The Story of Ruth and Raimund Neumeyer
Ruth Neumeyer 1923-2012 and Raimund Neumeyer 1924-2011
Ruth Neumeyer and her brother Raimund were born in the Bavarian town of Dachau to Hans and Vera Neumeyer. Hans was a blind music teacher and composer; their mother Vera taught eurythmics and languages.
Despite being Jewish, the family did not follow the Jewish religion. Vera brought up the children as Protestants, but they were persecuted by the Nazis because of their Jewish ancestry.
By the time war broke out, the family had been split up. The children departed on a Kindertransport to England in May 1939, while their parents remained stranded in Munich amid mounting uncertainty before their eventual deportations in 1942 to Nazi camps, where they were murdered.
Their story is told by Ruth’s son, Tim Locke. Audio extracts include Hans’s music, Ruth’s interview with the Imperial War Museum and a reading of a letter written by Vera while being deported to certain death in Nazi-occupied Poland. Despite its tragic elements, there is a theme of positivity, with the children finding a new life with a loving English family. Its closing message from Hans is how important it is ‘not to hate’.
Presented by Tim Locke
Tim Locke is a retired travel writer and editor, who has written guidebooks and other non-fiction. After his mother Ruth Locke died 2012, he started researching through her vast collection of family items, all of which are to be donated to the Imperial War Museum’s archive. Alongside this research he has been writing a blog (https://ephraimneumeyer.wordpress.com) unravelling the family’s Holocaust story. For him it is a quest to find out more about what happened to the family during the Third Reich and how Ruth and her brother fared when they came to England on a Kindertransport.
Tim is a member of the Holocaust Memorial Day group in his home town of Lewes, in Sussex. He wants to share this story to show how easily normality can be shattered, and how acts of kindness emerged in the darkest of times.
Watch an excerpt from the story of Ruth and Raimund Neumeyer
