Vera Schaufeld, who escaped Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, shared her harrowing story with students as part of Holocaust Memorial Week.A woman who escaped Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and became the only member of her family to survive shared her harrowing story with students during Holocaust Memorial Week.Vera Schaufeld was born in the Czech Republic where she lived until 1939 when, aged nine, she was
Vera Schaufeld, who escaped Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, shared her harrowing story with students as part of Holocaust Memorial Week.A woman who escaped Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and became the only member of her family to survive shared her harrowing story with students during Holocaust Memorial Week.
Vera Schaufeld was born in the Czech Republic where she lived until 1939 when, aged nine, she was brought to the UK by the Kindertransport rescue mission. She lived with a Christian foster family in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk throughout the war, and went on to marry a survivor of the concentration camps. All of Vera’s and her husband’s family members were murdered in the Holocaust.
Vera talked about her experiences to the group of around 70 sociology and psychology AS level students during her visit, which was organised through the London Jewish Cultural Centre.
Sociology lecturer Nicole Kypker said: “It was a privilege to welcome Vera to Uxbridge College. She captivated students and staff with her personal experience of escaping Nazi persecution.
“She related the unimaginable sadness of being the only member of her family who could flee the Nazis and described the horrors of the Holocaust.
“It was a very moving talk that particularly resonated with students who themselves have experienced exile and persecution, and will stay with those who heard it for a long time.”
Holocaust Memorial Day is held on the anniversary of the liberation of the largest Nazi camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945, 27 January, and remembers all those communities destroyed during the Holocaust under Nazi persecution, and the subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.