As Leeds United shows its support for the Light The Darkness campaign on Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember the late Heinz Skyte, a Holocaust survivor and lifelong supporter of the club.
At just 19-years-old Heinz Skyte stepped off the train that brought him to safety from Nazi Germany and the first thing he did was take a tram to Elland Road - 82 years ago.
Along with his brother, Frank, Heinz watched Leeds United play out a 1-1 draw with Everton – and from that moment he followed the club, through all of the ups and downs.
Heinz was forced to leave his home in a small town called Fuerth, near Nuremberg, after the events of Kristallnacht. At the time, Heinz was a student in digs near Hamburg, where he witnessed synagogues being set alight and the SS rounding up and taking away Jewish men.
He later discovered that his father had been arrested and taken to Dachau concentration camp, where he was incarcerated for six weeks – an experience that never left him.
Heinz was able to escape Germany and join his brother in Leeds, who managed to find a job for him as a trainee presser in the clothing factory where he worked. Their parents eventually managed to secure visas to travel to England in the August of 1939, just days before the outbreak of World War II.
“Sadly, there was a great deal of antisemitism at the time and that still exists today,” said Heinz. “After war broke out, Germans living in England were all regarded with suspicion and my family was arrested and interned, despite the fact we were more anti-Nazi than most people, having already been expelled from Germany.”
Heinz and Frank were sent to an internment camp on the Isle of Man before being moved on to Canada, where they stayed until 1942. On his return, he volunteered for war work and worked in engineering.
Heinz met and married a fellow Jewish refugee, Thea, who fled to England aboard the Kindertransport, and they had two sons, one who lives in London and the other in Israel. The couple were granted British citizenship in 1947.
He began work for the Leeds Jewish Welfare Board in 1951, eventually becoming chief executive, and remained with the board until 1985. He was awarded the MBE for his dedication to community work in 1976.
Heinz was one of 16 Holocaust survivors and refugees whose stories feature in an interactive exhibition at the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre – the only facility of its kind in the north of England, based at Huddersfield University
Sadly Heinz passed away in January 2020 at the age of 99, but his life story will always be remembered.
Holocaust Memorial Day (27th January) is a key date where we take the time to remember the six million Jews that were murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of other people who were killed or suffered under Nazi persecution and in genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
