Gathering the Voices

Moniek gives his reaction to Michael’s work. This is episode 6 of 6 of a mini series - Due to popular request we are releasing all six episodes. At a meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, organised by The Association of Jewish Refugees, he heard Michael Tobias OBE, who is a genealogist, offer to trace family members. He said sadly to Michael that he did not think that Michael could help him. Michael Tobia...

Michael explains how he tried to trace Moniek ‘s family This is episode 5 of 6 of a mini series - Due to popular request we are releasing all six episodes. At a meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, organised by The Association of Jewish Refugees, he heard Michael Tobias OBE, who is a genealogist, offer to trace family members. He said sadly to Michael that he did not think that Michael could help him. Mi...

Moniek explains why he was punished and sentenced to five years imprisonment and what happened to his father, brother and mother. This is episode 4 of 6 of a mini series - Due to popular request we are releasing all six episodes. At a meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, organised by The Association of Jewish Refugees, he heard Michael Tobias OBE, who is a genealogist, offer to trace family members. He s...

We find out about Moniek Garber’s life before the Second World War. ‘Finding Moniek’s Family ‘ Moniek Garber thought he was only person left in his family to have survived the Holocaust. This is episode 3 of 6 of a mini series - Due to popular request we are releasing all six episodes. At a meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, organised by The Association of Jewish Refugees, he heard Michael Tobias OBE,...

Michael talks about two different cases that he worked on, tracing relatives of children who survived the Holocaust. This is episode 2 of 6 of a mini series - Due to popular request we are releasing all six episodes. Moniek Garber thought he was only person left in his family to have survived the Holocaust. At a meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, organised by The Association of Jewish Refugees, he hear...

Episode 1 of 6 , Michael discusses his career as a genealogist and some of the organisations that he has worked with. This is episode 1 of 6 of a mini series, a new one will be released every week commencing from 29th Jan 2026 ‘Finding Moniek’s Family ‘ Moniek Garber thought he was only person left in his family to have survived the Holocaust. At a meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, organised by The As...

Finding Moniek's Family Moniek Garber thought he was the only person left in his family to have survived the Holocaust. At a meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, organised by The Association of Jewish Refugees, he heard Michael Tobias OBE, who is a genealogist, offer to trace family members. He said sadly to Michael that he did not think that Michael could help him. Michael Tobias is an award-winning pro...

Howard Singerman is the son of Susan Singerman, a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp. Susan died in January 2011, but Howard keeps her memory alive by visiting schools and telling pupils about her experiences in the camps. BBC Scotland has granted Gathering the Voices permission to re-publish the audio on our website and podcast channel.

Evelyn was born in Leipzig in 1933. Evelyn and her mother were deported to Poland in 1938 but managed to escape to Britain as her father had set up a factory. Her Polish grandparents did not survive.  The other grandparents lived in Berlin throughout the war.  Her father set up a furrier's business in Glasgow. Evelyn worked in the business too then married and had children. 

Dany Metzstein (Danielle Kahn) was born in Montpellier, France in 1942. Her parents were in hiding and her father was involved with the Maquis. They survived the war in France, but after her father died, Dany had to stay in an orphanage and then a boarding school. She came to live in Motherwell, Scotland with her mother, stepfather and brother, and later met the love of her life, Isi, and had thre...

Erna Grace (Rabner) was born in Dortmund, Germany in 1930.  Erna came on the Kindertransport when she was only eight years old.   She had diphtheria while living in the reception camp in Harwich.  She was taken in by Nurse Livingstone and her family In Glasgow with whom she lived with till she married. Sadly, she never saw her parents again. Erna was a hairdresser and married Jack....

Saskia Tepe was born in 1954 and lived in a Displaced Persons’ Camp outside Nurnberg until she was 7.  Saskia describes the bravery of her mother Brigitte in escaping from a train to Auschwitz and her long journey to safety.  Brigitte suffered greatly under the Nazis a Mischling (mixed ancestry) then under the Czechs as a Sudeten German, and finally as a refugee in the DP camp.  Sas...

This Audio comic relates a moving poem by Howard Singerman which is dedicated to his aunt who died in the Holocaust. Find out more by visiting our website.  The Common Good Comics Project – Gathering The Voices Scotland

Marion was born into a wealthy family in Krakow. Aged only 7, together with her family she fled the fighting east into Russia, where they were interned as Poles and sent to a logging camp in Siberia. After they were released from there, they travelled through Kazakhstan and ended up in Uzbekistan for the rest of the war. In 1946, she joined her aunt in Glasgow, where she completed her education an...

Rosa Sacharin came alone to Britain in the very first Kinder transport. Born in Berlin in 1925, Rosa remembers first-hand what it was like to grow up during the rise of Nazism in Germany. She tells of how her mother, a widow, bravely helped other young Jews in Berlin to survive. Initially after she arrived in Scotland, things did not get much easier for Rosa. But Rosa bore her life with fortitude...

Listen to a fascinating interview with a remarkable man, Henry Wuga . Henry talks about his childhood in Nuremberg, where he was a schoolmate of Henry Kissinger – a fellow refugee who later became the US Secretary of State. He describes coming to Scotland on the Kindertransport. Discover what happened to Henry when, just 16, he was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man. Henry went on to bu...

‘To say goodbye to your parents at the station in Hamburg… I will never, never forget waving goodbye to my parents when I was on the train and they were on the platform running along.’ In 1939, Ingrid Wuga arrived in Britain on the Kinder transport. She found shelter initially in Leicestershire, but after her parents managed to escape from Germany and find jobs in West Kilbride, Ingrid was reunite...

For most of his life, Joe Cent didn’t know he was a refugee. Joe was born in France in March 1937. His parents were both from Warsaw but had moved to France in the 1920s to escape antisemitism in Poland. However, in 1940 the Nazis invaded France and established control over the north of the country. Joe tells how, thanks to a lucky encounter, his family all managed to leave France and establish a...

Moniek Garber was born in 1923 in Wolozin, a town which was then part of Poland but is in present day Belarus. Wolozin had a long tradition of Jewish learning, and 80% of the town’s population were Jewish. By the end of the war, 95% of the Jews in the town had been killed. Before eventually settling in Scotland, Moniek’s fascinating journey took him across the globe. Listen to find out what happen...

On the morning of the 3rd September 1939, Lore Lucas’s parents and sister – who had been visiting her in London – left Britain to return home to Holland, leaving Lore alone with her first husband. War was declared 1 hour later. Listen to the eventful life of Lore Lucas – including her happy childhood, marriage, divorce, a wonderful 2nd marriage and the awful fate of her family in Holland.

Arriving in the UK in 1947, Halina Moss learnt how to be British from a book. Halina was born into a politically active family in Warsaw in 1929. Her testimony encompasses her family’s return from exile in Russia and her shock at discovering that almost all of her friends and relatives had perished. Listen to hear her vividly recount her lucky escapes, her mother’s terrifying experiences and her f...

Though the war started when she was just seventeen, Judith Rosenberg describes a happy childhood in Gyor in north west Hungary. Indeed, Hungarians were largely unaffected by the conflict until the Nazis invaded the country in April 1944. Soon after, Judith’s whole family was sent to Auschwitz, and she never saw her father again. Listen to Judith’s testimony to discover how her watch-repairing skil...

Eva Szirmai begins by describing her experiences as an apprentice photographer in Budapest. She goes on to speak about life under the Germans – the yellow star houses, the arrests, the hunger, the curfew, the ghetto and the good luck that saved her life. Eva chronicles her life with her husband and family under the Cold War Russian regime, ending with their ‘escape’ to Glasgow where her husband ha...

At the age of 93, Alice Malcom was welcomed back to Vienna by the Austrian President, Alexander Van der Bellen. It was the first time she had returned there since she escaped in 1938. Learn first-hand what it was like for a Jewish girl to live in Vienna before and after the Anschluss of March 1938 – when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany without a single shot being fired. Finally hear why Alice...

Welcome to Gathering the Voices podcasts, this is a limited series of episodes, featuring interviews exploring the stories people have told to escape Nazi persecution and reach Scotland