Henry Wuga
Eyewitness to History
Henry Wuga was born in Nuremberg in 1924. His family was Catholic on his father’s side and Jewish on his mother’s side. Henry Wuga himself was raised Jewish.
After being forced to leave school in Germany at age 14, he began an apprenticeship as a cook at the kosher kitchen of the Tannhäuser Hotel in Baden-Baden. In May 1938, he was able to escape the country with a Kindertransport (Children’s Transport) to Scotland, where he was interned as an “enemy alien” after the war began.
After ten months of internment on the Isle of Man, Henry Wuga was released in spring 1941. Back in Glasgow, he attended the Refugee Club, where he met like-minded people from similar backgrounds, including his future wife Ingrid Wolff. Henry and Ingrid married in December 1944.
Henry’s father died that same year, and as a result his mother no longer had the protection of a non-Jewish spouse. In January 1945, she went into hiding in the countryside near Nuremberg, where she experienced the end of the war.
Henry Wuga is among the museum’s cherished donors and has been closely connected to the Jewish Museum Berlin for years as an eyewitness to history.
What were Kindertransporte?
Kindertransporte (“childrens’ transports”), rescue operations in 1938–39 for Jewish minors from Nazi Germany after the terror of November 1938; Britain was the main receiving country for 10,000 refugees
Video recording of Henry Wuga: A Nuremberger from Glasgow, 23 October 2017, in German; Jewish Museum Berlin
Photos
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Henry Wuga as an apprentice at the kosher kitchen of the Tannhäuser Hotel in Baden-Baden, 1938; photo: Henry Wuga
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Henry Wuga with his parents shortly before his emigration to England with the Kindertransport, 12 May 1939; photo: Henry Wuga
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Henry Wuga; photo: Hauke Cornelius
Henry Wuga as an apprentice at the kosher kitchen of the Tannhäuser Hotel in Baden-Baden, 1938; photo: Henry Wuga
Henry Wuga with his parents shortly before his emigration to England with the Kindertransport, 12 May 1939; photo: Henry Wuga
