The Guardian

'A victory ride': cyclists to retrace Holocaust evacuees' journey for 80th anniversary

Kindertransport survivors and descendants to pay tribute to scheme that saved 10,000 young refugees fleeing Nazis
Paul Alexander, 80, and his grandson Daniel, 14, will be part of the commemorative cycle ride from Berlin to London to mark Kindertransport’s 80th anniversary. Photograph: World Jewish Relief/PA

The last time Paul Alexander was at Harwich port in Essex, he was 19 months old and Europe was braced for war. In Leipzig, in eastern Germany, Alexander’s distraught mother had handed her precious child to a stranger on a train, desperate to save him from the horrors that lay ahead.

The Kindertransport carrying young Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe began at the end of 1938. Alexander arrived in Harwich the following July, six weeks before the outbreak of the second world war. Now 80, he has no recollection of the journey.

But next week he will retrace it

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