‘I’ll probably feel emotional’: Kindertransport centenarian prepares to revisit site of family separation

North Shields’ Gabriele Keenaghan was 12 when she was evacuated from Nazi Austria in 1939. She remembers the shock of leaving her family at Westbahnhof station

Gabriele Keenaghan still remembers the day in April 1939 when she said goodbye to her grandmother at a Vienna railway station for a Kindertransport to Britain – tears were strictly forbidden.

“I was apprehensive and I was worried because Nazis in black uniforms were on the platform,” she said. “I was only 12 years old so I think they were frightening … terrifying.

“People had been told that there were to be no emotional scenes, they didn’t want any emotion shown by anyone. I tried not to cry. It was very difficult. My grandmother … she smiled.”

This week Keenaghan will mark her 100th year by returning to Vienna’s Westbahnhof, a place which changed, if not saved, her life, and there might be tears.

“I haven’t thought about how I’ll feel – I probably will feel emotional.”

Keenaghan, a retired head teacher, is speaking at her home in North Shields before what will be an epic trip to Vienna with several generations of her family.

The plan, hatched for her centenary, was nearly scuppered because Lufthansa cancelled routes from Newcastle. Fortunately, a good samaritan came to the rescue offering the use of a private jet, and the family admit they have been bowled over by the generosity.

She was awarded the British Empire medal for her services to Holocaust education, recounting what is a remarkable life story in the hope it might bring “kindness, tolerance and acceptance of diversity” in others.

Keenaghan, an only child, said she did not even know she was Jewish until after the Nazis invaded Austria .

Her mother, Hildegard, was a Catholic who died suddenly in 1935. Her father, Josef, was Jewish and manufactured heating stoves.

The young Gabriele was a boarder at a Catholic convent school run by nuns when the Nazis came and told pupils they would all be moving.

“The authorities came into the convent to tell us which schools we had to go to. We were all standing in the hall and names were called for this school, that school. At the end, I was the only one left standing. And I thought: ‘What’s happening to me?’”

She was told she would have to go to a Jewish school and a yellow star of David was sewn on to her coat. “I hadn’t realised that my father was a Jew. I didn’t know. I don’t think I even knew what being a Jew meant.”