Pastor Courtenay Harris

Pastor Courtney Harris was born Kurt Walter Badrian, in May 1934 in Beuthen, Upper Silesia, Germany (present-day Poland). When he was two months old his mother, Frieda Badrian, placed him in a Christian orphanage and went to Budapest where she died of an infection.

The orphanage had been founded by Sister Eva, the youngest daughter of a wealthy Silesian family, who wanted to improve the lives of people in need. In 1890 she founded “Friedenshort” (German for: a peaceful place for children).

Pastor Harris stayed in the orphanage until he was five years old. He has no memories of his time at the orphanage. When a Christian lady, Mrs. Winifred Ponsford in London, approached the orphanage to help with a donation, the orphanage asked her to instead find homes for four Jewish children in England. After arrival with the Kindertransport in Harwich, they stayed for a couple of days in Mrs. Ponsford’s house in Highgate, before he and another girl were taken in by Charles and Lola Harris. Charles was a grammar school master in Paston Grammar School first in North Walsham then in Weston-super-Mare Boys’ Grammar which Pastor Harris later both attended as a student.

Pastor Harris remembers a caring home with Christian instruction. Charles and Lola never spoke about his Jewish Continental European background and his name change at adoption. After finishing school, he did not pursue further education but worked on a dairy farm in Devon. Missing Weston-super- Mare, he returned and worked in different jobs until he joined the National Service. Later he met his future wife, an au-pair from the Netherlands and they moved to Gloucestershire.

Pastor Harris’s Christian faith had continually grown deeper since he was a teenager. He worked for the Army Scripture Readers. Eventually, he became a minister for the Evangelical Free Church in Winchcombe.

Through DNA testing, he learnt about his biological mother Frieda and his biological father, Getzel Elter Ulreich. He had married and had another child who all presumably died on a transport from Prague to Baranavichy Camp in Belarus in 1942. Finding the missing pieces of his life story he felt finally ready to share it with a wider audience and also joined the AJR.

Key words: Beuthen. Kindertransport. Ulreich. Badrian. Friedenshort. Eva von Tiele-Winckler. Winifred Ponsford, London, Highgate. Budapest. Prague. Baranavichy Camp, Belarus. Charles and Lola Harris, Open Brethren. Soldiers' and Airmen's Scripture Readers Association, SASRA. Weston-super-Mare. Winchcombe. DNA test