SURVIVORS
Central to our school and sixth form visits is our work with the Holocaust Educational Trust which helps to facilitate visits from Holocaust and Genocide survivors as part of our outreach programme. Two survivors who have worked closely with the Parkes Institute for outreach activities are Walter Kammerling BEM and William Bergman BEM. Many of the responses you will see are responses written by students after hearing Walter or William give their testimony, and through our work their stories have been heard by over 1000 Hampshire students.
Walter Kammerling BEM
Walter Kammerling was born 1923 in Vienna. He was 14 when Nazi Germany occupied Austria in the Anschluss in March 1938.
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Walter witnessed the Kristallnacht pogrom on the night of 9th-10th November 1938, when Jewish synagogues, shops, businesses and homes were attacked and destroyed across Germany and Austria. In Vienna, hundreds of Jewish men were arrested following the pogrom and sent to Dachau concentration camp.
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Walter’s parents decided to send him to Britain on the Kindertransport. The age limit for the Kindertransport was 16: Walter was 15 but his, sisters being 17 and 18, could not join him. The eldest managed to get a domestic permit where the lower age limit was 18. She arrived in Britain on 4th July 1939. The younger sister, however, was too old for the Kindertransport and too young to get a domestic work permit. She had to stay in Vienna and was sent to Terezín (Theresienstadt) and subsequently to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Walter’s father was sent to Auschwitz on 29th September 1944 and his mother and sister on 23rd October 1944. This was the penultimate transport to Auschwitz, just 3 months before the camp was liberated. It was only after the war that Walter discovered his parents' and sister's fates.
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When Walter arrived in Britain, he was sent to a camp for refugee children at Dovercourt in Essex, where he stayed until February 1939 when he was sent to a farm in Northern Ireland. Walter worked on the farm for 3 years. Walter had to report to the police, but as farming was a 'reserved occupation' (important for the war effort) he was not interned as other 'enemy aliens' were.
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Walter joined the British Army in March 1944 and served in Belgium and the Netherlands later that year. Whilst on embarkation leave, Walter married Herta, who he had met in London in 1942 and who had also came from Vienna on a Kindertransport. The couple returned to Austria in 1946 and had two sons. They later moved back to Britain in 1957.
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- Biography courtesy of https://www.het.org.uk/survivors-walter-kammerling.
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You can listen to Walter sharing his testimony in the video below courtesy of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
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William Bergman BEM
William Bergman was born in Birkenhein, East Prussia in 1933. He lived in a farmhouse with his parents, and his grandparents lived in the annex next to them.
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In November 1938, William, then aged 5, witnessed the Nazis burning down his local synagogue and the surrounding houses during Kristalnacht.
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Things then become more difficult for William and his family, and they were forced to flee their home, hiding in a haystack, and later a mill and farm owned by friends of his grandfather who were comrades from the First World War.
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William’s father was interned in Dachau concentration camp, and it was not until after his release that the family were able to leave for England. They arrived in Southampton 5 weeks before war broke out
In 1940, the family were interned to the Isle of Man as stateless enemy aliens. After their release in 1941 William’s father went to work on a farm and then later in a factory.
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William and his parents later moved to Scotland, where he was finally able to start school aged 7 and a half, though he found it very difficult. He had very little English and had to work hard to catch up and pass his exams.
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The family later found out that William’s grandfather, along with many other members of their family and community, had been gassed at Treblinka in 1944.
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William is married to Anne and has 2 grown up children. He regularly shares his testimony in schools across the UK.