rucksack

A sand coloured drawstring canvas rucksack (L 48.5cm x W 55.5cm) with one main compartment and two small pockets on the front. It has brown leather shoulder and fastening straps. The rucksack bears the inscription (on fabric label on the inside of flap): 'Lore Heimann / Wuppertal -Elberfeld / 27.6.1939 / Transpotnummen 7001 / Reisegepack'.

Lore Heimann arrived with this rucksack at Liverpool Street Station on a Kindertransport from Germany in June 1939: ' I came to this country with my sister Ursula in June 28 1939. We were allowed to bring only one suitcase and a rucksack plus ten marks (then seventeen shillings). The rucksack contained, amongst many other things twenty pairs of stockings which, in the event, lasted two years -no nylon then. Also a little set, an ornament, of a pig and five piglets, to be bombed later during the war, but three piglets are with me still. I remember my father writing the fabric label for the rucksack. He took such immense care as if he wanted to ensure my safety by writing meticulously. My mother then sewed it in and it is still there -sixty years later -now very faded. Although I lived in Wuppertal we had to join the train in Dusseldorf. Once our rucksacks were stowed away on the luggage rack above our seats we went back to the platform to say goodbye to our parents. The suitcases were collected together and we found them again at Liverpool Street Station. All too soon we were told to board the train. My parents stood as close to the window as they could but the S.A. -the Brownshirts -came and roughly ordered them away to stand at the back of the platform. We crossed the Channel at night arriving in Harwich in the morning for the train journey to Liverpool Street Station. When we arrived the first impression was of a cavernous, black, smoky hole -not the best introduction to the England that I came to love so much. We soon met our guardians. I immediately took to Miss Elizabeth Gertrude Buchan who, with her brother and his wife -Mr. and Mrs. Buchan -and their daughter Joy, became lifelong friends. Sadly not one of the four is alive today. After the war, in 1947, we met our parents again. My mother was a Christian and as a member of a mixed marriage, my father, although doing compulsory labour in Wuppertal, was not deported to Teresienstadt until the autumn of 1944. In spite of the fact that he was down to ninety pounds with hunger oedema at knees and ankles when the Russians liberated the concentration camp in May 1945. We were among the few lucky 'Kinder' who met their parents again.'

Lore Heimann arrived with this rucksack at Liverpool Street Station on a Kindertransport from Germany in June 1939: ' I came to this country with my sister Ursula in June 28 1939. We were allowed to bring only one suitcase and a rucksack plus ten marks (then seventeen shillings). The rucksack contained, amongst many other things twenty pairs of stockings which, in the event, lasted two years -no nylon then. Also a little set, an ornament, of a pig and five piglets, to be bombed later during the war, but three piglets are with me still. I remember my father writing the fabric label for the rucksack. He took such immense care as if he wanted to ensure my safety by writing meticulously. My mother then sewed it in and it is still there -sixty years later -now very faded. Although I lived in Wuppertal we had to join the train in Dusseldorf. Once our rucksacks were stowed away on the luggage rack above our seats we went back to the platform to say goodbye to our parents. The suitcases were collected together and we found them again at Liverpool Street Station. All too soon we were told to board the train. My parents stood as close to the window as they could but the S.A. -the Brownshirts -came and roughly ordered them away to stand at the back of the platform. We crossed the Channel at night arriving in Harwich in the morning for the train journey to Liverpool Street Station. When we arrived the first impression was of a cavernous, black, smoky hole -not the best introduction to the England that I came to love so much. We soon met our guardians. I immediately took to Miss Elizabeth Gertrude Buchan who, with her brother and his wife -Mr. and Mrs. Buchan -and their daughter Joy, became lifelong friends. Sadly not one of the four is alive today. After the war, in 1947, we met our parents again. My mother was a Christian and as a member of a mixed marriage, my father, although doing compulsory labour in Wuppertal, was not deported to Teresienstadt until the autumn of 1944. In spite of the fact that he was down to ninety pounds with hunger oedema at knees and ankles when the Russians liberated the concentration camp in May 1945. ???? We were among the few lucky "Kinder" who met their parents again. Lore's husband is also a refugee from Wuppertal. The Jewish faith faded completely.

Lore Heimann Wuppertal -Elberfeld 27.6.1939 Transpotnummen 7001 Reisegepack