Voices of Holocaust Survivors: The story of Esther Starobin

Mergen had the extraordinary opportunity to conduct an interview with Holocaust survivor Esther Starobin through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. As you read on, take a look at her personal story of escaping on the Kindertransport, surviving wartime challenges, and more.

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Written By Kamilla Jumayeva And Dina Ayele

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Esther Starobin

When she arrived in London at just five years old, she carried little more than a tag with her name and the hope her parents had placed in the Kindertransport. While she grew up in safety with an English foster family, her parents’ fate would be tragically different.

The Night of Broken Glass

Things took a turn for the worst on November 9th-10th, 1938, when Nazi leaders unleashed a series of pogroms or violent attacks against the Jewish population in Germany. This event came to be known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, because of the shattered glass that littered the streets after the vandalism and destruction of Jewish-owned businesses, synagogues, and homes.

My sisters in Aachen started to go to school in the morning. Unlike today, news wasn't known immediately, and they were on their way to school and saw the synagogue burning and were told to go home.

They [sisters] didn't talk a lot about their experiences, but they did mention that there were people in my aunt's house at night and they were gone in the morning. My aunts must have been helping them to leave Germany.

In Adelsheim, people came from other villages, and a couple of people from Adelsheim joined them. They took the Torah, the holy books from the synagogues, out of the synagogue and burned them. They made people go out of their houses and mistreated them. Luckily, my parents' house was not on the main road, so nothing happened to them that night.

Kristallnacht convinced many German Jews, including my parents, that life under the Nazis had become intolerable. In 1939, my parents made the extraordinary decision to send all of their daughters on a Kindertransport (from German “children’s transport” – a British rescue operation that brought about 10,000 jewish children to Great Britain to escape Nazi persecution) to England.

After Kristallnacht, in England, the Jewish community, the Quakers, and other religious groups went to Parliament to ask if they could bring Jewish children to England to save them. Parliament said yes. The children had to travel unaccompanied, and there was a 50-pound fee—equivalent to about $5,500 today. 

Life After Escape

My sisters were still living in Aachen, but they left soon. 

My Aunt Hannah, another of my mother's sisters, was living in London at the time, working as a maid. She found them places to stay when they arrived. My older sister lived with a family that took her to Scotland, and she lived with them for about a year and a half, and then came back at 16 to live with Aunt Hannah and to work. 

At some time, the police came to the door and said, “Do you know who this is?” She didn’t recognize the name, but it turned out to be her foster father, who had actually been spying when he was in Scotland.

Edie lived with a family in England, but when the heavy bombing started in London, the Blitz, all the children in London were sent out of the city. Edie went to live in the countryside, and she thought she was treated very badly there. Who knows, maybe she was a teenager, and they just treated her like a teenager, but she eventually joined the women’s ATS and was in the army.

Ruth lived with a doctor in London, and then was sent to live with a family in Tunbridge Wells, and later ended up in a hostel. She sometimes said it was because she didn’t do the Jewish lessons that were sent to her, but I don’t know if that’s true.

Months before World War II

I arrived in London in June 1939, several months after my sisters, and just months before World War II officially began. Sarah was the name the Nazis added to all Jewish women’s names, just another way of separating us out from the rest of the population. 

I was placed by Quakers in a small rural community in England. My foster father worked in a shoe factory owned by a Jewish man who put up a sign on the bulletin board: “Will anyone take one of these children?” They really wanted a boy because they had a son, but they got me.

I was lucky. They were wonderful people, and I lived with them for eight years. They were very fundamental Christians, went to chapel, and of course, I went with them. When I first got there, I was afraid of Uncle Harry, but before I even got there, the woman who was escorting me sent them a letter.

I took a couple of things with me from Germany that lasted: a little toy dog and a pair of shoes. My foster mother saved them. The shoes are now at the Holocaust Museum.

I had scarlet fever when I first got there and was in quarantine, but their son Alan played with me through the window. I was very happy there. We had a bomb shelter, carried gas masks, and grew vegetables and chickens. My sisters visited on occasion, but it was hard to travel during the war.

From Gurs to Drancy to Auschwitz

While we were in England, my parents and my brother Herman remained in Germany. On October 22, 1940, all the Jews in Baden were told to report with one suitcase and supplies for three days. 

My parents, my brother, and the other Jewish families of Adelsheim were sent to Gurs, a concentration camp in France. Men and women were separated. My father’s wooden leg wasn’t sent with him at first, so he wasn’t very mobile. My mother worked in the kitchen.

In France, an organization called OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants – a French Jewish humanitarian organization) took children out of the camps. They housed, fed, and educated them. My brother was sent to Chateau du Chabane, and in 1941, OSE brought 1,000 children to the United States. 

My brother came here then, to Washington, D.C., to live with an aunt and uncle. My parents were later sent from Gurs to Rivesaltes, and then ultimately to Drancy, which was the exit camp to Auschwitz. They were deported to Auschwitz on August 14, 1942, and murdered upon their arrival. I don’t remember my parents at all.

In the 1980s, my sister Bertel revealed that she had letters our parents had written from the camps. My mother wrote most of them, with my father adding a line or two. She mentioned losing so much weight she could fit into Bertel’s old clothes. She knew Herman had made it to the U.S. and urged us to go there and to stay together as a family.

In 1947, Bloomsbury House arranged for us to come to the United States, where Herman already lived. My foster mother wrote to my uncle asking if I could stay, but he said we needed to be together. I loved my life with the Harrisons and did not want to leave. But in November 1947, we sailed on the Queen Mary. Eventually, I joined my sisters and brother in Washington, D.C.

Starting Over in the United States

At first, life there was difficult, living with an aunt and uncle in a crowded house. Later, my sisters got jobs and an apartment and took me with them. They made sure I finished high school and helped me go to college.

We built a family life in the U.S. We celebrated holidays together, and Bertel fulfilled our mother’s wish that we remain united as a family.

When I was choosing a career, opportunities for women were limited. I didn’t want to be a nurse, and social work required more study, so I became a teacher. I loved teaching – both young children and later middle schoolers. I thought it was important to help students question what they learned, what they saw around them, and what they read.

If I could tell my younger self one thing during the Holocaust, it would be to look around and notice how people adapt and survive, how they accept those from other cultures, and what individuals can do to help others. I would remind myself to remember people’s names, because it is unfortunate that I blanked out many parts of my life when moving from one stage to another.

It is very important to share history and learn from it, to understand the causes of the Holocaust, and to pay attention to what is happening in the world around us. Our lives were upended, and the effects go far beyond the survivors.