One of these children was Shlomo Hammer, born on 13th May 1934 in Lemberg, Poland. In 1987, he
recounted what he remembered of his early life. As a five year old he had to watch the Germans
kill his grandfather; he, and his mother, were able to escape. Shlomo Hammer relates:
We experienced the ghetto, in 1940. My parents were murdered there. Everybody was murdered,
only we children were smuggled away. I was hidden in a bunker. [...] I was hidden in the bunker,
under the earth, for 9 months. [...] When the Russians , the Red Army, liberated us my face lit
up with wonder. [...] We travelled to Cracow where I was placed in a children's home. I then
travelled to Germany with a group of other children. I was a 10 year old orphan. [...] From
Germany I travelled to France. That was an experience. We were told we were to travel to Palestine.
We were taught for this goal. We started to learn in a real school. [...] We were educated to be
able to live in Erez Israel, Aliya Beth, love of country. At this time, as I left the camp I no
longer wanted to be a Jew. After the holocaust. [...]
We came to a camp near Marseille. [...] We arrived in France at night, and were roughly two days there before we were brought aboard the ship, again at night. [...] Everyone had to lie on their sides, not on their backs. Like sardines. The feet all pointed in the same direction. Despite everything I have good memories of the ship.
At the age of 13, Shlomo experienced the tragic journey of the Exodus 1947, the arrival in
Hamburg, on the Runnymede Park, and the final train journey to Lübeck:
We were again loaded onto lorries. From there we were taken to Pöppendorf. Pöppendorf was a
concentration camp. I do not know how long we remained there. We were surrounded by barbed-wire
and watch towers. [...] What distressed us was the rows of British soldiers; I saw Nazis once
again...
Many children from Poland and Hungry survived the holocaust by having been hidden from the Nazis in monasteries and convents, and children's homes. After the war, Jewish Kindertransport organizers, like Hanshomer Haztair, travelled from one cloister to another and fetched these Jewish orphans out from their concealment. These children were given preparation for a life in Palestine, so that they would have a future there. They were to contribute to the building of a Jewish state in their own country.
Istvan Szeisen, Otto Nagyrona and Tamas Magyrona were fetched by Hashomer Haztair from a children's home in Budapest, and taken to the preparation camp in Ansbach. Here they learned Hebrew and Jewish culture. Later they were taken on board the refugee ship to travel to Palestine. Istvan, Otto and Tamas found themselves on board the Exodus 1947 and later in the Pöppendorf and Am Stau camps.
The British camp command suspected that there were non-Jewish children among the Hungarian children,
who had, through coincidence, come aboard the Exodus 1947. The British endeavoured to discover who
their parents were.
In this way, Korohy Koffler, a young Hungarian came aboard the Exodus 1947. He got to know Hashomer
Haztair in
January 1946, in Hungary, and joined them. He told his parents he wanted to make a ten day journey
with an organisation. Two weeks later the parents were informed by a Hashomer Haztair member that
their son was on his way to Palestine. From Ansbach he wrote that he wanted to take responsibility
for his own life. On 28th July 1947, he related that he was on his way to Palestine. He was 16 years
old.
