The exhibit tells the ten survivors’ stories through artifacts, photographs and personal narratives. One photo shows Dr. Ruth Westheimer at age five posing for the first day of school with a wide smile. In a recent photo, Westheimer, now 90, holds a washcloth she carried on the train as a reminder of her father, a washcloth wholesaler who was murdered during the Holocaust along with Westheimer’s mother and grandmother.
Also on exhibit are poignant postcards sent during the war from 15-year-old Rita Berwald in Scotland to her aunt and uncle in Switzerland desperately seeking information about her parents. She eventually learned that they had perished. Berwald’s daughter, Museum board member Michele Gold, discovered the postcards only after her mother had died. “I personally will always regret that I did not know she wrote those postcards in her living years and, because of that, I didn't fully understand what she made have lived with. I think a lot of the Kindertransport survivors lived with guilt because they survived and most of their parents did not," Gold said.
Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust will continue its commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport at its Annual Gala on December 3, where it will honor Mona Golabek and The Lord Daniel Finkelstein OBE, associate editor of The Times of London, who sits in the House of Lords. The event will be hosted by Melissa Rivers and include an award presentation by Dr. Ruth Westheimer. For more information, click here.
Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, the first survivor-founded Holocaust museum in the United States, is a primary source institution that commemorates those who perished, honors those who survived, and houses the precious artifacts that miraculously weathered the Holocaust. Since 1961, the Museum has provided free Holocaust education to students and visitors from across Los Angeles, the United States, and the world, fulfilling the mission of the founding Holocaust survivors to commemorate, educate and inspire. The Museum is open seven days a week and admission is always free.
100 The Grove Drive, Los Angeles, California 90036
Bea Green (right) on the train, about to leave the station, with two other girls