Hedi Argent family photograph

A photograph of Holocaust survivor Hedi Argent. It shows Hedi, aged 10. The photograph was taken for her passport in 1939 so that she could emigrate to Britain and escape Nazi persecution in Austria.

Hedi Argent was born in 1929, and lived in a suburb of Vienna, Austria with her parents, Max and Elise Schnabl. The family were secular Jews, Max was a lawyer, and Elise studied chemistry. Hedi was an only child, but she had a large extended family.

Hedi remembers anti-Jewish racism long before the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938. She recalls being excluded from plays, sports teams, and other activities at school. When anti-Jewish laws were introduced, she remembers Jews being made to scrub the pavements and having stones thrown at them, including her own father. Because they were Jewish, Hedi’s father lost his job, Hedi was unable to go to school, and the family lost their home and many of their possessions.

Hedi’s father was arrested before the November Pogrom (also known as Kristallnacht), which meant he escaped the Nazis' round-up of Jewish men. When he was released, the family escaped to England intending to go to the United States. The family arrived in England in July 1939, but the Second World War broke out and they were unable to complete their journey to America. In England, Hedi’s mother and father could only work as domestic servants while Hedi attended school.

After the war, the family found out that all their relatives had been murdered in the Holocaust.