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The voice of 98-year-old great-grandfather-of-three Bob Kirk cracks as he describes the unbreakable bond together with his spouse Ann.
‘To me, it’s a miracle even now. We have propped one another up through the years,’ he says from the lounge of their bungalow in Northwood, north-west London.
That ‘miracle’ is the story of affection, a relationship solid from a shared expertise of getting to flee Nazi Germany once they had been each younger kids.
For each Bob and Ann, 95, had been among the many 10,000 largely Jewish kids who discovered refuge from Hitler in Britain on what turned often called the Kindertransport.
Eighty-five years on from that first arrival of 196 kids at Harwich, Bob speaks to MailOnline with a readability folks a few years his junior would envy.
It is a man who retired from his function as a finance director at 79, who weathered the dying of his youngest son simply final 12 months and who’s now caring for his more and more frail different half.
And but he nonetheless finds the time to discuss his experiences to a whole bunch of schoolchildren directly – typically as much as 1,000 – in classes on Zoom. The most recent is simply days away as he offers this interview.
Bob Kirk, 98, survived the Holocaust after fleeing to Britain on the Kindertransport. He spoke to MailOnline from his dwelling in Northwood, north-west London
Bob’s voice cracks as he describes the unbreakable bond together with his spouse Ann. ‘To me, it’s a miracle even now. We have propped one another up through the years.’ Above: Bob and Ann on their marriage ceremony day in 1950. They had been married on the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St John’s Wooden
After Bob’s service as an interpreter within the British Military got here to an finish in 1948, he first noticed Ann – a ‘very fairly younger woman’ – at a membership for refugees later that 12 months.
The primary time they had been in the identical room, they ‘took no discover of one another by any means’, as a result of, Bob says mischievously, ‘I used to be busy pursuing another woman’.
However, six months later, in 1949, she returned and the pair obtained speaking. It took him three weeks to ask her out, however, by the tip of the next 12 months, the pair had been married.
It was a relationship outlined by mutual bodily attraction in addition to shared trauma, with each having final seen their mother and father when their trains departed Germany.
It was solely later that they’d uncover the total horror of what had occurred to them.
The youngest of three kids, Bob was born Rudolf Kirchheimer in Hanover in 1925.
His father Josef, who had been awarded the Iron Cross for his service for Germany within the First World Struggle, ran a textiles enterprise.
Along with Bob’s mom Hedwig, Josef offered his kids with what was, till Adolf Hitler’s rise to energy in 1933, a snug formative years.
Bob and his spouse Ann in 2019 with Sir Kenneth Olisa, the Lord Lieutenant of London, after receiving a British Empire Medal (BEM)
Bob and Ann assembly King Charles – then the Prince of Wales – at a reception for Kindertransportees at Buckingham Palace in 2018
Bob holds a cone filled with sweets – often called a Schultüte – on his first day of college in Hanover, Germany, in 1930
Ann Kirk with with the ladies who agreed to look after her at their dwelling within the East Finish of London. Milly and Sophie Levy, who had been sisters, had been later known as Ann’s ‘aunties’
‘It was a really carefree, comfortable childhood as much as then,’ Bob says.
‘I began college in 1930. I cherished college. However it all modified in 33. The environment modified.’
Kindertransport hero Nicholas Winton did a ‘marvelous job’, however he wasn’t the one one says survivor Bob Kirk
A key determine concerned within the Kindertransport scheme was businessman Nicholas Winton.
He performed an instrumental function in rescuing 669 Jewish kids from Czechoslovakia within the months earlier than the Second World Struggle started.
Regardless of his unimaginable feat, Sir Nicholas, who was a stockbroker, lived in relative anonymity till February 1988, when he appeared on BBC programme That is Life.
Nicholas Winton performed an instrumental function in rescuing 669 Jewish kids from Czechoslovakia within the months earlier than the Second World Struggle. Above: Winton with one of many kids he rescued
The second he was re-united with a studio full of individuals he had saved moved thousands and thousands to tears.
Bob was amongst these watching. He says Winton did a ‘marvellous job’, however is eager to level out that different figures – reminiscent of Trevor Chadwick and Doreen Warriner – who had a key function within the rescue have largely been forgotten.
Each Chadwick and Warriner had been in Czechoslovakia placing themselves in nice hazard after the Nazis’ invasion as they tried to get as many as kids as potential in a foreign country.
Sir Nicholas lived in relative anonymity till February 1988, when he appeared on BBC programme That is Life. Above: Winton meets Vera Gissing, one of many kids he saved
Winton himself was eager to minimize his personal function, later saying: ‘Chadwick did the tougher and harmful work after the Nazis invaded… he deserves all reward.’
Bob says: ‘The truth that he by no means talked about it’s fairly superb. It has been mythologized a bit bit, however he deserves all of the credit score.’
The story of Winton’s unimaginable life is being re-told in upcoming movie One Life, which stars Anthony Hopkins.
The evacuation of youngsters continued till the start of the battle on September 1, 1939.
Winton later spoke of his deep remorse {that a} last trainload of youngsters by no means left Czechoslovakia because of the begin of the battle.
Practically all of these kids died within the Holocaust.
Bob remembers his associates coming to highschool within the uniform of the junior part of the Hitler Youth.
The college’s headmaster began dictating limitless passages from a ranting tome that Bob later found was Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf.
‘We crammed train e-book after train e-book. I had no concept what it was about,’ Bob says.
‘There was plenty of indoctrination occurring, should you understood what was occurring, which I did not.’
By the point he obtained to secondary college, the state of affairs had worsened significantly. Bob’s fellow college students had been ‘properly indoctrinated’ by then, he says.
‘So it did grow to be fairly tougher, fairly lonely within the playground.
‘Simply often, any person took it into his head to have a scuffle.
‘You possibly can get overwhelmed up, which you could not do a lot about, and the workers wouldn’t intervene.’
A lot worse – within the type of Kristallnacht – was to return.
The ‘night time of damaged glass’, in November 1938, was the mass outbreak of organised violence towards Jews and their properties and companies.
Virtually 100 had been killed and a few 30,000 Jewish males had been despatched to focus camps in what is taken into account to have been the beginning of the Holocaust.
Bob although was blissfully unaware. ‘I slept via, I had no concept what was occurring,’ he says.
He quickly realised what had occurred when he tried to go to highschool and was turned away by a sympathetic trainer, who warned him to not come again.
By February 1939, Bob was the one younger Kirchheimer nonetheless in Germany. His sister Helga, who was 12 years older than him, had left for South Africa in 1936.
His brother Franz, two years his senior, had left for Britain on a piece allow.
Bob’s mother and father had made a number of purposes to attempt to to migrate as a household to different nations, however all – like with 1000’s of others – had been refused.
As a substitute, his mother and father took up the lifeline of the Kindertransport to get their son out of Germany.
Beneath the scheme, the UK agreed to take kids from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and what was then the Free Metropolis of Danzig (now Gdansk in Poland).
They had been put in foster properties and educated within the UK. Bob is one among a whole bunch of Kindertransportees who’re nonetheless residing.
Bob was solely allowed one suitcase, which means he left with no household mementoes. His household photographs survived because of his sister, who he didn’t see once more till 1981.
His mother and father tried to get throughout the truth that this was a short lived separation, which means they didn’t give him any photographs or household mementoes to take with him.
All the images Bob has now had been rescued by his sister.
Bob’s nervous waves to his mom and father as his practice departed Hannover station can be his final interplay with them.
As Bob ‘shrunk into myself and did not discuss to anyone,’ the practice took him and a whole bunch of different kids to the Netherlands, the place they then travelled by boat to Harwich.
Arriving on the the Essex port was, Bob says, a ‘nice disappointment’, as a result of ‘going to England to most of us meant Dover, the cliffs.’
From Harwich it was again on to a different practice, this time to Liverpool Avenue Station.
There he and others sat nervously on their little suitcases, a pose immortalised within the statue that now stands on the station.
Bob initially spent per week residing underneath the care of a rich man who he solely ever knew as Henry Smith.
Smith, who lived in Hampstead, north London, had spent £300 – the equal of greater than £16,000 immediately – sponsoring Bob and 5 different Jewish kids so they may come to Britain.
Above: Bob holds up photos of his mom and father, Hedwig and Josef Kirchheimer, who had been each murdered by the Nazis
The doc which allowed Bob to return to Britain on the Kindertransport
Bob had a carefree formative years in Germany, however that every one modified when the Nazis got here to energy in 1933. Above: Bob as a younger boy and proper, after enlisting within the British Military
Bob labored as an interpretor at a prisoner-of-war camp for German inmates in Yorkshire. Above: The veteran in uniform
Bob and his spouse with their kids Andrew and David (proper). David was born in 1953, while Andrew arrived in 1956.
Bob and his spouse Ann are seen in 1949, the 12 months earlier than they obtained married
Subsequent, he spent eight weeks with a household in Greenford, within the west of the capital. It was there that he obtained his first style of college.
Bob, who then spoke no English, loved his preliminary introduction with British poetry, however the expertise was short-lived.
In what was an rising theme of these unsure years, he then needed to transfer on as soon as once more.
After a stint at a hostel out of the capital – the place Bob says the selection was between ‘getting mumps or measles’ – he returned to Hampstead in mid-August 1939.
Dwelling with seven or eight different kids at one other hostel, Bob returned to highschool – however extra upheaval was to return.
‘We actually obtained there simply in time to be evacuated firstly of the battle,’ Bob says.
With Neville Chamberlain’s authorities having declared battle on Hitler’s Germany after the invasion of Poland, a whole bunch of 1000’s of youngsters had been despatched out of London and different main cities to reside in safer areas.
Bob ended up with two sisters who ran a hen farm within the Bedfordshire village of Whipsnade, made well-known by its zoo.
It was there that he correctly learnt English and acquired a number of extra years of training.
His first autumn there was ‘superb’, Bob says.
‘To some extent we had been working wild, to some extent attempting to earn a little bit of pocket cash both within the zoo or on an area farm.
‘The farmer was very good and gave us little jobs to do.
‘Within the first frost the air raid shelter sprang an awesome crack and could not be used. No one took any discover. We simply carried on with college.’
As much as the outbreak of battle, Bob’s mother and father had been in fixed contact. However after the battle started, they had been restricted to 25-word messages as soon as a month by way of the Crimson Cross.
These messages stopped in late 1941. Bob would later uncover that in December of that 12 months, his mother and father had been pressured onto the primary transport out of Hanover and brought to a focus camp in Riga, Latvia.
While Bob’s father was shot in 1942, his mom survived till July or August 1944, however was doubtless amongst those that had been murdered by the Nazis because the Russian military drew nearer amid Germany’s impending collapse.
Bob left college on the age of 16 in 1941 and went to work in a manufacturing unit making optical elements for devices utilized by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Drive.
He volunteered for service within the British Military in 1943 and was lastly referred to as up the next 12 months.
Ann’s mother and father Hertha and Franz Kohn (above) had been additionally murdered. They each died at Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland
The final time Ann noticed her mother and father, they had been waving frantically at her from the station platform in Berlin as her practice pulled away
Bob was initially on an inventory to go to Nigeria, however says with a smile: ‘I stated “nah”‘.
When he was despatched to see his commanding officer to elucidate himself, he insisted that he needed to go to Germany to seek out out what had occurred to his mother and father.
He was met with a swift refusal, however was provided the possibility to work as an interpreter at a prisoner-of-war camp for German inmates.
Regardless of failing the interpreters’ check ‘abysmally’, Bob was despatched to Camp 108, in Thirkleby, Yorkshire.
There, he interacted day by day with males who had been preventing for Hitler. Bob says he informed them: “You must perceive I am a German born Jew. You must perceive that.
“You’re going to get honest therapy from me, simply by no means come to me and complain about unhealthy therapy as a result of you do not know what that’s.
“As long as you keep on with that, we’ll get on all proper.” He provides: ‘I by no means had any bother.’
Shortly after becoming a member of up, he had anglicised and shortened his title with the assistance of his commanding officer, who warned him that his life wouldn’t be price a lot if he was captured on energetic service with together with his German surname.
After leaving the military, Bob joined the social membership the place he would meet his spouse.
By then, Ann had been on her personal tortuous journey, having come to Britain on a Kindertransport practice in 1938, when she was 11.
Ann would later uncover that each her mother and father died at Auschwitz, the dying camp in occupied Poland the place round 1.1million Jews perished.
In contrast to Bob, Ann had someplace everlasting to name dwelling in Britain from the second she arrived.
Two sisters, Millie and Sophie Levy – who fondly turned often called her ‘aunts’ – agreed to take her in to their dwelling within the East Finish of London.
The final time she noticed her mother and father, they had been waving frantically at her from the station platform in Berlin as her practice pulled away.
Talking of Ann’s return to the refugee membership in March 1949, Bob says: ‘She says her response was, “Oh, he remembers me!”
‘Why, I have no idea, as a result of we would met simply that when, properly we hadn’t met, we hadn’t spoken. She’d been sitting on the opposite facet of the room.
‘So, one thing will need to have caught. We obtained married in 1950, and right here we’re.’
Their first date was in mid-March 1949, and by June, Bob knew he was going to suggest.
However first he needed to move an ‘interview’ with Milly and Sophie.
Each Bob and Ann grew up in Britain after fleeing Nazi Germany. Above: Bob as a younger man, Ann as a bit woman
Jewish refugees are seen at Liverpool Avenue Station in July 1939, having made the lengthy journey from Germany. Bob and Ann had been each in the identical place
Chuckling as he remembers them asking what his ‘prospects’ had been, he says: ‘Completely none. I had no training. I imply, my training had completed at 16. After that, nothing.’
He provides: ‘Anyway, I managed to persuade them that it’d work. They had been very supportive. They actually helped us through the years no finish.’
The couple married on the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St John’s Wooden.
Their sons, David and Andrew, arrived in in 1953 and 1956 respectively. Tragically, Andrew, who by no means married, handed away after struggling a stroke final 12 months.
David, who’s each a father and grandfather-of-three, is a ‘superb son’, Bob says. The retired accountant lives together with his spouse in close by Moor Park, and visits his mother and father commonly.
To get the {qualifications} he wanted for his personal profession, Bob slogged away doing correspondence programs and coaching on the Chartered Institute of Secretaries.
After taking over a sequence of short-term jobs to pay the payments, Invoice was taken on as an organization secretary at – fittingly – a textiles agency, run by two Catholic brothers.
He would stay there for the following 36 years.
His bosses had been ‘completely improbable’, Bob says, permitting him to take day trip of the workplace to take up a part-time function as honorary secretary of Leo Baeck Faculty, one of many nation’s important coaching centres for Rabbis.
In his day job, he was swiftly promoted and was finally invited to grow to be finance director.
By the point he retired in 2004, Bob was joint managing director of the agency.
Explaining his spectacular work ethic, he says: ‘I had began late, and I loved the job’.
Ann can not be part of Bob when he does his talks due to her growing bodily and psychological frailty.
He takes care of her with the assistance of live-in carer Vicky.
In 2018, when Ann was in higher well being, she and Bob had been fortunate sufficient to satisfy King Charles.
The couple had been amongst Kindertransportees who attended a reception held by the monarch – who was then the Prince of Wales – at Buckingham Palace.
Bob speaks to MailOnline from his homely bungalow in Northwood, north-west London
<img id="i-c642d77be688ca0" src="https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/12/01/16/78475011-12808793-image-a-33_1701448295227.jpg" peak="946" width="634" alt="Bob worries vastly about Israel‘s battle with Hamas, that it’s going to ‘encourage one more technology of hate'” class=”blkBorder img-share” />
Bob worries vastly about Israel‘s battle with Hamas, that it’s going to ‘encourage one more technology of hate’
Now, Bob continues spending his time talking to younger folks about his personal outstanding life and the horrors of the Holocaust.
He worries vastly about Israel‘s battle with Hamas, that it’s going to ‘encourage one more technology of hate.’
‘It is undermining the arguments that we carry on placing ahead,’ he provides.
‘The unique drawback with, should you like, the Jewish query, is it begins with prejudice, then you definitely get discrimination, then, finally you get segregation, which finally results in homicide.’
He concedes that there ‘needed to be a response’ to the stunning terrorist assaults on October 7, however believes that Israel‘s bombing marketing campaign is ‘overdone’.
‘And I do not assume there’s any likelihood of it assembly its goal,’ he provides.
It’s a characteristically courageous perspective from a person who, alongside his beloved spouse, has spent his life being courageous.
MailOnline was put in contact with Bob by way of the Holocaust Memorial Day Belief, the government-funded charity that exists to teach folks concerning the Holocaust.
