RENATE Collins, now living in Rogiet, was only five years old when her mother put her on board a train to the UK with just a few possessions including leather shoes and her ice skates.
She thought she was going on holiday
Instead, she was on the last “Kindertransport” train to leave Prague before war broke out – sending Jewish children to safety in the UK, without their parents.
After she left, the Nazis killed 64 members of her family in the Holocaust.
Mrs Collins was among those yesterday marking Holocaust Remembrance Day.
After making sure her child was safe, Mrs Collins’ mother Hilda Kress, 26, and father Otto Heinz Kress would be sent to concentration camps along with her grandmother, uncle, great aunt and six million other Jews from across Europe.
Mrs Collins, now 81, still wears her mother and grandmother’s engagement rings, which were smuggled out of Treblinka in a loaf of bread.
At a service in Cardiff yesterday, Mrs Collins and other Holocaust survivors passed candles to the next generation.
“Most people are in their 90s now, so we’ve got to hand it on to the next generation to keep the memory,” she said.
The day of remembrance was marked throughout Monmouthshire.
A service was held at St Mary’s Priory Church in Abergavenny where pupils from King Henry VIII school helped lead an act of remembrance and Monmouthshire Council held a service at County Hall.
Holocaust Memorial Day is marked across county