Lecture
Leon Duval and Trudy Gold
Tuesday 10.11.2026
Leon Duval and Trudy Gold
The Dark Side of the Kindertransport
Tuesday 10.11.2026
How to watch
This lecture starts on 10 November at 5:00pm (UK).
Summary
On 9 November 1938 the pogrom we know as Kristallnacht shattered any illusions that there was a future for Jewish life in Germany. The pogrom was one of the critical catalysts for initiating the Kindertransport which brought 10,000 Jewish children to Britain in 1939. Whereas many of the children were able to rebuild their lives after 1945, many suffered abuse, estrangement and forced conversions to Christianity. After many hours of intense interviews with one survivor who endured years of mental abuse until she, in her own words, “escaped”, Leon Duval wrote a book Read Between the Lines to tell her story, the story of Martha Braun. In this session, held on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, Trudy Gold and Leon Duval discuss the events leading up to the pogrom and the darker side of the Kindertransport.
Leon Duval
Leon Duval was born in Johannesburg but moved to Australia with his wife and daughters in 1975. The Victorian culture confronted in the days before Australia became ethnically diverse prompted them to shorten their surname to Duval. An accountant by profession, Leon discovered that many of the clients he looked after were Holocaust survivors which prompted him to search for a greater understanding of his Jewish inheritance and the underlying causes driving antisemitism. After retiring from professional life and moving to Jerusalem, Leon undertook an extensive course to train as a guide for the Yad Vashem history museum and is now a committed amateur historian spending many hours researching the history of the Jews in Europe and that of his own family’s Lithuanian roots. His occasional blog appears on the Times of Israel platform and he recently published a book telling the story of a Kindertransport survivor.
Trudy Gold
Trudy Gold was the CEO of the London Jewish Cultural Centre and a founding member of the British delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Throughout her career she taught modern Jewish history at schools, universities, and to adult groups and ran seminars on Holocaust education in the UK, Eastern Europe, and China. She also led Jewish educational tours all over the world. Trudy was the educational director of the student resources “Understanding the Holocaust” and “Holocaust Explained” and the author of The Timechart History of Jewish Civilization.