A woman who lost 60 members of her family in the Nazi holocaust and escaped from Prague on the last special children's train from the city in 1939 will tell her story at Bridgend's Holocaust Memorial Day on Friday this week.
Renate Collins, who went on to grow up in the South Wales Valleys, lost approximately 60 members of her family in the Holocaust, including her parents Otto and Hilda Kress.
She still wears her mother and grandmother’s rings which were smuggled out of a concentration camp in a loaf of bread.
Exact figures are unknown, but it is estimated the kindertransport trains saved around 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Five-year-old Renate’s train was to be the last kindertransport to leave Prague.
She will use Bridgend’s HMD event to tell the moving story of how her mother only agreed to let her go in the final minutes at the station. Renate never saw her mother again.
HMD is the international day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust and of other genocides. It commemorates victims, honours survivors and commits to tackling prejudice, discrimination and racism in the present day. The official date of HMD is 27 January – the anniversary of the date of the liberation of Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Bridgend Council’s event in the council chamber on Friday will be hosted by two local students, Joe Wiltshire-Smith, a pupil at Porthcawl Comprehensive, and Mari Izzard from Ysgol Gyfun Llanhari.
It will feature the traditional HMD “Seven Statements of Commitment†read by prominent members of the community and the Mayor of Bridgend County Borough Councillor Jefferson Tildesley will also light a candle in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and all 20th century genocide.
Harpists from the council’s music service will open and close the ceremony.
Guests have been invited to represent a wide cross-section of the community and First Minister and Bridgend AM Carwyn Jones will also be there.
The highlight of the ceremony will be Renate Collins’s story followed by a question and answer session with students from local schools. Many of Renate’s remarkable catalogue of letters, photographs and documents, dating back over 70 years, will also be on display.
Council leader Councillor Mel Nott, who will also speak at the event, said: “Bridgend County Borough Council has a proud tradition of marking Holocaust Memorial Day and we are honoured that Renate Collins will be with us to share her very personal experience. Her moving testimony will be a reminder to us all of how the lessons of the past can play a part in our communities today.â€