Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Tamara Sessler - February 4, 2008

Sharing Story

You said you wrote a book.

I wrote?

Didn't you say...

I wrote my story in a book.

Has it been published?

Yes, we--there was--there's a girl in Yerushaláyim that got a few of us. When we first published the first book in England it was called I Came Alone and I wrote four or five pages and my--??? my husband looked at it and he said, "Everybody's going to write the same things," so I tore it up. Then I wrote for myself a few lines and this friend in Yerushaláyim wanted to publish one for the Israeli Kinder so I sent it to her and she published it. And I'll give you a present afterwards. I've just had another one sent because I wanted to give it to somebody else. I'll give it to you and you can read what I just told you including other people's stories. I collect the books from the Kinder. You know how many I've got by now? Forty three. And you know why I collect them? First because I find them very interesting and second because I want to encourage people to write because we're all going to be extinct very soon then nobody will be able to tell the stories of the Kinder.

Well, we're trying.

Yes, I'm sure you are. You're doing a good thing. You see, the thing is Britain was the only country in the world to take in five thousand Kinder. Big America took in five hundred Kinder and I shall never forget that because somebody said the other day, "Oh, they could've save so many more." They could've done but they saved five thousand but no other country in the world did the same.

Well there was Denmark.

They didn't save five thousand Kinder.

Not children, no.

No, no. And I'll tell you something, when you get older and you think--first I had something against the Jews in England because I thought, "Why did I have to come to Christians? I had, I had nothing in common with them. I didn't speak their language. Are there not any--not enough Jews here to take in Jewish children?" But as you grow older and you have your own home and children and everything I wonder how many of us would've been good enough to take in Kinder, yeah? Not everybody, not everybody can do it. Not everybody's willing to do it so I think my, my adults were very kind and very good. Altogether I love the British people and I do to this day. Of course, England is not England anymore as we knew it because the whole world has changed but the Englishmen was uh, very, very kind to us especially during the war, you know, how they behaved to each other and to people who were not as well off as they are themselves. I'm sorry I can't tell you more about Winton. I mean, you know more about him than I do.

Well, now I know a little bit more about you which is...

Yes, but not about Winton...

...which is why, why--actually why I came.

Yes but I would've like to have, you know, been able to--knew something of Winton which I can't.


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