Kurt Stern - February 11, 2008
Life with Foster Family I
Were they nice to you?
They were very nice. I--today I can appreciate what they did for us. At the time, I mean um, they weren't mother and father. They're not--weren't very expressive but they gave us everything they could at war time. I mean, they had a farm so we're not short of anything. We helped in the fields. But my uncle decided in September 1944 that he wants them--wants us--actually my cousin Ruth at the age of 16--it must've been then in 1943--she went to because of the war effort to train to be a, a wa...assistant nurse and she left in 193...uh, '43 so my uncle decided in 1944 that he wants me near him in Eng...London. He was a pastry chef. Um, I'll tell you a little bit of history of my uncle. He is, as I said, arrived as a refugee in '38. When the war started he was interned like an Austrian but before that he was evidently staying with an English family--a brother and a sister. And this sister helped him get out of internment camp and they married. She was non--Jewish. But uh, they had a son, Philip, who is still living in England and I'm in touch with him, who feels himself a Jew and not a goy though...
Did your uncle put up the--what is it, a certificate?
This is, this is it I al...'til 1939 when it came out or when Winton's story came out I always thought it was my uncle put me on the list. I had no idea and uh, as I said I had no idea about it. Nobody--most of the children that Winton got out didn't know who got them out because of other--as you know there were other organizations. I mean eventually almost ten thousand kids got to England.
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