Trude Silman MBE
Trude was born in 1929, in Bratislava in the former Czechoslovakia. After the Nazis forced her school to close in March 1939, her parents were desperate for her to leave the country with her brother. Her sister had managed to leave on the Kindertransport some months earlier. On arrival in England, Trude stayed in numerous hostels, foster families and boarding schools until she moved to study Biochemistry at Leeds University, where she subsequently worked as a university lecturer. In later life she learned her father perished in the Holocaust but her mother remains one of the two million missing. She received an MBE for services to Holocaust education. (Domestic Service, Came With Parents or Close Family, With Foster Family, Death march, Auschwitz)
... I have absolutely no memory of saying goodbye. I cannot remember whether I kissed them, whether I hugged them, or what we said to one another. This memory has been completely erased from my mind. The pain of that moment must have been so great that I have no recollection of it whatsoever.
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