In the footsteps of the Kindertransport children
"Our journey has already taken Jill and me to Glasgow, Edinburgh and to Ayr in Scotland," Eli Rabinowitz told The AJN.
Eli Rabinowitz with his wife Jill, probably best known as co-founders of the We Are Here! Foundation, have embarked on an extensive trip to the UK and Europe, camera in hand and copious copies of the In My Pocket books funded by the German embassy in Canberra and the German Consul in WA.
In My Pocket, Dorrith Sim’s autobiographical picture book about her journey from Kassel, Germany, to Edinburgh, Scotland, in July 1939, forms the basis of a unique and inspirational education program created by the Rabinowitzes for upper primary school students, presented in Australia and South Africa, and is about to be launched in the US.
“Our journey has already taken Jill and me to Glasgow, Edinburgh and to Ayr in Scotland,” Eli Rabinowitz told The AJN.
“We are here to learn in situ, more about Dorrith Sim’s life in Germany and in Scotland, and her journey on the Kindertransport in July 1939.”
The couple visited the Liverpool Street Station in London, where many of the Kindertransport children arrived.
“We met with the Scottish Jewish Archives in Glasgow, where 40 boxes of Dorrith’s papers and possessions were donated after her death in 2012.
We also met David Sim and Ruth McFarlane, two of Dorrith’s five surviving children in Ayr,” Rabinowitz said.
Susan Hodgins, another of Dorrith Sim’s children recently watched One Life, a movie about the Kindertransport rescue effort and wrote to the Rabinowitzes, “One Life was so real for me. I could feel my grandparents preparing my mum, Dorrith, to leave Germany for the UK.
“My family and I are still utterly amazed and so grateful by the courage of our grandparents to let their only child go at seven years of age.
“To those remarkable people who arranged to get Dorrith out and onto the Kindertransport, we cannot believe what they must have done to get her out.
“Then to the Scottish couple, the Gallimores, who took her in and looked after her as their own child. Dorrith never saw her parents again. We are forever grateful.”
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