A survivor who helped reunite “lost children” of the Holocaust with their families has received an honorary doctorate from Essex University in Colchester.
Lithuanian-born Dora Love was 16 when SS troops invaded the country. Her family were imprisoned in Stutthof concentration camp in Poland where her mother, sister and one of her brothers died.
Post-war, she married British soldier Frank Love and they worked for the Army, the United Nations and the American Joint Distribution Committee on resettlement projects. One of these was the establishment of a home for Jewish children in a Hamburg suburb.
“The work was very rewarding and 147 children are now called ‘Dora’s Children,’” she said. “At a reunion nine months ago in Jerusalem, we established that the immediate families of those 147 children now come to 968 members.”
Mrs Love, a member of the Colchester Jewish Community, has lived and worked in the Essex town for more than 30 years. She has built up a relationship with the university’s history department and has spoken about her wartime experiences to school and college audiences.