Library of Holocaust Testimonies – serie

When Nicholas Winton met a friend in Prague in December 1938, he was shocked by the plight of thousands of refugees and Czech citizens desperate to flee from the advancing German army. A British organisation had been set up to help the adults, but who would save the children? Winton felt he could not walk away. He set up a makeshift office and in just three weeks interviewed thousands of distraught parents who had the courage to part with their children and send them alone to England. Armed with their details and photos, he returned to London to convince the Home Office of the urgency of the situation. He knew he was working against time. His supreme efforts resulted in eight trainloads bringing 669, mainly Jewish, children to London. For half a century these children, now dispersed and in their seventies, were unaware of the person to whom they owed their lives. To Winton, it was just a job. Even his wife knew nothing of what is undoubtedly his greatest achievement, until 1988, when clearing out the attic she came across documentation relating to the episode. From that moment, Winton's life was never the same again. Winton has been a remarkable humanitarian all his life. After the war, wishing to be involved with the rehabilitation of Europe's refugees, he worked for international organisations. He retired early, settled in Maidenhead and devoted himself to charitable works for which he was honoured with the MBE in 1983. Amongst other awards, he was granted the freedom of the City of Prague in 1991 and was awarded the Tomas Garrigue Masaryk Order by President Havel in a grand ceremony in Hradcany Castle in 1999. Nicolas Winton documentary (Power of Good) has won the 2002 International Emmy Award, in the category of TV documentary.

The story of a wealthy Jewish family living in Cracow whose idyllic life is shattered in the midst of invasion by the Nazi army in Poland. Experiencing, on one hand, immense adversities, denunciations and arrest, and, on the other, miraculous rescues, incredible escapes and the occasional example of human kindness, the family survived until the end of the war, but just when liberation was in sight the uprising of Warsaw in August 1944 brought fresh troubles.

Peter Prager was born in Berlin and came to Britain via the "kindertransports". In The English Teacher from Berlin, he gives a fascinating, vivid account of life in Berlin before, during and after the war, as experienced by German Jews. His account of life once he arrived in Britain is told with sensitivity and humour, and includes hilarious stories from his early teaching career. Later, he makes a poignant return to Germany as an exchange teacher and reunites with contemporaries from his former Gymnasium, some of whom give their own short accounts.

David and Sophie Goetzel left Germany in 1935 to escape Nazi anti-Semitism. They moved to Warsaw, Poland, and were married. Once there, they planned to move to a safer country, farther away from the Nazi threat. But when their daughter, Micki, was born in 1937, financial constraints forced them to delay those plans. On September 1, 1939, they were awakened at dawn by the rumble of German aircraft. The war had begun, and David was angry with himself for not having already emigrated to a safer country. He vowed he would never again allow his inaction to endanger his loved ones. With dogged determination, help from the people he befriended along the way and luck, he guided his wife and two-year-old daughter through the siege of Warsaw, their separation and hiding on the Aryan side of the city, his application for emigration at the Hotel Polski and their two years of internment in Bergen-Belsen. David never gave up hope. He, Sophie and Micki all survive because of it.

Alexandre and his family live in Poland, which is partitioned in 1939, followed by a brief period of Soviet rule full of tension and fear. This is followed by the German invasion and occupation which brings depression and debasement to the Jews. Locked up by the Nazis in the ghetto in 1941, he escaped in February 1943 and spent 18 months in hiding before emigrating to France. This work is a memoir written from the perspective of a Jewish boy between his seventh and seventeenth year. The author describes a childhood and adolescence swept away - family, friends and playmates - were sucked into the extermination world of Nazi Germany.

Mietek Sieradzki fled Nazi-occupied Poland to the Soviet Union, from where he was deported to Siberia. Life there was tough and harsh, but he escaped the Holocaust and after the war joined the Polish foreign service. He was posted in Moscow, London, Korea, Cambodia and Canada, in the latter two as head of mission. From the early stages of his career disillusionment with the system set in. In time his reluctance to conform and his Jewish origin made him a target for harassment by the secret services, and eventually the anti- Jewish campaign unleashed in Poland in 1968 ended his career and drove him out of the country. By a Twist of History describes Sieradzki's experiences at the time, and refutes the myth, wide-spread in Poland, that large numbers of Jews had worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and reflects on Polish anti-Semitism. Sieradzki and his family eventually settled in Britain to build a new life.

Lessons in Fear and people's response to them are the subject of Vogler's ten stories set in, and in the shadow of, the labour camps of the Second World War. Vogler, himself a victim of the camps, conveys with poetic accuracy the touch, smell and taste of fear in unflinchingly honest, perceptive stories that show the extent and limits of humanity in extreme circumstances.

Florian's story is unique in many ways. He escaped from a slave labour camp and survived the Polish winter alone as a fugitive in the forests, living in hand-made shelters dug beneath the ground. He fought as a partisan in the Polish Home Army at a time when few Jews did so (but had to hide his Jewish identity from his comrades to ensure that men in the group he commanded would follow his orders). Finally, under threat from the anti-Semitism of Polish partisans, he joined a parachute group, made up of Russian prisoners-of-war and German veterans from the Spanish Civil War, and fought with them until the end of the War. The role that he played within the partisan movement throws light on a little-researched aspect of the War. After the Second World War, Florian became an officer in the Polish Army, but the new wave of anti-Semitism in the 1960s drove him into exile: first to Israel and, finally, to England.

This is the story of Rita Blattberg, a Jewish child from Krakow, from when the Germans invade Poland in 1939, to her deportation to the Soviet Union. It documents her time there and the colourful cast of characters that she met before returning to a hometown inhabited by ghosts, and leaving Poland to start a new life in the West. This account includes postcards, which were sent by Rita's grandmothers in 1940 and 1941, from occupied Poland.

From the Edge of the World is an anthology of largely unpublished work written by Jewish refugees who came to the UK in the 1930s, fleeing from the threat of Nazism. The idea for this collection was inspired by the story that the author's grandmother, herself a refugee, had written entitled, 'The Portrait'. The anthology is of a highly personal nature. It brings together writings by ordinary people who describe their day-to-day experiences of living under the Nazi regime, or recount their impressions of their 'new life' in England. They describe the trauma of living in Nazi-occupied Germany and how events affected everyday living, whilst worrying about events elsewhere.

Life Strictly Forbidden is the memoirs of the well-known Polish writer, Antoni Marianowicz, told partly through interviews with journalist Hanna Baltyn, and partly through personal recollections of his family before the War and during the Occupation. The honest, in-depth conversations with Baltyn create a unique picture of the formative life of this influential author and the reality of living in Europe under Hitler. The Marianowicz family was wealthy bourgeoisie but at the age of 16, Antoni was forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto. After 18 months, he fled from the ghetto and managed to survive for three years (1942-45) hiding out in a small provincial town near Warsaw where, paradoxically, he and other Jewish refugees hid in a glass factory that belonged to the Waffen-SS.

This memoir, written as fiction, but based on fact, describes the fear-filled efforts of a pair of Polish adolescents, brother and sister, to survive in secrecy and constant anxiety in Lvov at a time when Jews were being rounded up and sent to the Ghetto - or worse. They have only their false identity papers, their few trusted contacts and their own wits to help them conceal their Jewish background and keep one step ahead of the German authorities. Miriam Akavia, who experienced at first hand similar terrors and anxieties, skillfully conveys the fluctuations in mood from the natural optimism and high spirits of youth to the painfully learned caution and dissembling forced upon them by their situation.

Klara Rosenfeld was born in 1924 in Lwow, Poland. This book chronicles her experiences of life under the Soviets, the German occupation, life in the ghetto, her rescue by an Italian soldier and her escape to a convent in Italy. After the war Klara was located by the Jewish Brigades and united with other Jewish survivors in a 'kibbutz' in Parma. In 1946 she joined more than a thousand survivors on the ship Antzo Sireney, bound for Palestine, but the ship was stopped by the British forces and the survivors were sent to prison camps in Atilt. After her release Klara chose to stay in Palestine, met her husband and settled in Rishon Le Zion, where she raised her two children and lives to this day.