Liesel Carter who lives in Leeds talks about how she fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and her journey in the UK. She talks about the holocaust anniversary and its importance.
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00:00I'm Liesl Carter and I came to England in January 1940 after the war had been on for
00:11almost four months. I was travelling on my own at the age of four and I first of all
00:20came and settled with a family in Hull and then I was in Goathland and I kept being moved
00:27about until I eventually came to live in Leeds where I've lived ever since. I was with Jack
00:35and Mary Wynne and went to school here and eventually met my husband here and married
00:45and settled down and this is my home. The only thing I remember most vividly was being
00:54in Norway with the Alfsons. That was the family that took me in at Christmas 1939 and I stayed
01:04with them about four weeks but in 1983 we finally found the Alfsons and I contacted
01:15them and I renewed my friendship with them and went to see them in Norway which was wonderful.
01:22I was able to say thank you for saving my life but I lost most of my family. One cousin
01:31was in Theresienstadt with her children and they were all murdered in 1944 just before
01:41the war was nearly over really. So my brother managed to get away. He was a good swimmer
01:48and he managed to swim over some big river or something and finally ended up in France
01:55and he joined the Free French and was fighting with the Free French in North Africa and then
02:01after Paris was deliberated he came to find my mother and me here in England but we weren't
02:10very friendly because there was such a big age gap between us. 15 years is a lot. My mother was
02:19called Martha Meyer. Mother was working as a housekeeper for various families. First of all
02:27a family in Hull but they didn't want a little girl running around because the husband was a
02:34very ill man. So I was fostered with a family in Cottingham and then later on with another family
02:42in Goldsland and then eventually came to Leeds where my mother changed her position and worked
02:49for a refugee family in Harrogate. So I used to see my mother when it was her days off and I stayed
02:58with Jack and Mary Wynne until I got married in 1958. The most important thing I remember was
03:07being in Norway for Christmas and being given a dollopram for Christmas. The anniversary of
03:17the war being over and the liberation and everything, it means a lot because people
03:24were able to connect and find out what had happened to their families. My younger daughter
03:34did a search and she found out that from the near and extended family we lost 250 members,
03:43which is a lot. But I didn't know most of them because I was so young. But yes, it's going to
03:52be a big celebration on Sunday at the Varieties and I'll be speaking there as well. There's so
04:01much hate against people for their colour and their religion and whatever. It needs to be told
04:09and just get on with living and being friends with people. Why hate somebody because they
04:17weren't born in this country? If they're a nice person, I want them as a friend and I've got lots
04:25of friends.