Forced apart

On 20 April 1939, Beate Hammett (nee Beer)’s parents sent her on an uncertain journey into another life on the Kindertransport. Her large suitcase, probably too heavy for a nine-year old to carry, was filled with new clothes, two silver cutlery sets bearing the family’s initials (the extent of the permitted valuables), books and an album of photographs.

Beate recalls, ‘folded in tissue-paper lay a blue party-frock lovingly smocked by my mother, which had very big hems and pleats in the sleeves for future growth.’

These coat hangers were amongst the items packed into her suitcase. When she said farewell to her parents at the train station in Berlin, on route to England, she never knew that it would be the last time she would see them. In 2004, Beate donated her Kindertransport suitcase to the Museum. Gradually, she has donated other items that were in the suitcase as she feels that she is able to part with them. They are her only remaining link to her parents. Her mother died of cancer in 1941 and her father, who was the chief architect of the Berlin Jewish community, was murdered in 1944.