Hanna Singer Interview Featured in BBC Podcast

An oral history interview by the Research Centre for German & Austrian Exile Studies in the 1990s has featured in a BBC podcast piecing together the story behind one of the most iconic images of Jewish refugee children from Nazi Germany. The article accompanying the podcast, ‘Mystery of Holocaust Escape Girls Solved after 84 Years’ is available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-66040197.

Kindertransport Memorial at London's Liverpool Street Station by Frank Meisler — The Kindertransport Memorial by Frank Meisler (1925–2018) at Liverpool Street Station, London (Photo: Loco Steve, Bromley, via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0)

The interview was with Hanna Singer, who arrived on the Kindertransport on 5 July 1939 and had her photograph taken with two sisters, also refugees, shortly after her arrival at London’s Liverpool Street station. The photograph has appeared in museums, exhibitions and publications to illustrate the plight of the child refugees, but the girls’ identities have only recently been discovered.

Extracts from the interview, in which Hanna recalled her earliest memories of her new life in the UK, have been incorporated into the podcast ‘The Girls: The Holocaust Safe House’, which can be accessed on BBC Sounds. The interview was one of around 35 interviews carried out in the 1990s as part of a wider project by the Research Centre to record the oral testimonies of German-speaking refugees.

Find out more by visiting the University of London Archives Catalogue.