I remember sitting on a low pouffe opposite my English “auntie” in her
arm chair, holding my arms wide as she unraveled on old jumper,
feeding the wool thread in a loop around my outstretched hands
and then slowly rhythmically winding the reclaimed thread into a ball, ready for knitting a new garment.
Moments of closeness.
It was war time, clothing was rationed and we had to make do.
Last week Global Story Films, Dave and Kathi Peters, with Micah and Janie Dailey, flew back to my English past.
They started at the beginning, Liverpool Street Station London,
where bewildered, I climbed down from a train of children.
I had said goodbye to my parents, all that was secure and familiar
in Cologne and suddenly we were alone, children in
a strange, foreign land.
Kindertransport Memorial, Liverpool street Station, London
As the film team is bringing together past and present, they send back photos and short videos from their phones. I look and listen and think about the wonder of redeeming the past through the eyes and ears of others
I am there with them standing before the front door of
167, Coventry Road, Exhall, looking down at the tile still there today,
85 years later, feeling again the unravelling.
167, Coventry Road
At the Front Door
Imogen comes to be interviewed inside a building that was once Exhall Council Junior School, and I time travel back to 1939, to one December day when our class stood in a long line singing Christmas carols.
The familiar words flowed from the lips of all the children, but this 7 year old German Jewish child silently opened and closed her lips trying to hide her ignorance.
Imogen
Bill stands in a memorial garden and speaks about reconciliation.
And I remember the Reconciliation sculpture in the bombed shell of Coventry Cathedral. We were evacuated and I remember driving by the rubble the morning after.
Bill in the National Memorial Arboretum, Staffordshire
Reconciliation sculpture, Coventry Cathedral
Heading north to an art studio in Manchester the team is welcomed by Laura, a textile artist who is recreating scenes of my past to illustrate the film. Her grandmother was a Kindertransport survivor from Berlin.
We have a three fold connection,, like a strong cord…
a shared Jewish identity, the Kindertransport and
our passion to seek meaning in life.
Laura
And then there is Amy, woven into the fabric of the new garment,
Amy has taken me deeper into my story and brought each of us together.
Her interview took place in the Huddersfield Holocaust Museum.
After the the filming she posted her reflections on Instagram….
fitting because we all met on Instagram, our knitting machine.
8814… Summoned to a journey… Hanna uses this line in her book when she talks about the deportation of her parents. The line struck me because it was so chilling to read amongst the pages where Hanna talks about how her parents lovingly sent her away on the Kindertransport. Her parents had the foresight to do this… did they feel a calling? We certainly feel a connection filming the documentary. We are brought together by something higher. Summoned in this sense has such a positive meaning but we grapple with this amazement around connectivity and the destruction inflicted upon Hanna’s family. To quote Hanna it is as if we are “in a vintage movie that jumps and jerks from one scene to another”. The last few sections in Hanna’s book are called “We Trust the Flame to Keep Burning” and “Opening the Gift”. We are constantly straddling the light and the darkness but we find comfort in being together to remember the story.
Amy