In July 1939, Eva Paddock was 3½ years old and, along with her sister, boarded a train that would take her from Prague to England, saving them from the Holocaust. It was the last of the Czech Kindertransport trains.
“While I consider my story important to tell for its documentation of events which might otherwise be forgotten, it’s for me primarily a story of altruism, of love and of courage,” Paddock said in a lecture on Northeastern University’s Boston campus Wednesday. “I too am committed to keeping memory alive as long as I’m able to undermine the attempts of those who would deny the Holocaust and rewrite history.”
Paddock was the guest speaker at the Philip N. Backstrom Jr. Survivor Lecture. The event was part of Northeastern’s annual Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week, and was presented by the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee, the College of Social Sciences and Humanities, the Jewish Studies Program, and the Humanities Center.
Paddock’s story was heartbreaking, sometimes amusing despite the backdrop — her politician father engineered a scheme for Thomas Mann to be named an honorary citizen of the village where he sat on the local council, enabling the exiled German writer to obtain Czech citizenship and escape to the United States — and poignant, revealing the best and worst of humankind. It was also illustrated with artifacts — family portraits, messages from relatives and official papers documenting the story.
