This video is a story shared from a survivor of Kindertransport, Vera Gissing.
This luggage tag belonged to a young girl named Margot Loewenberg. She was born into a German family in 1922. In the 1930s, Margot's Hebrew school was shut down and she was no longer able to attend school. She was then sent to a children's home in Cologne. After Kristallnacht, she was sent back to her hometown where her mother and father still lived but her father's family owned business had been taken away from them. Soon she was sent on a Kindertransport to Holland and then to London. Once she arrived in London, she helped her mother, father, and brother get to England as well. After their arrival, they all obtained visas and set off to America in 1940. Once in America, they moved into Chicago and that is where Margot would meet her future husband, John.
Image caption: Luggage tag used by a Margot Loewenberg to identify her belongings during the Kindertransport, from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This doll belonged to a young girl named Inga Jane Pollack. Trixie, the doll's name, was given to Inga by her mother. She was given Trixie as a birthday present in 1938. The doll was dressed in traditional Austrian clothing. Inga took the doll on the Kindertransport with her in 1939 when she left Vienna with her sister, Lieselotte. Soon after, Inga and her sister left for the journey to England. Her mother and grandmother were also escaping Germany but died in their journey to Minsk.
Image caption: A doll dressed belonging to a young girl that was dressed in traditional Austrian clothing, from Imperial War Museums
These ice skates belonged to Herbert Kay. He left Czechoslovakia in June 1939 on the Kindertransport. Something special about these skates is that they are also shoes. The skates on the bottom come off to become a normal walking shoe. In 1942 after he arrived in England, his parents were killed in Germany which would cause Herbert to have to join an adoptive family. Soon after, he would realize that he couldn't go back to his home country, along with none of his family living their anymore either, so he became a British citizen in 1947.
Image caption: Ice skates and shoes which belonged to a boy named Herbert Kay who was a child of the Kindertransport, from Imperial War Museums
This drawing was created by a father named Hans Neumeyer. He sent this drawing to his daughter, Ruth Neumeyer during the war. In the drawing, it depicts Ruth, playing the recorder, and her foster sister. Hans was a composer and musical composition teacher as he drew this small drawing on a piece of sheet music with the trees and grass being notes to a song. Ruth and her brother, Raymond, left Germany in 1939 via the Kindertransport. Unfortunately their mother and father, Vera and Hans, would not survive the war.
Image caption: A drawing made by Hans Neumeyer given to his daughter, Ruth Neumeyer during World War ll, from Imperial War Museums