Audio clip from an interview with Ellen Kerry Davis, a Jewish refugee who lives in Swansea, conducted by the USC Shoah Foundation on 6 May 1996: The murder of her mother and six siblings

Description

This audio clip from and oral history interview with Ellen Kerry Davis was recorded by the USC Shoah Foundation on 06 May 1996. In the clip, Ellen talks about the murder of her mother and six siblings.

Ellen Kerry Davis - a short biography

Ellen Kerry Davis was born on 1 September 1929, in the town of Hoof in Kassel, Germany.

She grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family and her father worked in the family’s business (a Jewish butcher). The anti-Jewish laws of the Nazi government during the pre-war period barred the family from running this business and earning a living . Ellen’s home was seized by the Nazis and the family was forced to live in one room in the town’s synagogue. In 1937, when Ellen was eight, a group of Nazi youths burnt down the synagogue at night and attacked the family with bricks. They were rescued and hidden by a local non-Jewish family. Ellen’s father was imprisoned in the Dachau Concentration Camp but subsequently escaped and joined the Pioneer Corps and later lived in Australia.

On 30 June 1939, Ellen boarded the Kindertransport to the United Kingdom and was adopted by an elderly, childless couple in Swansea.

In December 1941, Ellen’s mother and six siblings (the eldest was aged 11, the youngest two) were deported to Riga and were shot and killed on arrival.

Transcript

Amongst all the deportees, the people who were transported in the cattle trucks from Kassel, were two boys who have Russian names. They were sent to a prison - to a camp. And when war was over, they were released by Russians.

They came back to Kassel - the only people who came back to Kassel - and swore affidavits to what they had seen. And one of these affidavits was about my family, because there is no way you could miss one woman with six small children. The eldest was eleven and the youngest was two.

They arrived at Riga. And this has been sworn as an affidavit.

Interviewer: In what year?

In 1941 - December 1941. And the Nazis, or whoever was in charge, wanted to separate my mother from my brothers and sisters. And my eleven-year old brother stood in front of my family with his arms stretched out, as if to embrace them, and said - turned around to the Nazis and said, "We are going to die. We will die together". And they shot them there and then.

Sources:

Davis, Ellen Kerry, Kerry’s Children (Bridgend: Seren, 2004)

USC Shoah Foundation, Ellen Kerry Davis, interviewed by Helene Elkus, video testimony, Visual History Archive, 6 May 1996
https://vha.usc.edu/testimony/14724?from=search [11 December 2023]

Depository: USC Shoah Foundation.

• https://collections.ushmm.org/search/ (link opens in new window)