Holocaust survivor Benno Black dies at age 96

Holocaust survivor and educator Benno Black died this week at age 96.

An obituary published in the Star Tribune said Black, of St. Louis Park, died on Wednesday. Black was one of 10,000 children evacuated to Britain and other countries during the "Kindertransport," an effort to save Jewish children from what became the Holocaust.

After fleeing Germany on a train in 1939, Black was taken in by a family in England. Later he joined the British Army and went on to fight the Germans in Holland. He never saw his parents again. He told MPR News in a 2014 interview that he thought his mother had died on a train headed to a Nazi concentration camp in Poland.

He says an English family took him in and his parents sent him letters for a while.

"After about six months, maybe a year, that stopped, and I only received a Red Cross postcard once a month with 25 words on it,” he said in his 2014 interview. “And eventually the postcards stopped."

In 1947, Black moved to the Twin Cities where he became active in participating in Holocaust education efforts. His story is part of the Kindertransport exhibit at the American Swedish Institute on view through October 31.

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