Dieter Eger with his father, Berthold. Eger was one of roughly 10,000 children saved by the Kindertransport, a campaign mounted by British refugee groups to save Jewish children from Nazi terror. PHOTO BY EMBERLEY FAMILY PHOTO
In late August 1939, one week before the outbreak of the Second World War, 13-year-old Dieter Eger said goodbye to his parents and boarded a train in his hometown of Frankfurt, Germany.
He was bound for England as part of a rescue effort, the Kindertransport (children’s transport), mounted by British refugee groups to save Jewish children from Nazi terror. The operation — made possible by the British government’s decision to allow unaccompanied minors from the German Reich to enter as refugees — saved about 10,000 Jewish children, including Eger.
Eger thought he was going on vacation, but he would never see his parents again. Both perished in the Holocaust.“It’s such a deeply personal part of his history: this saved his life,” said Eger’s son Phil Emberley, a retired Ottawa pharmacist.Emberley is one of at least three descendants of Kindertransport survivors who live in this city; two of them will speak Wednesday at a city hall ceremony to mark the launch of a new exhibit, For the Child.The exhibit, organized by the Vienna Memorial Museum, tells the story of the Kindertransport through a series of photos, including pictures of the keepsakes that the children chose to take with them.
The Kindertransport was hastily organized in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, a two-day pogrom launched in November 1938 across Germany with the approval of Nazi party officials. At least 91 Jews were killed during Kristallnacht, and 267 synagogues destroyed. More than 30,000 Jewish men were rounded up and sent to concentration camps.
Britain agreed to ease its immigration restrictions following the violence, which signaled a murderous new phase in the Nazi campaign against Jews.
Kindertransport children had to travel without their parents because Britain, like most western countries, remained unwilling to open their doors to the broader Jewish immigration. (Canada was among the most recalcitrant: It accepted only 5,000 Jewish refugees during the 12 years that the Nazis ruled Germany.)
Dieter Eger was cared for in England by a retired British soldier who operated an orphanage. He went to school, worked on a farm, and at the age of 17, enlisted in the British Army.Eger eventually learned that all of his relatives, save for one uncle, died in the Holocaust.He walled off that terrible history: Eger became a British citizen, joined the Anglican Church, and changed his legal name to Dennis Emberley in 1947. He never spoke of the Holocaust or his Jewishness for decades.“If you were ever to meet him, you’d swear that he was British” said his son, Ottawa’s Phil Emberley.
After the war, Dennis Emberley remained in the British military and served in Germany, where he helped transport German prisoners. There, in 1953, he met a German woman, Ursula Warmbler, on a train. They exchanged numbers, fell in love and married.
Warmbler found out Emberley was a Holocaust survivor only when his foster father mentioned it in passing.The couple immigrated to Canada where Emberley joined the Canadian Armed Forces. Major Emberley served tours of duty in the Gaza Strip and in Lahr, Germany. Fluent in German, Emberley lived in the city, befriended Lahr’s mayor and immersed his two children in the language and culture of Germany.In 1977, at the age of 52, he suffered a nervous breakdown. It was only then that his children, Phil and Peter, learned about their father’s traumatic past and their own Jewish heritage.“The breakdown was really a result, I think, of his repressed emotions about his childhood trauma,” said Phil Emberley. “They didn’t call it PTSD back then but it was PTSD.”
Dennis Emberley was awarded the Order of Military Merit and was made a member of the Order of the British Empire for his military service. He retired in Vancouver and died in July 2006 at the age of 80.“He changed his persona, he changed his religion, and as his son, I struggle with that sometimes because I feel like I have a heritage that was taken away from me,” said Phil Emberley. “But I completely understand his need to do that: It was all about self-preservation.”Ottawa’s Shelli Wittes Kimmel may also owe her existence to the Kindertransport. Her mother, Annemarie Klauber, grew up in Vienna and was sent to England on one of the first Kindertransports in December 1938, nine months after Nazi Germany annexed Austria.Klauber was 16, an only child. Her father, Paul, died the following year after he was denied critical diabetes medication. Klauber’s mother, Elsa, tried to flee to England and to Shanghai, but was unable to escape. She was deported to Minsk and murdered in a nearby death camp on Oct. 9, 1942.Annemarie was taken in by a Jewish family in Manchester. After several years, she moved out, found a job, and volunteered in the women’s fire brigade. She also became involved in a group that organized social events for Jewish servicemen.At one of those events, she met Herbert Wittes, a Canadian airman; the couple married in December 1944. Annemarie Wittes arrived in Canada as a young war bride the following spring, and settled with her husband in Montreal, where they raised three children.She rarely spoke of the Holocaust or her rescue on the Kindertransport before her death in 1995. “It was a trauma she never recovered from,” said Kimmel, who will speak at a ceremony to open the exhibit, For the Child, on Wednesday.“The survivors are few and far between now so it’s incumbent on the next generation to ensure the stories are told,” she said.
The exhibit is being hosted in co-operation with the Embassy of Austria, the British High Commission, and the Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship (CHES) in Ottawa. Free of charge, it will be available for viewing at Ottawa city hall until Oct. 31.
