Frank Meisler
Sculptor of monuments to the Kindertransports in Europe
FRANK MEISLER, the Israeli architect and sculptor, who has died aged 92, was best known in Britain for his “Children of the Kindertransport” monument on Hope Square, Liverpool Street Station, which commemorates the programme that, from 1938 to 1940, brought 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees out of peril in Hitler’s Europe.
The bronze statue, commissioned by World Jewish Relief and the Association of Jewish Refugees, depicts a group of children between railway tracks, clutching suitcases and teddy bears and gazing with wide-eyed wonder at their surroundings.
Meisler had himself arrived in Britain on one of the transports and, after the statue was unveiled by the Prince of Wales in 2006, he went on to make pieces for other stations on his journey.
In 2008, his “Trains to Life and Trains to Death”, depicting two groups of children on train tracks – a smaller group which was saved thanks to the Kindertransports and a larger group which went to the death camps – was unveiled at Friedrichstrasse Station in Berlin.
In 2009 “the Departure”, was unveiled outside the main railway station in Gdansk, depicting the same children in the Liverpool Street group waiting for the train.
Meisler had been born in the city on December 30 1925 when it was the free city of Danzig, and his statue is located on the exact spot where, in 1939, he and 14 other Jewish children assembled before departing on the last Kindertransport train to leave the city. Days later his parents were deported. Meisler never saw them again. They were murdered in Auschwitz.
The young Meisler continued his journey to Berlin, from where he travelled to London and was met at Liverpool Street Station by two maternal aunts, who subsequently looked after him. “The last thing my father said to me was, make something of yourself. I promised my father at our last meeting in Danzig that I would go to university,” he recalled.
He kept his promise and after National Service in the RAF, took a degree in Architecture at Manchester University, followed by a period working under Sir Frederick Gibbons on projects including Heathrow, Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral and the mosque at Regent’s Park.
He moved to Israel in the early 1960s and began to sculpt as a hobby before deciding to take up sculpture professionally and opening a gallery in the Old City of Jaffa.
Apart from his Kindertransport memorials, Meisler’s other large-scale sculptures include a monument to Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the 1945 Yalta conference in Sochi and a monument to Christopher Columbus in Madrid. He also designed the interior of the first synagogue built in Moscow in the 21st century.
He was also known for limited edition miniatures, including silver paperweights, depicting Jerusalem as the centre of the universe, which are popular with tourists visiting Israel and with Israeli officials needing gifts for foreign dignitaries.
Meisler’s autobiography, On the Vistula Facing East, was published in 1996.
In January this year he was awarded the order of Merit First Class by the German Federal Republic.
Meisler was married and had two children.
Frank Meisler, born December 30 1925, died March 24 2018