Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines tells Holocaust survival story

The Czech-born Holocaust survivor was speaking at the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) annual Holocaust Memorial Day service at Belsize Square Synagogue on Monday (January 22).

The day - which takes place on January 27 to mark the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp - is held to remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, as well as the millions murdered in Nazi persecution of other groups and during more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

Lady Milena and her younger sister were baptised as Methodists by their parents, who were non-practising Jews, before they left Prague as part of Nicholas Winton's Czech Kindertransport in July 1939.

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Aged nine at the time, she and her three-year-old sister Eva Paddock (nee Fleischmann) were among 669 mostly Jewish refugee children saved from the Nazis by the humanitarian.

Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines with fellow Holocaust survivors and refugees at a memorial service in Belsize Square Synagogue (Image: Adam Soller/AJR)

She told assembled guests at the event that Czech and Slovak parents were desperate to send their children to England.

"When Sir Nicholas came to Prague, he had a queue of 2,000 families all asking to get their children on his list," she said.

"The way we got on this Winton train has always remained a mystery. 

Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines, who came to England on Nicholas Winton's Kindertransport in July 1939, lights a candle in Belsize Square Synagogue (Image: Adam Soller/AJR)

"Our parents never talked about it, never knew how my sister and I managed to get on that train."

During the war, Lady Milena attended a Czech school in Shropshire, where a girl told her they had been in the same train compartment together.

She said: "When we left Prague she'd said 'we're not going to cry'."

Survivors of the World War 2 Nazi regime commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day at Belsize Square Synagogue (Image: Adam Soller/AJR)

Another guest speaker was Amos Schonfield, whose grandfather Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld had helped organise visas for the Kindertransports.

When he asked his grandfather how many lives he had saved, he turned around and said: "How many didn't I save?"

"I believe he could have saved hundreds and thousands of lives." Mr Schonfield added.

The service, in which candles were lit by survivors, was led by Rabbi Gabriel Botnik.

Cantor Paul Heller with Rabbi Gabriel Botnik at a Holocaust Memorial Day service at Belsize Square Synagogue (Image: Nathalie Raffray)

In a powerful speech, he said: "We the Jewish people have our own day to remember the atrocities of the Shoah.

"This day is not intended for us, it's meant to remind others how ignorance, hatred, discrimination, and of course antisemitism, can lead to unspeakable horrors that no soul should ever have to experience."

Association of Jewish Refugees chief Michael Newman told service attendees it's 'vital' that people of all nations remember the horrors of the Holocaust (Image: Adam Soller/AJR)

In his speech, AJR chief Michael Newman reflected on the "fragility of freedom", the theme of this year's memorial day.

He said the association was "acutely sensitised" to the fragility of freedom, adding: "The history and experiences of our members underscore, in the rawest sense, just how quickly humanity can crumble.

"Today it is vital, that as a nation, we collectively remember the victims of the Holocaust. Both to honour those whose lives were ripped apart by antisemitism and to ensure that the experiences of the survivors and refugees, and their families, are never forgotten.”