1. Alfred Freddie Knoller was born on 17 April 1921 in Vienna, Austria.

Following a series of
antisemitic attacks on the Jewish community in 1938, he left Austria and lived as a refugee in
Belgium and France.
In 1943, he joined the French Resistance and was eventually arrested. He was taken to Drancy, a
transit camp in Paris, and then deported to Auschwitz. As the armies advanced through Europe
in early 1945, Auschwitz was evacuated and the inmates were taken to the Dora-Nordhausen
and Bergen-Belsen camps in Germany. Freddie took the uniform badge of a dead French
political prisoner to conceal his Jewish identity. This helped him survive at Dora because as a
political and not Jewish prisoner, he was given a less dangerous job.
After the war, Freddie was reunited with his two brothers and became a United States citizen.
He moved to London with his wife in the 1950s.

2. Toby Biber was born in 1925 to an Orthodox Jewish family in Mielec, Poland. Following German
occupation in September 1939 the Jewish population of Mielec was subjected to increased
antisemitism violence.
Mielec’s Jewish community was deported in March 1942 and its residents were forced into a
nearby forest. From there, they were moved to a small town where Toby’s father obtained
forged papers for Toby and her sister allowing them to escape. They lived in hiding until arriving
in Krakow in southern Poland.
In the autumn of 1942, several thousand inhabitants of the Krakow ghetto, including Toby and
her sister were moved to the Plaszow forced-labour camp. They remained there until the
summer of 1943 when they were deported to Auschwitz and then to Bergen-Belsen in 1944.
Toby’s sister died eight days after Belsen’s liberation in April 1945.
After the war Belsen was used as a displaced persons camp and Toby remained there until 1947.
She met and married her husband at the camp and they immigrated to Britain in 1947.

3. Premysl Dobias was born in June 1913 in Czech.

In the winter of 1941, Premysl was arrested for helping Jews and in May 1942 he was deported
to the Terezin transit and labour camp. From there he was sent to the Mauthausen
concentration camp in Austria, where he was forced into slave labour and subjected to medical
experimentation. The camp was liberated by American troops in May 1945 and Premysl worked
with the Americans as an interpreter. He moved to London in 1947.

4. Maria Ossowski was living in Poland when the Second World War began. During the war non-
Jewish people were conscripted into forced labour in Germany and Maria’s parents sent her to
live with family in Warsaw in an attempt to save her from being called up. In Warsaw, Maria and
her aunt helped Jewish children by providing them with whatever food and clothing they could.
She was part of the Polish Resistance and arrested in 1943. She was deported to Auschwitz in
May later that year.As the Soviet Army neared Auschwitz in January 1945, the camp was
evacuated and Maria was taken to the Ravensbrück and Buchenwald concentration camps in
Germany. Shortly after, Buchenwald was also evacuated, but Maria escaped during the journey.
She hid in a forest for two weeks before being discovered by farm labourers working nearby.
Disguised in civilian clothing and claiming to be a German refugee, Maria joined the workers
until the Soviet Army arrived in April 1945. Maria felt it was still unsafe to return to Poland and,
 pretending to be a French civilian, she travelled west into the American and British zones of
occupied Germany.
After the war, Maria met her husband Alex. Together. they joined the Polish Army under British
command and eventually settled in Britain

5. Daniel Falkner was born in Poland in 1912 and grew up in the city of Rzeszow. Daniel hoped to
become a doctor but was unable to attend medical school because of restrictions placed on the
number of Jewish students. As he neared the age of compulsory military service in Poland, he
was sent to a military academy. After completing military service he moved to Warsaw and
shortly before September 1939, he was called up.
Daniel’s division eventually surrendered and he became a prisoner of war. After escaping, he
returned to Warsaw. In the autumn of 1940, Warsaw’s Jewish population was forced into the
ghetto. Daniel and his wife escaped the ghetto and lived in hiding until discovered in 1943. Later,
hiding amongst a group of non-Jewish Polish political prisoners, Daniel was taken to
Sachsenhausen camp in Germany.
As Allied troops advanced in April 1945, the Germans evacuated those prisoners deemed fit for
forced labour and left the rest behind to die. Daniel avoided deportation by hiding under
floorboards and was liberated. After the war, Daniel joined the British Army as an interpreter
and was reunited with his wife in 1946.