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. 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.

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 Nicholas Winton Kindertransport train to leave Czechoslovakia before the Second World War broke out. She was only five years old, when she left Prague and 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.

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”.

Her last communication with her parents was in 1942, a telegram wishing her a happy birthday. Renate found the exact date of death of her parents in 1996, on a visit to Prague.

In Wales, Renate quickly learned English and settled into her local school and community. She was a keen hockey player, and also enjoyed gardening. Her foster parents adopted her after she became naturalised in 1947.

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. 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 the other children from the Nicholas Winton Kindertransport for recording the BBC TV show “That’s Life”.

After their retirement David and Renate returned to Wales in 2001 and Renate started speaking about her life story in public and at 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.