The foundations of my faith were laid during a period of rising Nazi antisemitism in Bavaria in the 1930s. My father ensured this by teaching me to a high standard when I was a child.
Holocaust Memorial Day today reminds me that my faith has remained firm, despite difficulties. The crunch came with Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) on November 9 and 10, 1938, when my father was taken to Dachau concentration camp, leaving behind my mother, sister and me.
It was my first test of faith. Would I see Dad again? I did when he was released, but then the real trauma unfolded. I was sent to England on the Kindertransport with a promise that my parents and sister would join me. My sister eventually did.
After the November 1938 pogrom, refugees from Nazi-dominated countries became an issue for this country. As a result of pressure from various organisations, especially the Quakers, the government under Neville Chamberlain allowed unaccompanied children under 17 to enter the UK.
The first Kindertransport brought children from Berlin on December 2, 1938. Before the outbreak of war in 1939 some 10,000 children came.
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I arrived in the UK and was taken to a Jewish hostel in Margate, Kent — alone, but cared for. My father’s teaching stood firm in my heart. He had equipped me with the vital religious texts: a prayer book and a Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible), which are still in my possession.
Evacuation was to be another strong test of faith. Two of us were fostered by a caring, strongly Christian, elderly couple. My religious beliefs stood firm even though religious practice, such as keeping kosher and observing Jewish festivals, weakened.
We were taken to church services and, looking back, my beliefs were somewhat shaken and I remember wondering whether I would eventually turn away from Judaism, from my God. There are some examples of Jewish evacuees who did convert to Christianity.
I was later moved to a Jewish Orthodox boys’ hostel, where I lived for seven years, during which my faith, my beliefs and the practices I was brought up with in the parental home were restored.
Just after the war I learnt that my parents had been deported and killed. The impact of this hit me only later and still affects me profoundly to this day.
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I trained for the rabbinate and ministered in several synagogues, then became a teacher of religious studies in a Jewish comprehensive school. This plus marriage and bringing up a son and daughter all secured my faith.
Reminders of my parents have appeared from nowhere over and above the memorial candle I light for them every year. One of these was a set of prayer books that belonged to my father and mysteriously survived the Holocaust. The next reminder came when I was in a museum and saw a picture of prisoners from Dachau on the screen. My father’s face jumped out at me and seemed to say: “Are you still following the way I taught you?” He had smuggled into the camp a ritual object (a mini garment of four fringes that men wear all day, with the fringes reminding us of the commandments of the Lord, Numbers 15:38ff). This has always stood out as an example of true faith for me to follow.
The camp photograph of my father and a written inscription in my Pentateuch encouraging me to study the Torah hang on my wall as constant reminders of what my parents would expect of me.
An inscription on a photograph of a burnt-out synagogue in Fürth, Germany, where I was born, reads: “Parchments are burnt [but] the letters flourish.” I have applied this to my faith.
My parents are no more, but their example of true faith flourishes
over time, enriched by physical reminders such as the Dachau photograph on my study wall.
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Rabbi Bernd Koschland, MBE, speaks about the Holocaust and the Kindertransport on behalf of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust