Kitty Hart-Moxon - After The War

After The War

In 1946, Hart-Moxon emigrated with her mother to England to live with her uncle who had resided there since before World War II. In 1949, she married Rudi Hart, an upholsterer, who had escaped to England before being caught in the Holocaust. They had two sons, David and Peter.

While in England, Hart-Moxon became interested in educating people about the Holocaust by telling her life story to the public. This began with her first novel I Am Alive (1961), a fairly short account of her life in Auschwitz. Then, in 1978, Yorkshire Television (YTV), while doing background research on a project about women who risked their lives to save others during the Nazi era, producer Peter Morley's team learned about Hart-Moxon and convinced him to meet her. She didn't fit the parameters they'd set for Women of Courage, but after two visits, Morley was so impressed with Hart-Moxon, he submitted a proposal to YTV to accompany her to Auschwitz for her first visit in 33 years and film it, provided she brought along her eldest son, then a young doctor, for emotional support. In his memoirs, Morley wrote, "This, no doubt, was going to be a very raw film... I felt this to be a unique opportunity to add fresh insight to the infamy of Auschwitz as had been portrayed in both fictional and non-fictional films and television programmes."

The resulting documentary, Kitty: Return to Auschwitz, won international awards and was seen by millions. She began to receive mail by the sackful, some arriving addressed only to "Kitty, Birmingham". The documentary inspired her second novel, titled Return To Auschwitz, which was published in 1981. In 2003, she worked with the BBC to make a second documentary, titled Death March: A Survivor's Story, in which she retraced the death march from Auschwitz-Birkenau back to Germany.

Apart from her work for Holocaust survivors and victims, she also worked as a nurse. She studied through a private nurse training course and at the Birmingham Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, after which she obtained a job at a private radiology firm. Later she helped her husband set up his own upholstery business.