Holocaust survivor given MBE for 'best job I've ever done' (From Harrow Times)
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Herman Hirschberger given MBE in Queen's New Year honours list
10:13am Friday 31st December 2010 in News
By Jack Royston
Herman Hirschberger at a Holocaust Memorial Day event with pupils from Bentley Wood High School.
A STANMORE holocaust survivor on the New Year honours list says fighting for justice for Jewish refugees was the “best job I've ever done”.
Hermann Hirschberger, of Beverley Gardens, Stanmore, won a 14-year battle to secure compensation pensions for Kindertransport evacuees from the German government.
He will be given an MBE by the Queen for services to the Jewish community and the Kindertransport evacuees.
He said: “I was very proud when I found out and I felt it was nice to be appreciated. What I got it for is the best job I've ever done as a person.
“I fought against an injustice which was due to the German government not paying compensation which was owing to some of the people who came with Kindertransport and that fight took me 14 years.
“I think if you ask me, that was the best job I ever did because several hundred people benefited.”
Many Jewish children were saved from the Nazis on trains, known as Kindertransport, run from Germany and surrounding countries to Britain in specially organised rescue missions.
Mr Hirschberger himself escaped on one of them but, like many spared Nazi persecution in this way, he never saw his parents again and discovered only later that they had been killed at Auschwitz.
The European Court of Justice decided in 1990 Kindertransport refugees should be entitled to compensation pensions from the German government but Mr Hirschberger had to battle for years to ensure they got what they were owed.
The German government initially stated that a European law meant the former evacuees could not receive pensions from both the British and German governments at the same time.
It was only through years of lobbying, including hundreds of phone calls and dozens of letters to civil servants and ministers, that Mr Hirschberger convinced the then pensions minister Michael O'Brien to pursue a change in the law.
NathanielWenger says...
12:13am Sun 2 Jan 11
I have too many words for a Jew; I have so many that I have to explain them I'm so furious. This is in reference to Anne Frank and the Jewish community and countless other communities. Civilocity is a form of government where the people watch the ruler or elected official entirely amongst their reign. I wonder if Anne Frank would have included civilocity in her second book if she had known what it is. Well if she didn't she would allow what happened to her to happen to someone else in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia after it happened to her. What civilocity is to you is a word what it is to her is a breath.
It is almost like Anne Frank wrote about the wrong thing and the holocaust survivors are writing about the wrong thing. Civilocity is the abolishment of genocide. Civilocity makes sure a genocide never happens again. You are either for genocide happening again or against genocide happening again? Holocaust survivors are not writing about making sure a genocide never happens again because its happening in Sudan.
Now, if Anne Frank wrote about the wrong thing how do you think I feel towards what the living holocaust survivors are writing about?
If it wasn’t for Sudan I would understand waiting to release civilocity but because of Sudan and an arrest warrant out for Omar al Bashir for genocide I don’t understand the mainstream media waiting to release civilocity over three years after civilocity was written because what civilocity is and what genocide is and especially because Anne Frank only hid for two years and I really don’t like any of you because your waiting.
Everyone is waiting for the presidents statement on civilocity because he hasn't allowed the holocaust survivors or the mainstream press to report civilocity. How holocaust survivors for the last three years have reacted to civilocity is the most repulsive thing that has ever happened in history more so then the holocaust.