13/05/2026
Edith Goldberg was born in southwest Germany in 1928.
After the N***s rose to power in 1933 and growing antisemitism across Germany, Edith’s family’s business began to struggle and eventually closed. The family soon realised that to be safe they would need to leave Germany.
During the Novermber Pogrom (known as ‘Kristallnacht’) in 1938, Edith saw her father and uncle arrested by German officers, her local synagogue stormed and vandalised, and ritual objects burned. Her father and uncle were sent to Dachau concentration camp and did not return for nearly three weeks. This night changed their family; her mother was desperate to get the children out of the country, applying for the Kindertransport scheme to being the girls to England. Edith’s mother was unable to leave due to her responsibilities caring for elderly relatives.
Edith and her sister were sent to Leeds to live with separate foster families on the same street. On the journey over, they were allowed one small case between the two of them, and travelled on a ferry from Rotterdam to Harwich where they were taken to meet their new respective foster parents.
The girls initially struggled in England, attending new schools, attempting to speak an unfamiliar language, but Edith praises her foster family for their supportiveness. Sadly, Edith was unable to contact her parents again and it was not until she was adult that she discovered their fate. They had been murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942.
Edith married in 1951 and, together with her husband, opened a Jewish provisions store in Leeds. Edith went on to become an active member of the Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association, sharing her experiences with school children around the age she was when she was forced out of her home town.
Edith passed away in 2013, but her legacy is memorialised in her children, grandchildren and the exhibition.
This post was written by Jess, one of our student placements studying History at
