Bob Kirk, a Kindertransport refugee who dedicated his life to Holocaust education, dies at 99

They had 74 happy years together, two child refugees who found love in the UK while they tried to put their anguished past behind them.

And now, within a month of each other, both have passed away. Ann Kirk (see left) died in January, aged 96, and Bob, like her a dedicated Holocaust educator, died in December at the age of 99. As is often the case with long-lived couples, perhaps neither could survive without the other. In a twist of fate, Ann and Bob both arrived in the UK on the Kindertransport.

Bob Kirk came to the UK in May 1939 and met Ann at a club run by the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St John’s Wood, a shul that gave them a sense of deep security and with which they were both permanently involved.

For more than 70 years Bob spoke at schools and communities all over the country as part of his “tireless” dedication to Holocaust remembrance. Both Bob and Ann were involved with the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) for many years and his testimony became part of AJR’s Refugee Voices archive.

Rudolf Kirchheimer was the youngest of three children born to a textile businessman in Hanover, Germany. He described his early childhood, before the Nazis came to power in 1933, as comfortable, but then life for the Jewish community grew increasingly difficult.

He was bullied at school and his classmates were ordered not to associate with Jews. Boycotts and book burnings became a normal spectacle, and he recalled a “sense of unease” within the Jewish community.

His father believed the distinction he had gained in his German army service record during the First World War would ensure his family’s safety. That false sense of security, shared by many at the time, felt justified by the long Kirchheimer paternal line in southern Germany, dating back to about 1700.

But then came the terror of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. On the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938, hundreds of synagogues throughout Germany and Austria were destroyed, homes and businesses were attacked and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Jewish children had to leave state schools, leading to extreme overcrowding in Jewish schools.

Bob’s life story took an abrupt turn with the British government’s decision to accept 10,000 unaccompanied children and his parents booked him on the Kindertransport. Kirk, then 13, left Hanover on May 3, 1939 alone, and made his way to Liverpool Street Station in London.

“The first stop inside the Dutch border was wonderful,” Kirk recalled. “We were met by kind people with drinks and food – and smiles. There had been no smiles from a grown-up outside the family for a long time. My transport went to Liverpool Street… I was collected by a gentleman by the name of Smith – that is all I ever knew about him – and taken to a beautiful house in Hampstead, where I was handed over to the housekeeper.

“Mr Smith was a very generous man. Every child had to have a guarantee of £50; he had sponsored six of us to the tune of £300 – quite a lot in 1939. Each of us stayed with him for a week or so until the next one arrived, and then we had to move on. This was fair, but I had not known it would happen.

“Next, I stayed with a family in Greenford, the Morris family, who had two young children of their own. They sent me to school, where I started to learn some English. The first lesson, luckily, happened to be poetry, which caught my imagination.”

However, the Morris family had also sponsored another boy and Bob was on the move again. He went first to a hostel at Westgate in Kent, followed by another in London, in time to join a school and be evacuated at the beginning of the war.

He was finally sent to Whipsnade, which reminded him of his Liverpool Street arrival, as he was surrounded by lots of children sitting on suitcases. He was finally chosen by two sisters who ran a chicken farm. They took him in with two other children.

He stayed at school until 1941, when he was 16, and was drafted into war work in a factory making instruments for the Navy and RAF. He also joined the Home Guard. In 1944 he joined the army and was sent to Yorkshire, where he worked as an interpreter in a PoW camp.

“Up to the outbreak of war, my parents and I had been in constant touch. That soon changed, and we were restricted to 25-word messages once a month via the Red Cross. Those messages stopped in late 1941, and after the war I found out my parents had been on the first transport out of Hanover, on December 15, 1941 to a concentration camp in Riga, Latvia. They never returned.”

Ann and Bob met at a social club for young Jewish refugees. Its name, Achdudt, meant “togetherness”. They were married on May 21, 1950, and together they threw themselves into raising awareness of the Holocaust and the experience of the Kindertransport through addressing synagogues, schools and events on Holocaust Memorial Day and on other days throughout the year.

In a JC interview with Ann and Bob in 2018, on the eve of a Jewish Museum exhibition on the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport, Keren David described watching Bob unwrap the Iron Cross medal his father was awarded for fighting for Germany in the First World War. “It made no difference in the end,” he says. None of the couple’s parents survived the war.

“The following week, I visit Ann and Bob Kirk in their flat in Northwood… Their sunny living room is packed with family pictures; they have two sons, three grandchildren and have just welcomed their second great-grandchild.

“Their sons David and Andrew…knew almost nothing of their parents’ past until 1992 when the rabbi of their local Liberal shul, Andrew Goldstein, asked them to speak at a meeting to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht. They were nervous but agreed. ‘It was a bit of a relief,’ says Bob, “to be able to talk about it, to ‘come out’.”

In recent years, Bob revisited his former family home in Hanover with his extended family, and placed a Stolperstein (memory stone) outside the house, an experience he found cathartic.

During their lifetimes, Ann and Bob received many plaudits for their educational work. They were awarded the Citron, Sivan and Sefton Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award by the Jewish Volunteering Network for their volunteering work at LJS. Tributes have been paid to them by the Holocaust Education Trust, the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Association of Jewish Refugees, among others.

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, described Bob as “fiercely intelligent, articulate and thoughtful” and noted that he “refused to let what happened to him and millions of others be forgotten, and dedicated years of his life to tirelessly telling his story. Bob spoke softly but his words had a profound impact.”

In her tribute to the couple, Nicky Goldman, chief executive of the Jewish Volunteering Network, said: “Ann and Bob Kirk were chosen last year by the Liberal Jewish Synagogue to be their Lifetime Achievement winners at the JVN Awards 2023 Honouring Volunteers. Members of the LJS for over 70 years…the audience rose to their feet after Bob’s inspirational acceptance speech, which left many in tears.” In his speech Bob said: Describing LJS as both “a home” and “a family”, Bob added: “I like to think that we gave a little bit back. That’s what volunteering is all about.”

Kirk, who was awarded a BEM in 2019 for his contribution to Holocaust education, is survived by his son David and three grandchildren. Andrew pre-deceased his parents. 

Bob Kirk: born 1925. Died December 4, 2024.