Renate Collins BEM

Renate Collins née Renate Kress) was born in 1933 in Prague. The only child of Otto Heinz, a banker, and Hilda née Altshul, a nurse, Renate was brought up in a Jewish household. Otto was originally from Germany, so Renate spoke both Czech and German at home. Renate’s great-aunt, Selma, was a sculptor who studied for three years in Paris at the studios of Auguste Rodin. Another relative was an important figure in the founding of the Republic of Czechoslovakia in 1918.

When the Germans marched into Prague in March 1939, Renate’s parents made the decision to send her to the UK. She escaped on the last Kindertransport train to leave Czechoslovakia before the Second World War broke out. She was only five years old when she left Prague and when she saw her parents for the last time. Her mother and grandmother were both shot after their train broke down en route to Treblinka extermination camp in Poland, while her father and Uncle Felix were murdered in Auschwitz. In total, she lost 64 members of her family during the Holocaust.

Renate was fostered by a Welsh couple, Arianwen and Frederic Sidney Coplestone in Porth, South Wales. When she arrived, she only knew two words of English: “yes” and “no”. She recalls that “Most of us thought that when the war was over, we’d be going back – although I don’t think our parents did.”

Her last communication with her parents was in 1942, a telegram wishing her a happy birthday. Although her foster father attempted to reply, he was unable to make contact. Renate only found out exactly when her parents died in 1996, on a visit to Prague.

In Wales, Renate quickly learned English and settled into life in her local school and community. She was a keen hockey player, and also enjoyed gardening. Her foster parents, Sidney and Arianwen Coplestone, adopted her after she became naturalised in 1947. Sidney was the minister of the local Baptist church, nevertheless he never wanted her “to feel I was anything else but a Jew”.

After leaving school, she studied accountancy, typing and shorthand at college, and worked for BOAC, the forerunner of British Airways. One of the missionaries who stayed in her parents’ house, was her future husband’s sister who invited her to see the family farm. When Renate came, she met David for the first time, helping with the harvest, driving a tractor. Two years later, her parents invited David for afternoon tea. He was by then stationed with the Air Force in St. Athan near Cardiff. When he came back another two years later from Singapore, they became a couple and got married in 1954.

They moved to Newquay, Cornwall where David worked as a salesman for agricultural machines and Renate ran a guesthouse. They had two sons. In 1988 she joined other children from the Kindertransport at the BBC TV show “That’s Life” where Nicholas Winton was surprised by many of the children, he had saved by escaping from Czechoslovakia.

After their retirement David and Renate returned to Wales in 2001 and Renate started talking about her life story in public and started visiting schools. In 2021 Renate moved back to Cornwall to be closer to her son Paul.

Key words: Prague. Czechoslovakia. Kress. Altshul. Wales. Porth. Nicholas Winton Kindertransport. Selma Baštýřová (Rodin). Cornwall.