Page 22 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - June 13

the Foners, his arrival cannot have been easy. He further healthy! Our destiny is uncertain. Write
spoke only German, his new foster family only
English and Yiddish.
Yet after just a few months in a local Swansea
school, when his father telephoned him on his
birthday in June – Henry can remember the call
standing in the hall of the Foners' home in the
Sketty area of Swansea – he had forgotten his
German. Which is
why from then on,
his father wrote the
cards as frequently
as ever, but in
English. The cards
his father sent have
now been published,
along with other
letters and cards, in a
book produced by
the Israel Holocaust
History Museum Yad
Vashem, entitled
Postcards to a Little "Signing can be a tiring business" - Henry Foner
Boy: A Kindertransport Story.
They are a rich document of a programme which,
when finally approved, was a kind of compromise
by a UK government that was at the time resisting
demands for an increase in Jewish immigration to
British-run Palestine. Not all the children, billeted
in homes and hostels across the country, had a
happy time.
But Henry Foner, by his own account, was "one of
the ones who was lucky. Morris and Winnie Foner
brought me up as they would have brought up
their own child, and more than that you can say of
no-one." They made sure he knew them as "Uncle
Morris and Auntie Winnie.” "They never tried to
hide the fact that I had a father and they would
say, 'Henry, after the war we'll have to see…'" But
Henry was never to see his father again. The last
direct communication he had from Max, a lawyer
who had worked hard to help other Jews escape
from Germany, was a letter sent through the
German Red Cross in August 1942, saying: "I'm
glad about your health and progress. Remain
22
more frequently. Lots of kisses, Daddy."
Max Lichtwitz was deported to Auschwitz on 9
December, and killed a week later. But in 1961,
shortly before his 30th birthday, Henry received
from a second cousin in the US what Max
himself, by now expecting the worst, had called a
"kind of farewell letter,” written in 1941: "I think
my Heini has found a
good home and that
the Foners will look
after him as well as
any parents could.
Please convey to
them, one day when
it will be possible,
my deepest gratitude
for making it
possible for my child
to escape the fate that
will soon overtake
me… Please tell him
one day that it was
only out of deep love and
concern for his future that I have let him go, but
that on the other hand I miss him most painfully
day by day and that my life would lose all
meaning if there were not at least the possibility of
seeing him again someday."
Henry Foner went on to serve in Egypt in the
British Army, graduate – and gain a doctorate
from – Leeds University, get married and finally
settle in Israel with Judy, his beloved wife for 52
years. There, he worked as an eminent analytical
and environmental chemist on the Geological
Survey of Israel. He has eight grandchildren. The
Yad Vashem book is dedicated – as well as to his
wife – "to the memory of my father and
grandmother who had the foresight and courage to
send me away, and to Morris and Winifred Foner
who saved my life and made me part of their
family."
* The INDEPENDENT, Sunday23 June 2013