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Vera Gissing

Details

Birth Date 4 July 1928

Death Date 12 March 2022

Personal Name Vera Gissing

Vera Gissing (born Věra Diamantová in Čelákovice near Prague) was a Czech-British writer and translator. She was one of "Winton's children," the Czechoslovak Jewish children in 1939 who were rescued from transport to the United Kingdom by British broker and humanitarian Nicholas Winton. Her sister, who accompanied her on the kindertransport, was the diarist and nurse Eva Hayman.

After the end of World War II, when most of her family perished in concentration camps during the Holocaust, she returned to Czechoslovakia, where she lived until 1948, then emigrated again to the United Kingdom. Her story was depicted in a 2021 book by Peter Sís, called Nicky & Vera. Gissing is the author of the autobiographical book Perličky dětství, composed "not only of personal memories of the pre-war and war years, but also of diary entries and letters that Věra wrote mainly with her parents and later with her sister."