leeds, in Yorkshire, where we stayed in Addlemans Kosher Hotel for a few weeks until the hostel, which was to be our home, was ready for us to live in. 

 Each family of the Leeds Jewish community paid a small amount of money per week to help support us in the hostel.

When I was 16, the police came to my workplace and arrested me as an enemy alien and I was taken to Pontefract, staying in an army hut for 2 weeks, then to Hoyton near Liverpool for another 2 weeks, then on to the Isle of Man where I was interned.

Luckily, an influential member of the Leeds community managed to persuade the immigration authorities that I was not a threat and I was released from the interment camp and sent back to the hostel.

Until a a few years ago,, I thought my parents died in concentration camps and since I did not know the date of their deaths I kept Holocaust Memorial Day as Yartzeit for them. I have recently found out through the Australian Genealogical Society and Yad Vashem that my father died in the Lodz Ghetto on 24 Iyar, so from now on I will keep the Yartzeit for him on the correct date. 

I still do not know the date or circumstances of my mother’s death.