Richard and Gisela Bernstein: personal papers

This collection contains papers (photocopies) relating to the fate of the Jewish family of Richard and Gisela Bernstein and their children Heinz and Susanne. Whilst the children emigrated to England as Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi regime, their parents could not escape deportation to Auschwitz despite them moving to Oslo.

Personal papers including birth and death certificates, correspondence from the parents in Prague and later Oslo to their children in England, Red Cross letters sent to the parents in Oslo, photographs and Susanne Medas' personal accounts concerning her family's life in the 1920s and 1930s and her experiences as a Kindertransportee. Also included are lists of Czech children emigrating on Kindertransports.

In addition there is an interview with Susanne Medas, the donor, in which she describes her early life in Berlin; moving to Prague when the Nazis came to power on account of her father's work; experience coming to Great Britain on one of Nicholas Winton's trains from Prague as part of the Kindertransport; friendship with Nicholas Winton and his mother; her brother Heinz Bernstein's disillusionment with life in East Germany; Susanne's work in London with the Jewish Refugees Committee, Bloomsbury House and later Lingfield; her contacts with Joan Stiebel, Rose Henriques, Alice Goldberger and Zdenka Husserl