Big Red Book

Celebrating television's This Is Your Life

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THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Alice Goldberger, child therapist, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the audience at the New London Theatre, having been taken there by friends.

Alice came to England in 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War, having previously run a centre for underprivileged children in Berlin. She was initially interned as an 'enemy alien' on the Isle of Man, but her eventual release was organised by child psychologist Anna Freud, who employed her as a superintendent of one of the Hampstead War Nurseries for evacuated city children. At the end of the war, Alice, whose own family had perished in concentration camps, and her colleague Oscar Friedmann were tasked with setting up a team to receive and care for young Holocaust survivors.

Alice and 24 children moved into a large estate named Weir Courtney, in the Lingfield, Surrey region, where she became mother, caretaker, advocate, and teacher to the refugees, some as young as four years old. She worked diligently to get the children adopted into foster homes or reunited with living family members. In 1948, when some of the older children had left, Alice and the remaining children moved to London and settled in Lingfield House, until it's closure in 1957, when Alice became a child therapist at the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic.

"What a surprise!"

programme details...

• Edition No: 495
• Subject No: 493
• Broadcast live: Wed 25 Oct 1978
• Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
• Venue: New London Theatre
• Series: 19
• Edition: 1
• Code name: Lifeline

on the guest list...

• Hanka Darama
• Eva Cowan
• Denny Muench
• Sylvia Cohen
• Rachel Oppenheimer
• Eva Graham
• Asta Berlowitz
• Zdenka Husserl
• Fritz Friedman
• Vicci Cohnheim
• Charles Kessler
• Tania Kessler
• Sophie Wurtch
• Elizabeth Moshage
• Anna Lisa Schnurmann
• Henny Spier
• Gertrude Dann
• Judith Sherman
• Rabbi Hugo Gryn
• Liliana Bucci
• Andra Bucci
• Mrs Bucci
Filmed tribute:
• Jane Wilton

production team...

• Researchers: Debbie Gaunt, Catherine Parnall
• Writers: Tom Brennand, Roy Bottomley
• Directors: Royston Mayoh, Terry Yarwood
• Producer: Jack Crawshaw

A Charitable Life

the unsung heroes

The Big Red Book

the programme's icon

The Audience

the applause, laughter and tears

Screenshots of Alice Goldberger This Is Your Life - and a photograph of Alice Goldberger's big red book

The Jewish Chronicle unknown date

Her Wonderful Life

Jewish Chronicle Reporter

Warm tributes were paid to Miss Alice Goldberger, an 81-year-old child therapist of West Hampstead, who to her surprise found herself the star of ITV's "This Is Your Life" programme last week. She was reunited with some of the children and others she helped in England after the Second World War.

Eamonn Andrews, the compere, called her life "one of the most remarkable and moving stories I have ever come across. She met her greatest challenge at the end of the war when she lovingly and patiently rebuilt the lives of innocent children rescued from Hitler's concentration camps."

Turning to Miss Goldberger, he said: "For 50 years your love and care led them out of that nightmare and gave them the will to live again."

The many who said "Thank you" included Rabbi Hugo Gryn, senior minister of the West London Synagogue, (of which Miss Goldberger is a member). As a young survivor of Auschwitz, he met Miss Goldberger in 1946. He spoke of the wonderful and profound Jewish legend that "our world could not exist unless there were the Lamed Vav Zaddikim, the 36 righteous people."

"Alice is one of those people, I am sure of that," he said.

Before the war, Berlin-born Miss Goldberger was in charge of a centre in the city for families made destitute by the economic depression of the 1930s.