Author: Christopher Gilley

We hear that a post about how to keep documents and photographs safe for the future might be a useful addition to this project

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First, when taking a copy of a document or photograph to share with this project, keep a copy for yourself

When you have placed your historical item carefully into its new safe environment (see below), put your copy where it is accessible

In this way, if you want to show someone your historical treasure, you don’t need to get out the original

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With our collection at home, with which we are still working, each item is placed within two pieces of acid-free paper. This acid-free ‘sandwich’ is then placed in an acid-free transparent envelope. Into this goes a copy of the original (also printed on acid-free paper), which goes between the top protective piece of paper and the transparent envelope

So, when we need to consult the item, we just look at the top copy and don’t have to remove or disturb the original in any way

We also slip our translations into the pocket (again, on acid free paper)

The whole thing, kept together, is then filed by date in a nice dark filing cabinet in a room in which the curtains are kept closed

This keeps our historical materials orderly, straight, cool, dark, and in the best environment I can provide at home until our collection goes to the Wiener Library in London, which is what will happen when we have finished working on it

• As you might expect, National Archives both in the UK and in Australia, for example, have some very good advice about materials preservation, which can be accessed online. I have drawn on some of their advice for the notes below

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In the present context, it is possible that families have, to date, regarded these old photos and documents as not especially important, except at the level of family interest and sentiment

However, if you think about it, paperwork from – say – 1937 is now 80 years old! And these are historic items that document a key part of Jewish, World War Two, and Holocaust history

Ideally, while you are thinking about sending copies of your items to this Kitchener camp project, you will also take this opportunity to think about what you might do with the originals in order to keep them safe

Many families have already donated their collections to museums, libraries, and universities with departments that work in this area. Some families will not be ready to do this, however

For those who are not ‘yet’ ready to contemplate letting go, you can at least mitigate against further deterioration of your items

At good archival suppliers you can purchase acid-free paper and acid-free pockets of various kinds

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First things first …

• Handle everything with great care
• Never put your items anywhere near food or drink
• Always have clean hands and preferably wear protective cotton or powder-free surgical gloves
• Do use an appropriately sized rigid support to keep your documents from bending or being put under strain
• Never have pens anywhere near what you’re doing
• Do not attempt to remove any staples or other holdings, however old and rusty they may look. You risk causing more damage than doing good. Leave that kind of decision to a professional
• Do not straighten out pages of a book to scan or photograph them. This risks breaking an old spine and its glue
• Do interleave documents with acid-free archival tissue to protect from abrasion, ink or adhesive transfer
• Do not apply identification labels of any kind directly onto your historical items. Identification should be done on the packaging (before it is put anywhere near your materials), or on a piece of archival (acid-free) paper slipped into the sleeve/envelope holding the photograph or document
• Materials degrade more quickly when exposed to light, especially ultraviolet. Fluorescent tubes emit a relatively high level of UV. Which room in your house stays darkest? Ideally, your storage area should have no windows, or they should be covered with opaque curtains or blinds
• Watch out for any signs of mice or insects – both of which may be very destructive of old paperwork

Photographs 

• Photographs should be handled where possible in their protective enclosure, if they have been put into one
• If a picture must be re/moved, handle with great care, by the edges only
• Clean disposable cotton or surgical-type gloves are useful here, because fingerprints corrode the silver in black-and-white images and cause dyes to change colour
• Never use metal pins, staples, paper clips, rubber bands, or tape to secure photographic materials
• Do not try to remove any tape and labels that are already stuck to photographic or other historic materials without conservation advice. Removal may cause damage

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Many Kitchener descendants who are getting in touch are asking some version of the question posed by the title of this post.

Why did my father/grandfather/uncle get a place at Kitchener?

In other words – why were we saved, when so many weren’t.

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With a few exceptions, we are unlikely to know for sure, even by the end of this process.

Or, this was what we’d been assuming when we started out …

• Interestingly, however, we already have one descendant who has a pretty good idea of why their relative gained a place:

“It is believed that a distant relative, Professor Hanns Günter Reissner, saved Willi’s life by arranging for him to go to England. In the 1960s, the professor wrote that he and his family knew Willi’s family well and they often visited each other. Hanns Günter died in 1977 and his obituary states “Hans (sic) Reissner was one of those who remained in Berlin throughout the pre-war Nazi years. During the last months after the November pogroms, his honorary offices in the Jewish sphere included the membership of the committee in charge of the selection of applicants for the Kitchener Transit Camp in Richborough (Kent)” (see https://kitchenercamp.co.uk/willi-reissner-memories/ ).

Indeed, personal relationships of all kinds are bound to have played a part in a number of the decisions taken.

• We know some of the men were brought over early in 1939 because of their practical skills, which were needed for rebuilding (and then maintaining) the derelict World War I camp.

Walter Brill was a craftsman, for example, who arrived early that year.

Fascinatingly, in Walter’s testimony, which is housed in the Leo Baeck archives, he notes that these early arrivals were acutely aware that for every hut finished, 72 men could come over to safety in Britain, so they were conscious of working against the clock (see Documents, Walter Brill). Reading Walter’s testimony certainly made me pause, the hairs standing up on the back of my neck …

Of course, these factors only provide a partial answer for families. There must have been many people with practical skills of one kind or another, so this explanation only goes so far, rather than answering that crucial – ‘Yes, but why him/us’ specifically?

• Another descendant has been in touch from New York. She pointed us to a section of JewishGen and their notes on Jewish ‘training centres’. If you think your relative might have been involved in these, you might want to take a look: https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Holocaust/0041_German_Training_Camps.html

I don’t know anything about these camps beyond what is written in JewishGen, but they don’t sound a million miles away from what the ORT was doing. There were certainly many similar-sounding, small-scale schemes in Britain – all of them run by charities such as the CBF, but also by the Quakers, notably, and other Church-based institutions – each taking in a few young refugees during the course of the 1930s. They effectively were carrying out on a small scale what Kitchener did on a larger scale for adult men in 1939. They taught agricultural and practical skills so that people could find employment in order to emigrate onwards to safety.

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• My own father was a member of the Kartell-Convent, and we know of several other Kitchener men who were also members of this Jewish university fraternity. If you believe your relative might have been a member, please let us know. They referred to each other as Bruder (brother) in correspondence. It was a group for people working in the professions, it would seem, and refugees who had been at university in Germany may well have been members.

When I did a quick comparison of our descendant list a few months ago, and cross-referenced it with men from a K-C handbook of my dad’s, around one in ten were K-C members.

Whether this would be borne out across larger numbers, and whether it was a factor in gaining a place at Kitchener – it’s too early to say, but the more examples we can bring together of all these factors, the better our chance of being able to answer some of our questions by the end of this process.

If you have other theories – or any specific knowledge about this side of Kitchener – please share it with us.

Some fascinating documents are coming in to the project, and we have some amazing items – and big surprises – to come, so do keep an eye on the updates.

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We have heard that a number of Kitchener descendants at the summer meeting in Sandwich didn’t manage to get hold of a copy of the local write-up of our visit. Luckily, one of the group did get a newspaper and has recently emailed me the article. I have posted it below.

I have not included the group photograph that was placed just above the article because this would mean getting the permission of everyone who was in the picture, which isn’t really practical.

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We continue to receive an extraordinary level of support and generosity from people and groups all over the world. We can’t type or upload fast enough to keep up with the material coming in, which is an amazing position to be in.

We also continue to receive kind support from related groups, including recently World ORT, who have posted up news of the site to try to help us reach the ORT ‘boys’ (and their families) who were in Kitchener for a short time; and the Association of Jewish Ex-servicemen and women (AJEX), who may be able to help us reach Kitchener Pioneers.

Finally, HOB (Hitachdut Olei Britannia), the Israel Association of British Immigrants, has just been in touch to say they will put out the word for us; Manchester Reform Synagogue (among others) is doing the same; and quite a large number of archives have checked the site and will be allowing us to upload materials without charge.

We must take a moment, then, to thank everyone who is giving their time and resources so generously to this Kitchener camp project. It started with a small group gathering, and is slowly but surely growing to include many families and organisations around the world – because of the generous and enthusiastic support for what we are trying to achieve among us.

And the biggest thank you goes to our fellow descendant families who have put their trust in the project to help us get started. It would be nothing without your contributions – and we honour them all.

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As mentioned previously, if anyone wishes to attend this year’s AJEX parade, and wants to do so in company, please get in touch. We will post some photographs on our return so that Kitchener families globally can participate in this special day of remembrance. Please note – anyone wishing to attend must be pre-registered

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To families – however large or small the amount of information you have – even if it’s just a name – please do get in touch. If you only have a more recent photograph to put to a name, that would also be lovely. It’s so much more personal and meaningful to be able to put a face to a name. Families sending in information may remain anonymous if they wish to do so

You can read the memories/histories, or view the documents, letters, and photographs by using the drop down menus. If you wish to view the Photographs, for instance, there is a drop down menu of the men’s names – just click on a name and you will be able to view their pictures

I hope it’s simple enough to use, but if you’re having problems, please let me know. Sometimes what seems obvious in the design isn’t that obvious in the use …

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A special remembrance day – 2018

Next year, 2018, marks a key anniversary for the end of World War One. After this, authorities will be reviewing formal State Remembrance activities

Therefore, next year may well be our last opportunity to honour the service of our fathers and grandfathers in a public ceremony

In conversation with AJEX today, they have suggested that if there is a group of Kitchener/Pioneer descendants, we may join in the parade as a group in memory our fathers and grandfathers. Their medals may be worn (on the right-hand side) if wished. AJEX would provide us a named banner for our group

If descendants would like to participate as a group, please let us know. There is a special seated area where relatives may simply observe the parade if that is preferred. There is also a very kind invitation to attend an afternoon tea after the parade

London – November 2018 – please get in touch if you would like to be involved

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We have written for a couple of weeks now about the military involvement of the Kitchener men: many of them joined the Pioneer Corps in late 1939 and 1940

However, around 600 Kitchener men, for various reasons, did not join the Pioneer Corps, and as soon as we start to get the histories and documents for these men, we will start to add in the research for these other important outcomes

Because we have so much research to get through over the next 12 months or so, we are simply taking issues as they arise in the materials being sent in

Please help us to gain the full picture by getting in touch to send in your images and family histories – we’d love to hear from all our fellow Kitchener families

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A quick plea first – another item for translation has arrived, if you have German language skills. Thank you!

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We’ve just had some contact from World ORT that adds to the history of the ORT boys at Kitchener.

They have a list of ORT boys’ names, which includes one of the ‘boys‘ whose grandson has very kindly sent in his Kitchener materials, and it would be great if we could locate more families to add to this.

The link to the ORT information on Kitchener is here: http://dpcamps.ort.org/camps/uk/

“As the final destination of the boys, the ORT school in Leeds, was still being built, until its completion the boys were to stay in the Kitchener reception camp for refugees at Sandwich, Kent: “We stayed in the camp until December 1939. By then hostel accommodation had been found in Leeds and a site for the new school had been located. I remember that each time we went to the school we carried two bricks to help us with the building work” (World ORT Archive. 2001. David Cohn, British ORT Report, ed. 4, London, British ORT, p. 9).

As soon as we hear anything else relating to the ORT in Kitchener we will update you straight away.

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As Remembrance Sunday approaches, people living in (or near) London with an interest in this area – and particularly those who had family in the Pioneers – may want to think about supporting AJEX-The Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women: https://www.ajex.org.uk/index.php. I am currently trying to find out about their Remembrance day parade, which takes place on November 19th. Perhaps some of us could go as a group? If you might be interested, please get in touch.

This notice (below), kindly sent to us by AJEX, provides information about the AJEX Remembrance Day parade. Anyone with their father’s or grandfather’s service medals may be interested to know that you may wear your relative’s medals on the right-hand side. The medal earner themselves wears them on the left, over their heart.

For me, my Pioneer Corps father’s birthday was in November, and this feels like a good way to mark it in remembrance of his service, of which he was proud.

Clare Weissenberg, Editor

Please just click on the image if you need to enlarge it.

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Finally, we have been working hard on the research to expand the list of names of the men (and a few women) who were in Kitchener camp. In this list we are using original names from country of origin in order to protect identities. In a number of cases we have also been able to verify dates and places of birth. Where it is possible to add this extra information, we are placing the names onto a map. If you expand the map, you can zoom in and read this detail (and the source material) in the side bar. Any problems – please just let us know.

If you can add anything to the history here, we would love to hear from you – and especially if you can add to our list of names. It is growing, but we are a very long way from having 4,000 names! However small the amount of information you may have, we would very much like to hear from you – and you may of course remain anonymous if you wish to do so.

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A thoughtful and pertinent quotation cited by a letter writer in this month’s AJR journal:

“How you are with the one to whom you owe nothing is a grave test” Rabbi Hugo Gryn

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The Jewish Museum, London, has been incredibly helpful in its response to this project, and we hope to be into their archives as soon as we have time; they are also now the curators for the Jewish Military Museum artefacts. In thanks, below is a note about an upcoming event and two exhibitions that are relevant to our area of history

Reach the JM via a 3 minute walk from Camden Town Underground

Opening Hours
Every day 10am – 5pm
(early closure on Friday at 2pm)
Last entrance is 30 minutes before closing
Open on Bank Holidays
Closed on 21 and 22 September 2017 (early closure at 2pm on 20 September) for Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and on 30 September 2017 for Yom Kippur
Closed 25, 26 December and 1 January

http://www.jewishmuseum.org.uk

For AJEX, see also: https://ajex.org.uk/contact.php

History: A British Story

An insight into British Jewish history from 1066 to today featuring interactive and thought provoking exhibits

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The Holocaust Gallery

Told through the story of one British-born survivor of Auschwitz

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Events

The Jewish Museum London

We Were There Too: Museum Roadshow

Please RSVP to [email protected] or drop in on the day

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The Wiener Library Reading Room Exhibition: The Contributions of Jewish Refugees to British Life: 7 September-31 October 2017

https://www.wienerlibrary.co.uk/contributions-of-Jewish-refugees-to-British-life

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Book Launch: The Évian Conference of 1938 and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, Paul R. Bartrop: 23 Nov 2017; 6:30pm-8pm

https://www.wienerlibrary.co.uk/Whats-On?item=353

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For an update on the Timeline, please see the end of this post. And I’ve just finished the first batch of research for our list of names…

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This letter (below) has now been translated by one of our very kind Kitchener descendants and can be viewed in the Letters section for Walter Brill.

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On the subject of translations, we also need some items in Hebrew translated into English. If you have Hebrew language skills and would be happy to help one of our descendant families, please can you get in touch with us, in the first instance, using the contact page.

Finally for today – I have been using the Minutes of meetings of the Council for German Jewry, largely from 1938 to 1939, to add to the scope of the Timeline. As well as the general history of such summaries, I have attempted to add in the events and decisions that are of particular relevance to Kitchener camp, the Berlin ORT, and the Pioneer Corps. I still have some work to add to the later months, but it’s a decent start, I hope.

My apologies – it is probably in a bit of a mess at the moment, because I’ve not yet had time to proofread it. However, the basics are now in place for anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of how these events mesh with one another. It’s long, as timelines go, but I hope the format will help clarify ‘what’ happened ‘when’.

I still have the period from 1940 to 1942 to cover, but that will have to wait until I can get back to the archives. I am aiming to cover to the point at which the refugees were given the opportunity to change their names to English ones, and when those in the Pioneer Corps were given the opportunity to change to a different unit, and to change their service numbers.

Editor

I spent a fascinating afternoon in the London Metropolitan archives yesterday, reading through the Minutes of meetings of the CBF for 1938/39. I will be writing up my notes, hopefully over the next couple of weeks; there were some interesting revelations and useful background to how Kitchener camp came into being.

We also received a really helpful email yesterday from a very kind woman working on HMT Dunera files in Australia, who pointed us to an archive maintained by the Australian government. The archive gives some information about the over two hundred Kitchener men who had the misfortune to be put onto the Dunera after war broke out. As you might have noticed, we have a page flagged for research on the Dunera, so hearing about the existence of this database was very welcome. We currently have a request out to them to ask about copyright issues – and we’ll see what we can use here when we get a reply.

Meanwhile, we have a backlog of materials to be uploaded, which I have started on this afternoon. I have given priority to the materials of one descendant in particular, because he was actually in Kitchener camp!

Winston Brill’s father, Walter Brill, was given a place in Kitchener camp – possibly because he had carpentry skills. The family were fortunate in that Walter and his wife Irmgard were both able to make it to the safety of the UK, where Irmgard soon gave birth to Winston who, as a baby, was made famous in this context in a photograph used in a promotional magazine that was produced about Kitchener camp.

Winston has been told that Irmgard – just arrived by plane from Germany a few days day or so before he was born in a London hospital – was asked what she wanted to name her baby boy. Irmgard replied “Winston,” believing it to be a common English name because she had heard a lot about Winston Churchill.

Most touchingly, Winston’s middle name is “Jonas,” after a Jonas A. May – one of the two brothers who ran Kitchener camp.

What a wonderful set of histories we are now able to share …

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When you look at the various documents pages, by the way, you might find it useful to click on the links under the document uploads, if you don’t know what some of the documents are.

This page, which I have just created, might prove helpful – https://kitchenercamp.co.uk/what-is-this-document/

Please bear with me – it’ll take a while to get up to speed with all this, but I’ll get there as fast as I can!

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Finally for today, I have just uploaded some photographs of Felix Bujakowsky.

These are fascinating for me, because when Felix’s grandson got in touch to say his grandfather had been in Kitchener camp, and he started to give me their family story, I started to realise that I had heard of Felix before …

If you are interested to know more, please see www.fromnumberstonames.com where there is further information about this connection between the two Kitchener refugees.

As the first materials begin to arrive here with their ‘permission to publish’ letters, we are profoundly moved by the histories, documents, and photographs that are being sent to the site, often with notes of pride in and thanks for the project.

We hope we can do the right thing by our ancestors and their histories: they obviously mean so much to everyone involved. We will certainly work hard to do justice to the lives and families depicted here.

The first of our memories is here. And some new documents and photographs are being uploaded during the course of today.

It is a reasonably lengthy process to go through everything carefully with families, so please be patient with us if you are waiting for a response. We take our contacts very seriously and want to work with respect with all our co-descendants.

We hope you find the materials as interesting as we do. Please feel free to have a look around the site as we gradually start to build it up from the many items being sent in.

As we’ve said before, if any families recognise their relatives in any of the photographs, do please get in touch. I know owners of the pictures would love to know who else is in them!

For myself – I scan every one of them, hoping to catch a glimpse of my dad in a photo I’ve not see before. And I know that any family with this in their background will understand the impulse.

A new page has just gone up, which contains a PDF of our Permissions Letter

Descendants who are sending images and histories, please would you also attach a Permissions Letter. If you are unable to download it from the website, please Contact us and we will send you a copy.

From May 2018 all websites will come under a new legislative framework, which includes digital copyright, so we thought we should get ahead of the curve on this and comply from the start.

It may seem a bit formal, and we wish we didn’t have to ask, but everything from FaceBook to the BBC online, to Netflix will be under the same constraints by the middle of next year. Like most people, you probably already click ‘accept’ on most of these sites without even reading the terms and conditions …

Anyway – the letter simply states that you own the images and that you are happy for them to be posted on this website. It gives the website permission to publish the documents and histories.

As it says on the letter and on our Data page, if at any point, for any reason, you decide you want images taken down again, we will of course comply with your wishes.

We’re just a group of ‘Kitchener Kids’ – the same as you – and we want people to be comfortable with their choices.

The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) has very kindly tweeted about our project.

Only a short time to go now before we can start to accept your photographs and documents – we’re just waiting for the last bits of paperwork to slot into place.

We’ve also had a write-up from EHRI (https://ehri-project.eu/kitchener-descendants-group-call-documents-photographs-and-information-relating-kitchener-camp) and by the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust, in their October newsletter – and hopefully this will all go towards helping us reach as many descendants as possible.

If you know of any group that can help us spread the word, please do get in touch. We can send you some information to send on to them – to synagogue newsletters, Jewish care institutions, relevant research departments, and so on.

We’re getting a lot of support and interest in the project from all over the world, and we need to keep up the search for descendants and their photographs, letters and documents – that’s what will make the project so useful to both families and researchers in the future.

When war broke out in September 1939, the Jewish men in Kitchener camp were in a particularly painful position. Unable to return home, they must have known that their chances of getting families out of ‘Greater Germany’ had now been closed off.

As yet, we are still unsure about the exact numbers of men in Kitchener camp (although watch this space!). Many of the camp records were destroyed – in part to protect these men who had escaped to Britain. It was felt that their families would be at increased risk if the records fell into the wrong hands.

However, we do know a majority of the men joined the Pioneer Corps after the war had started, and if you are trying to find out information about your relative in this context there are a number of places to which you can apply for records.

One of these is the Royal Pioneer Corps website: they are incredibly helpful. They are also able to quickly access some Pioneer Corps records. If you email them with some basic information about your relative (name, place of birth, and date of birth), they will almost certainly be able to provide some information. In a few cases this is quite detailed.

Anyway – their contact page is here: http://www.royalpioneercorps.co.uk/rpc/contact.htm

Good luck – and do let us know how you get on.

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The Royal Pioneer Corps archives sent some interesting information about Kitchener refugee Hans Blum, as follows:

Hans was the fourth Kitchener man to enlist and served until 30 August 1940.

Before him were:

• 13800000 Heinz Aron – DoB 14 July 1914
• 13800001 Otto Bassell – DoB 16 March 19 13
• 13800002 Kalmann Beutel – DoB 16 December 1903

They all joined up on 16 November 1939

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For further information, please read the data page.

Stephen Nelken has done us a great write-up in the AJR journal about the descendant group meeting in summer 2017.

We’re incredibly grateful to Stephen for all his input, not least because he’s incredibly busy at the moment, but somehow in amongst it all, he’s found time for our KDG.

Some people enjoy doing crosswords; others like to work through translations.

If you are one of the latter, we’d love to have your help!

Almost inevitably we will have some documents or letters that have not yet been translated. I will post these onto the translations page if/as we receive them. If you’d like a ‘nudge’ to say there is a new translation in, please just let us know using the Contact page.

Ideally, all documents and letters will be translated into English for upload to the site.

However, if families have a number of items for translation, this can prove expensive.

Sometimes people just enjoy translating materials, however – almost like others enjoy completing crosswords. So if you have documents at home that you are unable to have translated in advance, these can still be uploaded here and we will see if others are happy to provide crowd-sourced English-language versions.

So, if you only have documents in a language other than English, please don’t let this put you off submitting them to the project: let’s see what we can do by working together.