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Dora Love and the Children of Blankenese
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~~~ Dora Love is a retired teacher, who now lives in Colchester in the UK. She is a survivor of the Holocaust, specifically of the Stutthoff concentration camp, and she has spent countless years reaching out and recounting her experiences during and following World War II. Her experiences include the unspeakable horrors of forced evacuations, imprisonment in a ghetto and later at Stutthoff, the loss of loved ones, slave labor and being shipped in boats eastward across the Baltic Sea without food or water, as the Russian armies closed in on the Nazis in the final days of the war.
After liberation and her recovery from starvation and TB, Dora became a translator for the British, assisting them with war-crime investigations, and she later worked for the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and then the American Joint Distribution Committee. Of all the remarkable things Dora did in this period, she feels most proud of her work rescuing Jewish children who had survived the war, many of whom had been in hiding with gentile families. She assisted tracing these children and housing them in a home in Blankenese, near Hamburg, in Germany. The home was opened in early 1946 and was staffed by soldiers of the Jewish Brigades and people assigned by the AJDC, which also provided the children food, medication and books. Nearly 200 children passed through this home, on their way to being resettled and reunited with family, wherever they could be found.
Dora's mission to this day is to bear witness to her experiences, for the betterment of people from all communities and walks of life. She has worked closely in recent years with the history department at the University of Essex, where she helped establish a program for students of Modern History, in which students must take at least two courses in Holocaust Studies. In recognition for her courageous efforts, her advocacy and example, Dora was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex in 2009.
Dora will be in the Charleston area for a few days to attend her grandson's wedding. She will speak at two events under the auspices of the Charleston Jewish Federation and the Remember Program.
The first is the annual community commemoration of Yom HaShoah in downtown Charleston on Sunday May 1, 3 pm, which will begin at the Charleston Music Hall.
The second event is entitled "Dora Love and the Children of Blankenese", a talk followed by a reception, Tuesday, May 3 at 7 pm at the JCC on Wallenberg Blvd.
