Research by an Aberystwyth University academic is to feature in a special open air exhibition in Berlin marking the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport.

Thanks to the Kindertransport trains, around 10,000 mainly Jewish children were able to leave Nazi Germany in 1938-39 before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Over the past 20 years, Dr Andrea Hammel from Aberystwyth University’s Department of Modern Languages has been discovering and documenting the stories of those who fled.

Four of those stories will now feature in a new exhibition to be held in Berlin from 16 August until 27 October.

Entitled Am Ende des Tunnels (At the End of the Tunnel), the exhibition will be located outside Berlin-Charlottenburg railway station – one of the stations used by German Jewish aid organisations to put children on trains that brought them to the UK.

The life story of the late William Dieneman, former Aberystwyth University librarian, is among those featured.

William was born Wolfgang Dienemann in 1929.

He left Berlin on a Kindertransport train in January 1939 when he was nine years old.

He was placed with a number of foster families before being admitted to a boarding school in Bristol.

Many of the Kindertransportees never saw their parents again but William Dieneman was fortunate; his mother and father also managed to escape to Britain before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Ruth Parker was on the same train as William leaving Berlin for Britain in 1939 and one of her children will give a reading at the exhibition launch event on 15 August.

Speaking ahead of the opening of the official opening, Dr Hammel said: “I was surprised to find that both Ruth and William actually travelled on the same transport in January 1939.

“Sadly, this discovery came too late for William who passed away in September 2018. William had always looked for others who had made the journey to the UK with him."

See this week’s south papers for the full story, available in shops and as a digital edition now