Kurt Weinburg – “Quakers saved the lives of my sisters”.

Quakers saved the lives of my sisters by arranging for them to leave Nazi Germany and find a haven in England.

My sisters are Eva and Resi Weinberg, twins who were born on 26 October 1928. On 21 April 1939 I, then 14 years old, accompanied my mother to Loehne railway station in north-west Germany. When the train from Berlin to Hook of Holland arrived, my sisters joined a group of Jewish children. The next morning they arrived at Liverpool Street Station, travelled by train to Bournemouth and were welcomed by the Quaker family Tingey. Mr. & Mrs Jones became their official guardians.

After the fall of France my sisters moved to a village in Oxfordshire, Sibford Gower. There Miss Thorne took them into her cottage and looked after them until they finished their school education.

I too came to England by Kindertransport, in May 1939. My guarantors were a Jewish Refugee Committee in Hampstead Garden Suburb. I was supposed to live in a hostel for refugee children. It was not ready. Hence, I was temporarily housed in an old age home. On my third day in England I met a Mrs Aitken, who I believe was a Quaker. She had provided the house in Lee Green which was to become the home for Jewish refugees. Mrs Aitken thought that I should not be living there while the house was unoccupied. She invited me to live with her and her husband in their fine house in Blackheath. I lived with them like a prince for 2 weeks.

My mother wrote to me from Germany that I should try to continue to go to school. Mrs Aitken arranged and paid for me to go to a private secondary school, Christ’s College Blackheath, until the end of the summer term. This kind deed by Mrs Aitken led to a life-long relationship. In fact I kept in touch with her son and later with his wife and still now with their children who live in Cambridge.

Kurt Weinburg
Cambridge