Message of HMD postcards is particularly poignant

THE STORY of a Kindertransport refugee is a key element of a Holocaust Memorial Day Trust postcard campaign.

German-born Renie Inow was ten when she travelled to the UK, leaving her parents behind. She shares some of the correspondence she continued with them up until 1939 — they were transported to Nazi-occupied Poland, where in 1941, they were taken from the Lodz ghetto and murdered. Her sister was sent to Sweden and her brother was freed from Dachau and joined her in England in 1940.

Although life was difficult for her parents in Germany, her father tried to maintain a positive tone in letters, recalling a prank they had played on her mother. On Renie’s birthday, her mother wrote: “May you remain lovable and happy and a source of joy to everybody. Father and I think of you all the time.”

Evacuated to the country a few months after arriving in London, she felt isolated, recalling: “I remember Mr and Mrs Barnes asking if I wanted to call them mum and dad. I was shocked as I wasn’t ready to stop thinking about my mother and father in Germany. I resolved to call them ‘mum and dad’ but the words would mean the same as ‘Mary and John’ to me. I was living inside a bubble where I never felt like I fitted in.”

Ms Inow’s story is one of two in the HMD Trust’s postcard project — the other is of Sedin Mustafic, who survived the genocide in Bosnia.

Recipients of the project pack have been asked to return postcards to Ms Inow or Mr Mustafic, their MP (on an HMD theme), or as welcome message to a new refugee.