12
Stephen Adler
Stephen (Steve) Adler was
born in Berlin, Germany in
1930. He was the younger son
in a middle-class, Jewish
family. At age 7, he was
forced to leave his
neighborhood school and to
enter a Jewish private school.
In the wake of
Kristallnacht
,
the SS and Gestapo arrested
more than 30,000 Jewish
males including Steve’s father.
On November 10
th
, 1938, the
morning after
Kristallnacht
, he
was arrested and taken to the
Sachsenhausen concentration
camp where he was held
prisoner for six weeks before
returning on December 23.
Over the next few months,
conditions for Jews continued
to deteriorate. In January of
1939, the Nazi government
required all Jews to carry identity cards revealing their heritage, and danger became much more
immediate for Steve and his family. In March 1939, three months after his father’s release from
Sachsenhausen, Steve was sent by train to Hamburg to join a
Kindertransport
, or children’s transport,
going to England by ship. Steve arrived in England knowing only one sentence in English and was taken
in by a kindly widow.
When the war started in September 1939, Steve was evacuated with his schoolmates to a small town
north of London. In spring of 1940, Steve and his brother and mother were reunited in London during
the London Blitz. His father joined them in the fall and they traveled by ship for twelve days across the
Atlantic and settled with his family in Chicago.
Mr. Adler was a member and speaker for Holocaust Child Survivors of Connecticut before moving to
Seattle. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the World Federation of Jewish Child
Survivors of the Holocaust, an international educational and advocacy organization of child survivors.
Stephen Adler was born in Berlin, Germany. The
Kindertransport
took Stephen by train from
Hamburg to England.
