A BIKE ride to commemorate an inspirational humanitarian effort which brought Jewish refugees, including Bournemouth residents Walter Kammerling and Professor Otto Hutter to Britain, is due to take place on Sunday.

The ride, which started off in Berlin, traces the route of the Kindertransport from Berlin in Germany, to Liverpool Street station in London.

The word means 'children's transport' and the Kindertransport was created in direct response to the violent attacks on Jewish synagogues, businesses and even orphanages - one was burned down - made by German people on the night of November 9 1938.

The evening of terror came to be known as Kristallnacht - night of broken glass - to reflect the desecration of the historic synagogues by Nazi sympathisers. However, Walter, who came to Bournemouth in 1957 and who has spoken many times to the Daily Echo about his experiences as a Kindertransport child disagrees with the word. "I don't like to call it that because it sounds too romantic," he said.

Walter lived in Vienna, Austria, during Hitler's rise to power and was just 14 when violence against Jewish people erupted in his home city. “The whole thing was terrifying," he recalled in 2016. "Going to school was like running a gauntlet. You tried to go not too fast, not too slow. You always tried to be invisible.”

At one point he, like other Jews, was made to scrub the streets as an act of humiliation.

“They enjoyed humiliating people. We weren’t allowed to kneel down, only crouch. The chap next to me fell over and was kicked and abused.

"A smile went through the crowd and a lady held her little girl up high so she could see better. They were all smiling and I thought to myself ‘Good Lord.' "

After the November 9 atrocities the UK's Jewish community, plus representatives of the Quakers, begged the Prime Minister to provide a safe haven for Jewish people and children.

Walter’s parents ensured he was on the first ‘Kindertransport’ and left Vienna on December 12 1938 leaving behind his parents and two sisters when he was just 15. One sister managed to get to Britain. But his other sister and parents had been sent to Theresienstadt and then onwards to the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

The group’s 600-mile journey is due to start at Frank Meisler’s Kindertransport statue outside Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse Station on Sunday and is organised by World Jewish Relief, whose predecessor organisation spearheaded the original rescue effort.

From Berlin, the group will head west, covering about 100 miles per day, before arriving at Meisler’s second Kindertransport statue at the Hook of Holland,then sailing to Harwich in Essex where the children disembarked.

From Harwich they will cycle towards London Liverpool Street and arrive at the third statue outside the station on Friday June 22 where people who arrived as children on the Kindertransport will be waiting to welcome them.