Resources

The diary written by Anne Frank is famous around the world as an eye witness account which gives an insight into the persecution faced by Jewish people under the Nazi regime.

Sydney and Golda Bourne (previously Baum) saved the life of one Jewish German girl by agreeing to look after her as part of the Kindertransport program. Today, Susanne Kenton and her family remember the people who enabled her to survive in the face of genocide and tyranny.

Hedy Klein was born in Oradea, in Romania, and was 16 when the Nazis entered her hometown, which had been absorbed into Hungary and renamed Nagyvarad. She was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and then worked as a slave labourer in a munitions factory. After the war, she left Romania illegally and went to Canada.

Renie Inow was 10 years old when she travelled alone on the Kindertransport in 1939, leaving her parents behind in Germany. She continued to receive letters from them until 1939. Renie still has these letters, and some of them are shared here.

Susanne Kenton is a Kindertransport refugee. Born Susanne Flanter in Berlin, where she spent the first 13 years of her life, Susanne was driven to flee her country of birth by the rise of Nazism and the horrors of Kristallnacht.

Sir Nicholas Winton was born in Hampstead, London in 1909. For nine months in 1939 he rescued 669 children from Czechoslovakia, bringing them to the UK, thereby sparing them from the horrors of the Holocaust. Sir Nicholas died in July 2015, aged 106.

Jo was five years old when her family were murdered in their home in Kigali by their neighbours who were influenced by propaganda. Lucky to survive with multiple gunshot wounds, she hid for the 100 days of Genocide in Rwanda with her mother. Today, she is using the power of words to share the stories of those affected by the genocide.

Ann Kirk was born in Berlin, Germany in 1928. In 1933 the Nazis came to power and everything changed for Ann and her family. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, when Ann was 10, she travelled to the UK alone on the Kindertransport.

Born in 1927, Otto Rosenberg grew up in Berlin with his grandmother and two siblings. His family were Sinti, a Romani population of central Europe. Otto remembers living on private rented ‘lots’ of land that his family shared with the caravans and houses of extended family and other members of the Sinti community.

Zigi Shipper is a survivor of the Holocaust. As a child, he experienced the Łódź Ghetto and several camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was liberated after surviving a death march and came to England. Today, Zigi speaks to thousands of students in schools across the UK, and is committed to sharing his story and teaching the dangers of hatred.