Kitty Hart-Moxon
Encyclopedia
Kitty Hart-Moxon OBE is a Polish
-English
Holocaust survivor. She was sent to the Auschwitz labour camp in 1943 at the age of 16, where she survived for two years, and was also imprisoned at other camps. Shortly after her liberation in April 1945 by American soldiers, she moved to England with her mother, where she married and dedicated her life to raising awareness of the Holocaust
. She has written two autobiographies entitled I am Alive and Return to Auschwitz.
. She had one brother, Robert, who was five years older. Her father operated an agricultural supply business.
As a child, Hart-Moxon represented Poland as part of the Youth Swimming Team in 1939. She won a bronze medal and was the youngest selected on the squad.
During a holiday when Kitty was 12, her parents decided to leave Bielsko because of its proximity to the German and Czechoslovakian borders. The house was emptied in response to the anti-Semitic
mood which had swept the town. To escape the danger of proximity to Germany, Kitty’s family moved to Lublin
, in central Poland. They left on 24 August 1939. On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany
invaded Poland.
. In the winter of 1940-41, the family attempted to escape to Russia. They made it to the border, but found that it had closed 24 hours previously. They attempted to cross the frozen river by sleigh, but were sighted when they were about three-quarters of the way across and shot at. Forced to return to the Poland side of the river, they abandoned their escape attempt and returned towards Lublin.
The family returned to the vicarage of Father Krasowski, where her father bribed some officials and obtained false documents for her and her mother. With these passports, birth certificates and identity cards, the two were smuggled onto a train of Polish workers bound for Germany. The family split up to increase their chance of survival. Hart-Moxon went with her mother to I.G. Farben in Bitterfeld
and commenced working at a rubber factory.
On 13 March 1943, Hart-Moxon and 12 other Jews at the factory, including her mother, were betrayed and were taken to Gestapo
headquarters. The family members were interrogated, and charged at trial three days later with "endangering the security of Third Reich" and "illegally [entering] Germany with forged papers". They were told that they would be executed and placed in front of a firing squad. After the squad conducted a mock execution
, the victims were told that their sentences had been commuted to hard labor.
Rumors began in August 1944 that Auschwitz was to be evacuated. Hart-Moxon's mother was selected as one of one hundred prisoners to be removed from the camp. She requested that her daughter be allowed to leave the camp. The commandant, for unknown reasons, obliged. So, in November 1944, Hart-Moxon was taken along with several hundred prisoners to Gross-Rosen concentration camp
. Every day, the camp occupants were marched to a nearby town to work in the Philips
electronic factory.
across the Sudeten mountains. These prisoners were chosen to be moved, rather than executed, because Albert Speer
, the German armaments minister, felt that the special skills these prisoners had gained at the Phillips factory would be useful in other German factories for the manufacture of "jamming transmitters and equipment for high-performance aircraft". The prisoners were eventually taken to a train station and shipped across Europe to Porta Westfalica
in northwestern Germany. Only about 200 of the original 10,000 prisoners, including Hart-Moxon and her mother, survived the journey.
In Porta Westfalica, the prisoners were sent to work in an underground factory. From there, the two were eventually sent to Bergen-Belsen
, at which point they were abandoned in a locked train car and left to die. After being released by a group of German soldiers, they were transported to a camp near Salzwedel
.
guards disappeared from the camp. On Saturday, 14 April, Salzwedel was liberated by the American army. Hart-Moxon and her mother began working as translators for the British Army. Later, the two moved to help with the Quaker Relief Team, outside Brunswick
.
Hart-Moxon and her mother tried to locate their family members soon after they were liberated, but found that everyone else had been killed: her father had been discovered by the Gestapo and shot; her brother was killed in battle; and her grandmother was taken to Belzec
concentration camp and died in the gas chamber
s.
While in England, Hart-Moxon became interested in educating people about the Holocaust by telling her life story to the public. This began with her first novel I Am Alive (1961), a fairly short account of her life in Auschwitz. Then, in 1978, Yorkshire Television
(YTV), while doing background research on a project about women who risked their lives to save others during the Nazi era, producer Peter Morley
's team learned about Hart-Moxon and convinced him to meet her. She didn't fit the parameters they'd set for Women of Courage, but after two visits, Morley was so impressed with Hart-Moxon, he submitted a proposal to YTV to accompany her to Auschwitz for her first visit in 33 years and film it, provided she brought along her eldest son, then a young doctor, for emotional support. In his memoirs, Morley wrote, "This, no doubt, was going to be a very raw film... I felt this to be a unique opportunity to add fresh insight to the infamy of Auschwitz as had been portrayed in both fictional and non-fictional films and television programmes."
The resulting documentary, Kitty: Return to Auschwitz, won international awards and was seen by millions. She began to receive mail by the sackful, some arriving addressed only to "Kitty, Birmingham". The documentary inspired her second novel, titled Return To Auschwitz, which was published in 1981. In 2003, she worked with the BBC
to make a second documentary, titled Death March: A Survivor's Story, in which she retraced the death march from Auschwitz-Birkenau back to Germany.
Apart from her work for Holocaust survivors and victims, she also worked as a nurse. She studied through a private nurse training course and at the Birmingham Royal Orthopaedic Hospital
, after which she obtained a job at a private radiology firm. Later she helped her husband set up his own upholstery business.
, an Order of the British Empire
was conferred on Mrs Hart-Moxon for services relating to Holocaust education.
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
-English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
Holocaust survivor. She was sent to the Auschwitz labour camp in 1943 at the age of 16, where she survived for two years, and was also imprisoned at other camps. Shortly after her liberation in April 1945 by American soldiers, she moved to England with her mother, where she married and dedicated her life to raising awareness of the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
. She has written two autobiographies entitled I am Alive and Return to Auschwitz.
Early life
Kitty Hart-Moxon was born Kitty Felix in 1926, in the southern Polish town of BielskoBielsko
Bielsko was until 1950 an independent town situated in Cieszyn Silesia, Poland. In 1951 it was joined with Biała Krakowska to form the new town of Bielsko-Biała. Bielsko constitutes the western part of that town....
. She had one brother, Robert, who was five years older. Her father operated an agricultural supply business.
As a child, Hart-Moxon represented Poland as part of the Youth Swimming Team in 1939. She won a bronze medal and was the youngest selected on the squad.
During a holiday when Kitty was 12, her parents decided to leave Bielsko because of its proximity to the German and Czechoslovakian borders. The house was emptied in response to the anti-Semitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
mood which had swept the town. To escape the danger of proximity to Germany, Kitty’s family moved to Lublin
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
, in central Poland. They left on 24 August 1939. On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
invaded Poland.
Ghettos
The conditions for Jews living in Lublin deteriorated after the invasion. Eventually, all the Jews in Lublin were moved into a single area of the city, creating the Lublin GhettoLublin Ghetto
The Lublin Ghetto was a World War II ghetto created by Nazi Germany in the city of Lublin in occupied Poland, on the Nazi-administered territory of the General Government. Its inhabitants were mostly Polish Jews, although a number of Roma were also present. The Lublin Ghetto, set up in March 1941,...
. In the winter of 1940-41, the family attempted to escape to Russia. They made it to the border, but found that it had closed 24 hours previously. They attempted to cross the frozen river by sleigh, but were sighted when they were about three-quarters of the way across and shot at. Forced to return to the Poland side of the river, they abandoned their escape attempt and returned towards Lublin.
The family returned to the vicarage of Father Krasowski, where her father bribed some officials and obtained false documents for her and her mother. With these passports, birth certificates and identity cards, the two were smuggled onto a train of Polish workers bound for Germany. The family split up to increase their chance of survival. Hart-Moxon went with her mother to I.G. Farben in Bitterfeld
Bitterfeld
Bitterfeld is a town in the district Anhalt-Bitterfeld, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Since 1 July 2007 it has been part of the town Bitterfeld-Wolfen. It is situated approx. 25 km south of Dessau, and 30 km northeast of Halle...
and commenced working at a rubber factory.
On 13 March 1943, Hart-Moxon and 12 other Jews at the factory, including her mother, were betrayed and were taken to Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
headquarters. The family members were interrogated, and charged at trial three days later with "endangering the security of Third Reich" and "illegally [entering] Germany with forged papers". They were told that they would be executed and placed in front of a firing squad. After the squad conducted a mock execution
Mock execution
A mock execution is a stratagem in which a victim is deliberately but falsely made to feel that his execution or that of another person is imminent or is taking place. It may be staged for an audience or a subject who is made to believe that he is being led to his own execution...
, the victims were told that their sentences had been commuted to hard labor.
Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
On 2 April 1943, at the age of 16, Hart-Moxon and her mother arrived at Auschwitz. They found jobs working with dead prisoners, which was less physically demanding than jobs outside the camp. In order to aid in their survival, they took items from the dead, and traded those and other items with other prisoners. At one point, Hart-Moxon became ill with typhus, but eventually recovered. Throughout their imprisonment Hart-Moxon maintained a variety of jobs, including that of night shift worker responsible for sorting through the confiscated possessions of prisoners arriving by train.Rumors began in August 1944 that Auschwitz was to be evacuated. Hart-Moxon's mother was selected as one of one hundred prisoners to be removed from the camp. She requested that her daughter be allowed to leave the camp. The commandant, for unknown reasons, obliged. So, in November 1944, Hart-Moxon was taken along with several hundred prisoners to Gross-Rosen concentration camp
Gross-Rosen concentration camp
KL Gross-Rosen was a German concentration camp, located in Gross-Rosen, Lower Silesia . It was located directly on the rail line between Jauer and Striegau .-The camp:...
. Every day, the camp occupants were marched to a nearby town to work in the Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
electronic factory.
The death marches
After four months, in response to advances by the Allied Forces, the prisoners of Gross Rosen were forced on what would later be called a death marchDeath marches (Holocaust)
The death marches refer to the forcible movement between Autumn 1944 and late April 1945 by Nazi Germany of thousands of prisoners from German concentration camps near the war front to camps inside Germany.-General:...
across the Sudeten mountains. These prisoners were chosen to be moved, rather than executed, because Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
, the German armaments minister, felt that the special skills these prisoners had gained at the Phillips factory would be useful in other German factories for the manufacture of "jamming transmitters and equipment for high-performance aircraft". The prisoners were eventually taken to a train station and shipped across Europe to Porta Westfalica
Porta Westfalica
Porta Westfalica is a town in the district of Minden-Lübbecke, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The name “Porta Westfalica” is Latin and means “gate to Westphalia”. Coming from the north, the gorge is the entry to the region of Westphalia...
in northwestern Germany. Only about 200 of the original 10,000 prisoners, including Hart-Moxon and her mother, survived the journey.
In Porta Westfalica, the prisoners were sent to work in an underground factory. From there, the two were eventually sent to Bergen-Belsen
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle...
, at which point they were abandoned in a locked train car and left to die. After being released by a group of German soldiers, they were transported to a camp near Salzwedel
Salzwedel
Salzwedel of Altmarkkreis Salzwedel, and has a population of approximately 21,500. Salzwedel is located on the German Framework Road.-Geography:...
.
Liberation
In the second week of April 1945, the SSSchutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
guards disappeared from the camp. On Saturday, 14 April, Salzwedel was liberated by the American army. Hart-Moxon and her mother began working as translators for the British Army. Later, the two moved to help with the Quaker Relief Team, outside Brunswick
Brunswick
-Australia:* Brunswick, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne* Electoral district of Brunswick, an electoral district in Victoria* Brunswick Junction, Western Australia, a town near Bunbury* Brunswick Heads, a town on the North Coast of New South Wales-Canada:...
.
Hart-Moxon and her mother tried to locate their family members soon after they were liberated, but found that everyone else had been killed: her father had been discovered by the Gestapo and shot; her brother was killed in battle; and her grandmother was taken to Belzec
Belzec extermination camp
Belzec, Polish spelling Bełżec , was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust...
concentration camp and died in the gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
s.
After the war
In 1946, Hart-Moxon emigrated with her mother to England to live with her uncle who had resided there since before World War II. In 1949, she married Rudi Hart, an upholsterer, who had escaped to England before being caught in the Holocaust. They had two sons, David and Peter.While in England, Hart-Moxon became interested in educating people about the Holocaust by telling her life story to the public. This began with her first novel I Am Alive (1961), a fairly short account of her life in Auschwitz. Then, in 1978, Yorkshire Television
Yorkshire Television
Yorkshire Television, now officially known as ITV Yorkshire and sometimes unofficially abbreviated to YTV, is a British television broadcaster and the contractor for the Yorkshire franchise area on the ITV network...
(YTV), while doing background research on a project about women who risked their lives to save others during the Nazi era, producer Peter Morley
Peter Morley (filmmaker)
Peter Morley, OBE is a German-born British television producer and documentary filmmaker. As a nine-year old child, he fled Nazi Germany with his elder siblings and moved to England, where he has lived ever since...
's team learned about Hart-Moxon and convinced him to meet her. She didn't fit the parameters they'd set for Women of Courage, but after two visits, Morley was so impressed with Hart-Moxon, he submitted a proposal to YTV to accompany her to Auschwitz for her first visit in 33 years and film it, provided she brought along her eldest son, then a young doctor, for emotional support. In his memoirs, Morley wrote, "This, no doubt, was going to be a very raw film... I felt this to be a unique opportunity to add fresh insight to the infamy of Auschwitz as had been portrayed in both fictional and non-fictional films and television programmes."
The resulting documentary, Kitty: Return to Auschwitz, won international awards and was seen by millions. She began to receive mail by the sackful, some arriving addressed only to "Kitty, Birmingham". The documentary inspired her second novel, titled Return To Auschwitz, which was published in 1981. In 2003, she worked with the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
to make a second documentary, titled Death March: A Survivor's Story, in which she retraced the death march from Auschwitz-Birkenau back to Germany.
Apart from her work for Holocaust survivors and victims, she also worked as a nurse. She studied through a private nurse training course and at the Birmingham Royal Orthopaedic Hospital
Royal Orthopaedic Hospital
The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital is an National Health Service hospital situated in Northfield, Birmingham, West Midlands, England. It specialises in bone and joint problems.-History:...
, after which she obtained a job at a private radiology firm. Later she helped her husband set up his own upholstery business.
Honours
In the 2003 Queen's Birthday HonoursQueen's Birthday Honours
The Queen's Birthday Honours is a part of the British honours system, being a civic occasion on the celebration of the Queen's Official Birthday in which new members of most Commonwealth Realms honours are named. The awards are presented by the reigning monarch or head of state, currently Queen...
, an Order of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
was conferred on Mrs Hart-Moxon for services relating to Holocaust education.