In 2008, I had the privilege of shaking the hand of Walter Kammerling at a Holocaust talk. Walter, an Austrian Jew, was 14 years old when Nazi Germany and Austria united in the Anschluss of 1938. Walter witnessed the Kristallnacht, a name he believed was far too romantic for the horrors on the 9-10 November, when Synagogues, Jewish-owned shops, businesses and homes were attacked across the country, and hundreds were sent to Dachau concentration camp. Kristallnacht translates as Crystal Night or Night of Broken Glass.
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| Walter Kammerling (source: Holocaust Educational Trust) |
In a very loose sense, fifteen-year-old Walter was lucky - the war had not yet been declared, and Walter's parents were able to send him to Britain on the Kindertransport, a series of rescue efforts to bring refugee Jewish children to Britain from Nazi Germany. On arrival, he was sent to a camp at Dovercourt, Essex, before being moved to Northern Ireland, where he worked on a farm for three years. In 1942 he met his future wife, Herta, in London, marrying her in 1944, whilst on embarkation leave from the British Army, with whom he was serving in Belgium and the Netherlands. Like Walter, Herta had been a child of the Kindertransport. When the war was over, Walter and Herta returned to Austria, where they had two sons. They moved back to Britain in 1957, the country they now called home.
Walter left behind a mother, father and sister, whose terrible fate he would discover at the end of the war. He has since spent his life giving talks and educating people on the horrors of genocide, and the need to resist prejudice and discrimination in the modern world. His story has been written up in the Bournemouth Daily Echo in 2015, and is well worth a read.
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| Walter's British registration certificate (source: Bournemouth Hebrew Congregation) |
Oh my, how sad. He was so very fortunate to have had the chance to come to Britain.
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