Auschwitz 80: the Chichester woman who bravely embodies the need to remember

The Holocaust opera The Last Train to Tomorrow will be offered in Chichester’s Minerva Theatre on Monday, January 27 and also on Tuesday, January 28.

The production marks the tenth anniversary of the Chichester Marks Holocaust Memorial Day committee whose chairman Clare Apel embodies why we must never forget. Clare, who is also chairman of Chichester District Council, helped set up the memorial committee in 2015 because of the huge number of her family and her husband's family who were killed by the Nazis.

While in Vienna a couple of years ago, Clare visited a memorial wall, opened in October 2021 outside the National Bank, where the names of 65,000 Austrian Jews are recorded. Astonishingly, more than 50 of the names are members of Clare's family.

Speaking at the time, Clare described the visit as emotionally exhausting: “It was very emotional. I shed a lot of tears. It was so tough to go but it felt so right and I felt it really brought it home to the younger generation, just the horror of what happened. You see row upon row upon row of names and they put the name and the date of birth and you look and you see the names of little ones that were born in 1940 or 1939. And you realise they were just children. It really brought home the horror of it, not just in Austria but the horror of it when you think that this was being replicated all across Europe.”

Clare was making an emotional pilgrimage to Vienna where the remarkable British intelligence agent Thomas Kendrick saved both her parents lives before the war.

Kendrick was a British spy who rescued more than 10,000 Jews. Clare’s parents Frederick (who changed his name to Stephen after coming to England) and Margery Eisinger were the very first people he saved, receiving from Kendrick the false papers which enabled them to escape with their children, Peter, aged three, and Anthony, aged 11 months.

Clare discovered Kendrick’s name a couple of years ago through reading Helen Fry’s book Spymaster: The Man Who Saved MI6.

Two years ago, Kendrick was honoured in Vienna. Clare was invited to the Austrian capital to attend the unveiling of a plaque in the British Embassy in Vienna commemorating him and his team for the humanitarian work they did. Clare attended with two of her sons, two of her brother Peter’s children and two of her brother Anthony’s children. Had it not been for Kendrick, none of them – including Clare – would have been born.

Continuing the commemoration, Clare, through the Chichester Marks Holocaust Memorial Day committee, now brings The Last Train to Tomorrow to Chichester. An opera composed by Carl Davis, it tells the story of the flight of 10,000 children from the Nazis in 1938-39. Kindertransport rescue trains to London, such as the ones organised by Sir Nicholas Winton from Prague, carried the children to safety.

Children from Chichester-area schools will sing and play the parts of the children, accompanied by a professional orchestra conducted by Howard Moody. Tickets from the CFT.