Margit Annemarie Diamond (z”l)
b. December 2, 1927
“My mother found out about the Kindertransports, which took children to safety. In May of 1939 she put me on a Kindertransport to England. I had just turned 11.”
Margit Diamond enjoyed a carefree childhood and experienced no discrimination until Hitler’s accession to power in 1933. Then the situation of German Jewry steadily deteriorated. Kristallnacht convinced Margit’s mother to secure a place for her on a Kindertransport to England. So Margit’s recently widowed mother sent her only child into the unknown in May of 1939, not knowing whether they would ever see each other again. In England, Margit was taken in by the principal of an elite boarding school. Fortunately, her mother managed to get out of Germany to Ireland on a domestic servant visa, only a few days before the outbreak of war.
Upon high school graduation, Margit worked her way through London University and traveled extensively around Europe and the Middle East. Being multilingual, she found good jobs everywhere she went. One such job was in the south of France, where she prepared North African Jews for their prospective new life in Israel. Eventually she, too, went to Israel, before immigrating to the U.S. with her mother in 1954. Margit’s aunt was already living there after surviving the war years in Shanghai, China.
Margit lived in New York, where she met her late husband, Irwin. They had two children, whom they raised in Illinois. After Irwin’s death in 1990, Margit eventually moved to Pittsburgh to be closer to her children and three grandchildren.
More about Margit
StoryCorps Pittsburgh: Margit Diamond | 90.5 WESA
Holocaust survivor recalls Kristallnacht, Jews of Shanghai | Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle