Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Vera Gissing - April 22, 2006

News of Kindertransport

Though some, some people I know when my mother found out that there was an Englishman who had been in Prague and in uh, November--December of 1938 and that he was trying to get out as many of refugees who had fled to Prague from the Sudetenland--child refugees and also Jewish children from--who were refugees in, in, in Czechoslovakia. And that was the source of her, as I said, knowledge. That uh, something unpleasant might be happening. It's like next door there was a Jewish family and they had two boys. One was the same age as myself and my sister and uh, the wife called mother a wicked step-mother for even considering to send the--her children away. I mean, lots of people--look, nobody knew what Hitler had in store for them. Nobody knew that. So lots a people were short-sighted.

It'll be over in a year.

That's right. Well, listen, I think any parent faced with such a situation who has the strength and courage to send their beloved child to a country they--that they themselves had never been to, to people they'd never even heard of, without knowing when or even if they would ever see them again, what an incredible undertaking. It required an awful lot of courage and a very special kind of love to be able to do that.


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