My older sister Ruth was very advanced for her age (13). She went to the Berlin Kindertransport offices to ask if we could be accepted after father was deported. They said ‘No, we must look after our German Jewish children first’ [the Blooms were Polish]. So she tried to get on Youth Aliyah [to go to Palestine]. They said ‘You’re too young. Come back next year. We don’t take them at 13’.

She came back & said to my mother that while she was at the Kindertransport, she overheard a group of girls talking about going on the Kindertransport to Belgium. With a date when they will be leaving & the stations they were leaving from. She said, ‘Mutti, there’s only one solution for us. You buy Betty & myself a ticket for England so that we can say we’re joining our uncle & aunt & we will join this Kindertransport & we will follow them to Belgium.” My mother agreed to it. I’m 100% sure if my father had been alive, he would have said no, no way. But she was so courageous that on the 22nd of February 1939 she put us on a train leaving for Belgium not having any foster family to receive us just into the unknown. She bought me a beautiful shoulder bag. She put us on the train. The train started going & she managed to follow it I don’t know how to the next station. I don’t know. Anyway, we said goodbye & that was it.