Daisy Hoffner – “I came alone, knowing no one”.

With the help of the Society of Friends I came to England with a Kindertransport on 5 January 1939. As a so-called “non-aryan Christian”, I could not expect a place on a Kindertransport organized by the Jewish community for Jewish children although according to the Nurnberg laws, I was Jewish.

It was the Quakers, looking after children such as myself, who secured a certain number of places on each transport for children of Jewish descent or from mixed marriages.

At the time I belonged to a group that the Berlin German Quakers had formed for young people between the ages of 12 to 16 who were excluded from all mainstream activity either because of Jewish or part Jewish origin, or because of their parents’ political orientation, or because their parents were Quakers.

We used to meet every Monday evening for discussions, sing-song and a general get-together. I vividly remember what must have been a Tuesday morning, immediately after the Kristallnacht. I was at home, having been forbidden to attend school, when the phone rang . It was Gerd, one of the members of our Monday group. “Come quickly,” he said. “I am at the Quaker bureau. I had forgotten my raincoat here last night and when I came to pick it up, I found them registering children for a Kindertransport.” I rushed to the Prinz Louis Ferdinand Strasse, filled in some forms and found myself with a place on the second transport that left for England.

I came alone, knowing no one. On my arrival, at the Dovercourt holiday camp, I heard my name called out over the loudspeaker and there were two English Quakers, Margaret Taylor and Dorothy Hubbard, in the camp office. Berlin had informed them of my arrival. I felt very relieved and happy to be told that I would be sent to a Quaker family in Croydon.

Owing to a bureaucratic muddle I ended up in a non-Quaker family in Dorset but the Croydon family agreed to guarantee my parents who could therefore reach safety in England a month before the outbreak of the war.

Daisy Hoffner
London