Shoah refugee’s story is so relevant today

A KINDERTRANSPORT refugee who fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia said it was “very relevant” to be answering questions on her experience of persecution for an online school assembly run by educational resource the Oak National Academy.

Wembley-based Vera Schaufeld told the JC she had taken part because “at this time where racism has been a very important issue, I feel that any sort of discrimination is something that needs to be talked about”.

Although conversing through Zoom had been “a bit scary”, she hoped the session would “make the children think about my experience and the experiences of their fellow pupils, who might also have come as refugees, or who have had to learn to speak a new language”.

Ms Schaufeld was born in Prague in 1930. When the Germans invaded in 1938, her father — the leader of the Jewish community in Klatovy — was arrested and she was kept home by her mother until he was released.

She told the assembly that on returning to school, her friends told her:

“When you were away, our teacher said that the Jews are always the first to run away when there is any trouble.” She was devastated.

The following May, Ms Schaufeld departed from Prague station for London, the last time she would see her family. It was years later that she learned her grandmother had died of starvation at Theresienstadt and her parents had been murdered in the Trawniki concentration camp.

“So much has gone on in the world since the Holocaust. I still see that there is so much that we need to learn.”

During the assembly, Ms Schaufeld was asked about resilience in times of uncertainty.

She replied that when attending an

Vera Schaufeld online and archive material used in her session

I still see that there is so much that we need to learn’

English boarding school, and receiving no letters from home, “it made such a difference that I made friends who, for the rest of my life, were able to be there and to replace, in some degree, the family that I had lost”.

Academy principal Matt Hood said: “Now more than ever, it is critical to share the stories from those in the Jewish community so that young people can learn about the stain of antisemitism and what we can achieve when we work together to fight racism in all of its forms.”