Bath woman, 95, 'owes her life' to Kindertransport after family killed in Holocaust

  • Watch Richard Payne's interview with Friedel Hollis


A 95-year-old care home resident from Bath says she 'owes her life' to Kindertransport after escaping Germany in the Second World War.

Friedel Hollis, who lives at the Midford Manor Care Home, managed to avoid being sent to a concentration camp after being put on a train out of the country like thousands of other Jewish children when she was 10-years-old.

She would never see or hear from her parents and sister again. Later discovering what she feared, that they had perished in the Nazi's concentration camps.

She told ITV News West Country she felt like her family knew they may never see her again.

Friedel was moved to Horfield in Bristol where Maurice and Hazel Clayton paid a £50 deposit to take her in.

"Oh they did know, I think they did know because things had moved very fast from the time that war broke out.

She says she had no choice but to adapt to the change.

"We were sufficiently loving and geared to change and falling in with other peoples plans."

Friedel was moved to Horfield in Bristol where Maurice and Hazel Clayton paid a £50 deposit - as much as a year's rent - to take in Friedel in July 1939.

She stayed in England, went on to get married, had four children and, after gaining a university degree, became a social worker.

She now has seven grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren and has written a memoir to tell her story.