Good evening, my name is Kurt Marx, and I am very proud to have featured in the film you have just seen.
Thank you for inviting me to be here tonight – it is truly humbling for me to see your generation all coming together in this one room and showing your support to Holocaust survivors and refugees, and to the services that mean so very much to us all.
I promise I won’t keep you long, as I hope that from watching the film you can see just how much the different Jewish Care services, we use, like the Holocaust Survivors’ Centre means to people like me.
It is our second home, our extended family, the place where we get to hear and use Yiddish, the language that so many of us knew from what was once our home.
Like so many others, I have a story, I feel passionately that our stories keep being told, that we never forget, that your generation carries that heavy beacon of responsibility to ensure that people never forget, and that one day you tell your children, because we must never forget.
Having witnessed Nazi atrocities in my hometown of Cologne in Germany, which included Kristallnacht, the burning of my local synagogue, which then set alight to my school as we arrived for school that morning, and so many other atrocities carried out towards our people by the Nazis, my parents were like so many other Jewish parents forced to make the unimaginable difficult decision of putting me their only child on a Kindertransport train at the age of 13. I was just a boy, and when I kissed my beloved parents’ goodbye in 1939, I could never imagine that I would never be coming back to my hometown, and that this would be the last time we ever saw each other again.
In some ways I was one of the lucky ones, who escaped Nazi occupied Germany just before war broke out, and my parents did their very best to keep me a young boy as protected as they could from what was happening. And so, I held on to the belief that we would all go to America together and be reunited once their immigration papers came through.
I was sent to live in Bedford unable to speak English living in a completely foreign country without any family, and for 3 years the letters between my parents and I travelled slowly backwards and forth.
Then on 19th July 1942, I received my last letter from my father, he signed off the letter “We’re just leaving, don’t forget us.”
At the time, and bursting with hope, I had thought they must finally on their way to America. It took 50 years to learn the truth, that the next day on the 20th July, a train left to Belarus with my parents onboard and so many others; men, women, children, grandparents – who were all killed immediately on arrival at The Maly Trostenets Extermination camp in Minsk.
These are things of course that never leave you, and they can define you in life, destroy you if you let it, but it is very much my belief and my message to you “Please don’t hate. In the end hate destroys yourself more than anybody else. Be tolerant to others, be kind to others. Do good”.
Thankfully I have gone on to have a good life, I was blessed to meet my wonderful wife Ingrid, a survivor from Auschwitz, who whilst no longer is sadly with me, g-d rest her soul gave me a wonderful son and I have two wonderful grandchildren.
And it was 17 years ago that I found out about Jewish Care’s Holocaust Survivors Centre, 17 years later I continue to come every week. It is my home from home, a place where I can for a few hours a week feel like I’m back in time, back to my roots, reconnect with where I came from, remember what we had before it was so cruelly taken away, and what we survived.
The survivors and refugees there, well we are like family. Although we didn’t know each other, there is a common bond because what ties us together is despite us coming from different places, experiencing different things and all having a different story to tell, we were, we are, all affected by it. One of the main reasons I keep going and what feels me with happiness each week is to hear and speak Yiddish in their weekly Yiddish class, I adore it, the language that reminds us all of home.
Thank you for taking the time to listen to my story, as I said earlier, I am just one of so many others. I want to thank you again for making the effort to be here tonight, I want to thank all of you in the room for your support because only with-it Jewish Care to continue to be there for people like me.
When we first came here as refugees and survivors the Jewish Community were helped by so many – and it’s so important that we continue to be shown support, as there are so many of us who still need that help – and the centre run by the most wonderful staff and volunteers is a lifeline that means so very much to us.
Jewish Care in this tough and challenging time needs to raise over 16 million pounds this year to help keep the doors of services like this and so many others going, this evening will go some way to reaching that goal. So tonight, please be as generous as you can.
Thank you.