Walter Reed, saved through the “Kindertransport” program, will address audience

Holocaust survivor, World War II veteran and retired public relations director Walter Reed will give a presentation on his experiences as a teenager in 1930s and 1940s Europe at Dana College on April 29.

The presentation is free and open to the public, will begin at 3:45 p.m. in The Forum in the Durham Center on Dana’s campus in Blair, Neb.

Reed was born Werner Rindsberg in 1924 in a village near Wuerzburg, Germany. His peaceful childhood ended in 1938 when all the Jewish men and boys in his village were arrested and put in jail. After this incident, Reed’s family sent him to a refugee children’s home in Brussels, Belgium, as part of the “kindertransport” program, under which Belgium accepted more than 500 German and Austrian Jewish refugee children.

For the next year, Reed lived on the generosity of Brussels’ wealthy elite. Then in May 1940, the refugee children were forced once again to flee from approaching Nazi troops. In a freight railroad car for days, the children finally found some safety in a tiny village in France called Seyre, south of Toulouse. Their living conditions were harsh, with no heat, little food and frequent disease outbreaks.

After another move and another close call with capture, Reed acquired one of the few American visas issued during the war to Jews. In 1941 he joined his mother’s siblings in New York City, working as a tool-and-diemaker’s apprentice during the day and attending high school at night. In 1943, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and offered U.S. citizenship, at which time he changed his name.

After serving in the Military Intelligence Service, Reed returned to America and became the public relations director for the National Automatic Merchandising Association in Chicago. He focused on his new life, trying his best to “not be a refugee.”

In 1977, Reed started attending reunions of “Kindertransport” children. Since that time, he has been active in planning reunions and speaking on his experiences. His speech at Dana is sponsored by the Save the Children Holocaust Foundation on the request of Professor Diana Brown, associate professor of French and Spanish. Brown translated The Rescue of the Belgium Jews During the Second World War for the Save the Children Holocaust Foundation, as well as other works about Jewish refugees during the war.

Dana College is a private, liberal arts institution that currently enrolls approximately 600 students. The campus is located on 150 acres overlooking the Missouri River Valley in Blair, Neb. Dana grants bachelor’s degrees in more than 20 liberal arts, business, education and pre-professional programs, with an emphasis on personalized teaching from experienced and dedicated faculty. Dana is a college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and its athletic teams compete in the Great Plains Athletic Conference.

More information on Dana College can be found at www.dana.edu.

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For more information contact:
Sarah Cavanah
Communications Coordinator
Dana College
(402) 426-7216
scavanah@dana.edu