A BONFIRE burnt in the street outside Ernest Simon’s home on Kristellnacht – the night Nazis destroyed synagogues, smashed Jewish shops and torched prayer books.

He was just eight years old at the time, but remembers the fateful night of anti-Semitic violence, which saw schools, businesses, hospitals, homes and even orphanages targeted.

While no-one could know what full horrors of the Holocaust were to come, Jewish parents and concerned residents across Europe were taking action.

The British Government agreed to take in Jewish children fleeing from Nazis Europe. On December 2, 1938, the first Kindertransport arrived in Harwich, bringing nearly 200 children to safety.

Mr Simon said: “My parents got me on a Kindertransport, which left on January 11, 1939.

“I don’t remember the train journey apart from that it was filled with children, a couple of hundred, but I remember arriving at the Hook of Holland and going on the ship across to Harwich.

“I remember being seasick.”

Like many children who arrived at Parkeston Quay, Mr Simon boarded a train to London Liverpool Street. His final destination was a foster home in Leeds.

Unlike the majority of his fellow Kindertransport children, Mr Simon would see his parents again. 

Lia Lesser, who was also eight when her parents put her on a train to the UK, did not.

She boarded the train in Prague on June 30, 1939.

“There were a lot of people and a lot of other children saying goodbye.

"It was emotional and it was quite scary.

“I don’t remember anything about the journey until I got to the Hook of Holland, boarding the boat
and having strawberry jam sandwiches on white bread, which I thought was wonderful.”

Mrs Lesser went on to live with a foster carer in Anglesey, Wales.

When she was 12, she found out her parents had died – they were among the six million Jews killed in the concentration camps.

She went on to become a nurse and stayed with her foster carer, creating family ties which have continued through the generations.