Kitty Hart-Moxon

Polish born Holocaust survivor and author

Kitty Hart Moxon, OBE (born December 1, 1926) is a Polish British Holocaust survivor. She was sent to the Auschwitz Birkenau death camp in 1943 at age 16, where she survived for two years, and was also imprisoned at other camps. Shortly after her liberation, she moved to England with her mother, where she married and dedicated her life to raising awareness of the Holocaust. She has written two autobiographies entitled I am Alive (1961) and Return to Auschwitz (1981).

Hart Moxon was born Kitty Felix, on 1 December 1926, in the southern Polish town of Bielsko (known as Bielitz in German), which bordered both Germany and Czechoslovakia. She was the second child of Karol Felix and his wife Lola Rosa Felix, who had a son five years Kitty's senior, named Robert. Karol Felix (born c. 1888) had studied law in Vienna, and had also been a captain in the Austrian army in the First World War. Upon his father's death, he took over his agricultural supply business, which he ran with his sister, until the outbreak of the war. Lola's father was also in the agricultural business: he was a farmer, who owned his own land, and Kitty believes that this may have been how her parents met—with Lola's father potentially using Karol as a supplier. Kitty's paternal family had come from Italy hundreds of years ago—it had been said that one of her ancestors had been called to attend to the King of Poland, as he was a doctor, and that is how the family came to reside in Poland. Her mother was born on 18 February 1890, to a Slovakian father and his wife. Lola's sister had studied medicine in Vienna, and Lola herself went to England in 1911 to study English at Bedford College, London—eventually becoming an English teacher in Poland, where she taught children preparing for their state examinations (this meant it was an advanced level of English learning). Prior to the end of the First World War, Poland had been partitioned into three parts, with each part belonging to either Austria Hungary, the German Empire, or the Russian Empire; the town of Bielsko belonged to Austria Hungary. The majority of Austro Hungarians were German speakers, and due to the fact Bielsko belonged to Austria Hungary, many of its residents were German speakers, including Kitty's parents, and as a result of this, the Felix family spoke German at home, with Kitty not learning a word of Polish until she began attending school. Kitty also began learning basic English in nursery, where her mother—who was teaching at the nursery at the time—taught the children English nursery rhymes. Growing up, Kitty was extremely sporty, and participated in gymnastics, athletics, swimming, and skiing. Meanwhile, both her parents, and her brother, enjoyed ballroom dancing. Her parents also enjoyed socialising: they had a wide circle of Jewish friends, with whom they frequently went out. The family led quite a prosperous lifestyle: they travelled a lot; employed domestic staff; lived in comfortable accommodation; could afford to send Kitty to private school; and had lavish birthday celebrations—even including parties on ice. Lola and Karol Felix were liberal Jews: they did not observe Jewish customs, including not keeping a kosher home (in fact, Kitty states that she did not even know what kosher was until after her family had fled to Lublin); and the family only attended synagogue at occasions. Despite this, they were very much a part of the Jewish community: the majority of people the family mixed with were Jews, with Kitty herself frequenting Jewish social clubs. Additionally, Kitty also attended a Jewish primary school, and following this, was a pupil at the Convent School of Notre Dame for a year (after which the war broke out), which although not a Jewish school, was predominantly attended by Jews. The school was a private all girls school, and people came from miles around to attend it, as it was very prestigious, with alumni including a set of twins who were descended from the Habsburg dynasty. Kitty has stated that growing up, she was completely oblivious to the political situation in both Poland, and wider Europe, including Hitler's rise to power. One thing she does recall from her youth however, is a girl joining her school who stated that she and her family had been expelled from Germany for being Jews. In late August 1939, while on holiday in the mountains with her mother, Kitty went canoeing, and ended up disappearing down the river. After realising her daughter was missing, Lola informed the police, who began searching for her. Eventually, Kitty returned with her canoe by train, and found her mother in a frantic state—not only because of her daughter's disappearance, but because she had received a phone call from Karol telling them they must return home straight away. Kitty's brother, Robert, was also on holiday with his friends at the time, and was too summoned home. Arriving home to find that Karol had packed up all their possessions, her father sent Kitty and her mother to board the train to Lublin straight away (she had not known at the time, but already the Germans had placed machine guns on the rooftops of the town, and had been shooting at citizens). Two days later (still prior to the Nazis' invasion of Poland on 1 September), Karol and Robert joined them in Lublin; the two had managed to board one of the last trains out of the town, with the remaining citizens being forced to flee by foot—it later transpired that many of these people were eventually gunned down in their attempts to escape, when the invading forces caught up with them. Karol had arranged for the family's possessions to be sent on to Lublin by train, however they never arrived, due to the fact that the train had been bombed. Kitty considers the family's flight from Bielsko the first time she felt the effects of the war. On 1 September 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland.

The conditions for Jews living in Lublin deteriorated after the invasion. Eventually, all the Jews in Lublin were moved into a single area of the city, creating the Lublin Ghetto. In the spring of 1941, the family attempted to escape to Russia. They made it to the border but found that it had closed 24 hours previously. They attempted to cross the frozen river by sleigh but were sighted when they were about three quarters of the way across and shot at. Forced to return to the Polish side of the river, they abandoned their escape attempt and returned towards Lublin. With these passports, birth, and identity cards, the two were smuggled onto a train of Polish forced labourers bound for Germany. The family split up to increase their chance of survival. Kitty went with her mother to I. G. Farben in Bitterfeld and commenced working at a rubber factory. They were told they would be executed and placed in front of a firing squad. After the squad conducted a mock execution, the victims were told their sentences had been commuted to hard labour. Every day, the camp occupants were marched to a nearby town to work in the Philips electronic factory. In Sied Forces, the prisoners of Gross Rosen were forced on what would later be called a death march across the Sudeten mountains. These prisoners were chosen to be moved, rather than executed, because Albert Speer, the German armaments minister, believed the special skills these prisoners had gained at the Phillips factory would be useful in other German factories for the manufacture of "jamming transmitters and equipment for high performance aircraft". The prisoners were eventually taken to a train station and shipped across Europe to Porta Westfalica in northwestern Germany. Only about 200 of the original 10,000 prisoners, including Kitty and her mother, survived the journey. She didn't fit the parameters they'd set for Women of Courage, but after two visits, Morley was so impressed with Hart Moxon, he submitted a proposal to YTV to accompany her to Auschwitz for her first visit in 33 years and film it, provided she brought along her eldest son, then a young doctor, for emotional support. In his memoirs, Morley wrote, "This, no doubt, was going to be a very raw film I felt this to be a unique opportunity to add fresh insight to the infamy of Auschwitz as had been portrayed in both fictional and non fictional films and television programmes." The resulting documentary, Kitty: Return to Auschwitz, won international awards and was seen by millions. She began to receive mail by the sackful, some arriving addressed only to "Kitty, Birmingham". The documentary inspired her second autobiography, titled Return To Auschwitz. She later worked with the BBC to make a second documentary, titled Death March: A Survivor's Story (2003), in which she retraced the death march from Auschwitz Birkenau back to Germany. In 1998, Hart Moxon gave her testimony to USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education. Her testimony lives in the Visual History Archive, accessible to teachers and students around the world. In 2014, Kitty participated in a documentary resulting in her taking a new generation to Auschwitz telling of her experience. That year was her last trip to the camp. The documentary was called: “One Day In Auschwitz”. In 2016, Kitty spoke to the Auschwitz Study Group about her time in Auschwitz and also rejected unequivocally the story of Denis Avey who claimed to have escaped from Auschwitz. Apart from her work for Holocaust survivors and victims, she also worked as a radiographer. In March 1947, she began studies through a private nurse training course and at the Birmingham Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, after which she obtained a job at a private radiology firm. Later she helped her husband set up his own upholstery business.

In the 2003 Queen's Birthday Honours, Hart Moxon was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services relating to Holocaust education. In 2013, Kitty Hart Moxon was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Birmingham.