Page 21 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - June 13
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Goodbye to Berlin: Postcards
from Nazi Germany tell Story of
the Kindertransport*
DONALD MACINTYRE, LONDON
To mark the 75th anniversary of the and I must have forgotten because I remember the
Kindertransport, which saw 10,000 children journey very well, but I can't remember saying
escape from Nazi Germany to the UK, a new book goodbye to my father and my grandmother." (His
brings to light the heartbreaking postcards sent by mother had died two years earlier.)
one Jewish father in Berlin to his son in Swansea.
The "people like me" to whom Foner refers were
They are, if nothing else, a tangible testament to a the 10,000 Jewish and "non-Aryan" children of
father's love. From 3 February 1939, when "little the "kindertransport" who, between December
Heini" arrived in Swansea 1938 – in the wake of the
after leaving Berlin for the Kristallnacht pogrom which
last time, until 31 August, had terrorised Jews across
when war made such Berlin – and September
communication impossible, 1939, escaped the coming
Max Lichtwitz wrote a Holocaust, leaving their
stream of postcards to his families in Nazi Europe by
young son. They have left a train and ferry for Britain,
unique record of his accompanied by youth
determination to maintain workers and unemployed
the parental bond with the Jewish professionals who
boy whose life he had saved risked their lives by
by sending him to a strange returning again and again to
country and parting with remove other groups of
him, as he feared, for ever. children to safety.
What can the journey have In a series of events to
been like for a bewildered commemorate the
six-year-old? Henry Foner, programme's 75th
as little Heini Lichtwitz would become, anniversary, some of the children, most now in
remembers the German border guards searching their eighties, will convene with their families at
the train passengers and his one small suitcase, the London's Jewish Free School today in a gathering
Dutch women on the other side of the crossing addressed by David Miliband and Miriam
handing out "delicious" sausage rolls, a helmeted Margolyes, and at St James's Palace tomorrow for
bobby on the quay at Harwich, the large hall a reception given by the Prince of Wales.
where he waited to be collected, but nothing of the The young Heinz Lichtwitz, as he then was, was
painful departure from Berlin. "It's a strange destined for the home of a Jewish couple in
thing; if you talk to people like me, the traumatic Swansea, Morris and Winnie Foner. Despite the
memory is of parting with their parents, and I can't comforting postcard with "1,000 kisses" his father
remember it at all. It must have been traumatic
sent him as soon as he knew he was safely with
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