Bronia Snow

Born: 1927

Place of Birth: Prague

Arrived in Britain: 01/06/1939

Interview Summary

Date of interview: 05/07/2024

Bronia Snow was born Bronia Ringlerova in September 1927 in Prague. Her parents Esta and Jacob had come from Krakow and Przemsyl in Poland to set up a film distributing business in Prague. Bronia remembers a happy childhood with skiing holidays in winter and summer holidays in Marienbad. Her parents despite working long hours talked with her about current affairs but when the Germans marched into 1939 Bronia felt that things were changing. She was not told that she would go on Sir Nicholas Winston’s Kindertransport to England on 1 June 1939. She remembers the day she was leaving, standing on the platform in fear of the heavily armed German soldiers. Bronia didn’t know that she would never see her parents and her six-years younger brother Leo again. The plan had been for all four to go to the USA where an affluent uncle was preparing their emigration. Her family was deported to Theresienstadt and later on to Auschwitz where they died.

Bronia was taken in by relatives who lived in Hampstead and had three daughters. Despite lacking the warmth of her parental home in Prague, they were generous and she had a wonderful private school education. She loved school, especially extracurricular sports. After finishing school, she took a secretarial class as her uncle thought it was time that she started providing for herself. These new skills in combination with her talent for languages, landed her a job with Guinness Brewery in Park Royal. At a dance at her linguist club, she met her first husband George Zelenka. He was Czech like Bronia and the son of an Auschwitz survivor. The couple got married and moved to a flat in Twickenham and later to Northwood. They had two sons. Bronia became a member of the Kingston Liberal Synagogue. She met her second husband Tom Snow, a widower from Brighton, and they enjoyed retirement together.

Keywords: Ringler. Rubinstein. Krakow. Przemsyl. Prague. Czechoslovakia. Film distribution business. Sir Nicholas Winton Kindertransport. Guinness Brewery. Twickenham. Kingston Liberal Synagogue. Northwood. Brighton. Zelenka. Theresienstadt. Auschwitz.

Place of Birth

The Germans kept detailed numbers, records of the people they were going to murder. Thoroughly ridiculous.

German record-keeping

My parents always discussed everything. But not a word was spoken about my going to England. So I found myself one fine day, my mother packing a suitcase, me packing a little rucksack full of my doll, my favourite book & so on. On a platform of the main railway station, & getting on a train, with no idea it was going to happen. The platform was full of not only parents with children, but German soldiers with fixed bayonets. I was scared stiff. I thought: since they want to kill us all, why do they let the children, the next generation go? So I thought they would attack us, I was really scared.

Prague railway station

What’s lacking in England is an education, the young aren’t being taught history. They’re in cloud cuckoo land, they think England will always be free & democratic, without them even bothering to vote. They don’t realise that if the good people don’t bother, the baddies take over. Just what happened in Germany. Hitler took over before people realised.

Cloud cuckoo land