“Don’t Take My Baby”: A Kindertransport Escape from Frankfurt
She grew up in Frankfurt in a mixed neighborhood where religion didn’t matter—shared holidays, shared dinners, and friends who felt like family. That ended the moment Hitler came to power.
Her first taste of danger came at school. A new teacher demanded every child salute Hitler. She refused, was sent to the back of the room, and told no one could speak to her again. Days later, she watched her synagogue burn on Kristallnacht, saw Jewish shops smashed, and rode home terrified as strangers cheered the destruction.
That night Nazi youths searched her home, beat her mother, tore apart the attic and basement, and ripped the blankets off her bed while demanding to know where her father was. He survived only because he happened to be in the hospital.
When Britain announced it would take in 10,000 Jewish children, her mother insisted she go. She was 11 years old, didn’t speak English, and didn’t want to leave—but her mother knew it was the only chance to save her life.
At the train station, her 91-year-old grandmother slipped a small pendant into her pocket—a tiny Torah with the Shema—telling her, “Always wear this.” She wore it for the rest of her life.
As the train pulled away, her father—injured from his wartime service—jumped the fence and fell, screaming through tears, “Don’t take my baby!”
It was the last time she ever saw him.
She arrived in England with nothing but her suitcase and the pendant. A Jewish couple in London took her in; she learned English, worked, and survived the Blitz. She later discovered her parents were deported to the Minsk ghetto and murdered.
After the war, she returned to Germany as a U.S. Army interpreter, helping track fleeing Nazis and translating captured documents. A former neighbor eventually revealed she had secretly buried some of her mother’s belongings in a tin box to protect them—photographs and jewelry she later returned.
She eventually immigrated to the United States, built a life, started a family, and carried her grandmother’s pendant everywhere she went.