Quakers and the Kindertransport ~ Elizabeth Rosenthal .

"My maternal grandfather Georg Haase in Danzig helped the Quakers by offering storage space in his house for food supplies to feed the starving children in 1918. My mother Eleonore (n ée Haase) Rosenthal, a student of education, helped with the distribution during college vacations.

When in 1938 we were desperate to leave Nazi Germany, my mother wrote to the Quakers in Manchester and called on the Friends Office in Berlin: Corder Catchpool was working there. A family in Oldham near Manchester offered hospitality to a Jewish child. The Quakers organised this for me (aged 11 at the time). They paid for me and told my mother to put me on the train with the Kindertransport at the end of February 1939. At Liverpool Street Station Quaker ladies took me to a Jewish hostel for the night and in the morning two ladies took me by car to Euston Station, showing me Buckingham Palace on the way! They put me on the train to Manchester, telling the guard to “look after the child alone on the journey”. On arrival, a party of Quakers and the English family – Mrs Daxon and her daughter Nancy, aged ten, met me and took me home to Oldham. I was deeply unhappy when my mother did not follow me after a month, as promised, although the family were kind and loving.

Some time later, in May 1939, the Quakers found work for my mother as housekeeper to an English teacher of German, who had three children, and his wife, who was in hospital. As this job was in a village near Oldham my mother was able to visit me on her free day – a great relief, our lives saved by the work of the Quakers."

This is part of one of the many personal stories to be found at    http://www.quaker.org.uk/kinder  Well worth a visit.