George Shefi

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Shefi ( Hebrew ג'ורג 'שפי, Born November 29, 1931 in Berlin ; born George Spiegelglas ) is a Holocaust survivor of German-Jewish descent.

Childhood and escape

Shefi spent his early years as a child of a well-off Berlin family, in which he grew up protected and cared for. The first time on November 10, 1938, the day of the Reichspogromnacht , the then seven-year-old was exposed to the terror of the National Socialists . Since his school was attached to a synagogue, it was set on fire that night. It burned to the ground. In order to protect him from further pursuits by state power, his family gave him to the Kindertransport , which had been initiated by the English government against the background of the appeasement policy . The transports, financially secured by the Jewish communities in Germany, made it possible for German children of Jewish descent up to the age of 17 to leave Germany and travel to England in order to be accepted into English families. The Netherlands , Belgium , Switzerland , France and Sweden also took in Jewish children at that time.

Life in exile

George Shefi managed to escape to safe England in this way . However, his mother, an aunt and grandfather had to stay behind in Germany, where they were forced to do forced labor . His grandfather died of exhaustion after a short time under this strain. His mother and aunt were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1941. There they are lost; they were probably murdered on the day of their arrival.

Shefi grew up in an English family in the following years and also had the opportunity to attend school here. During a stay in London in 1940, he witnessed the bombing of the city by the German Air Force . A year later, at the age of nine, Shefi left his host country and embarked on a troop transport with 6,000 Canadian soldiers for Canada . When he arrived on the North American continent , he went to live with an uncle in the United States . At the age of 17, Shefi left the United States with his uncle and emigrated to Israel , where they both lived on a kibbutz . By chance, at the age of 35, he stumbled on the trail of his father, who had emigrated to Australia and built up a living there.

George Shefi is giving lectures today on his fate and personal experiences with the Holocaust. He has been active at AMCHA for many years .

Works

  • The way of fate . Memoir of a boy sent by his parents from Nazi Germany to England on the kindertransport to save his life. ISBN 978-0974852485

Individual evidence

  1. Commemorative event of the state parliament of Saarland for the victims of National Socialism ( Memento of the original from January 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved January 29, 2015.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lpm.uni-sb.de
  2. ^ Commemorative event of the Saarland Landtag on January 27, 2015 in the Gestapo camp "Neue Bremm" , Saarbrücken