A HOLOCAUST survivor from East Renfrewshire who has dedicated her life to raising awareness of the wartime atrocity has been rewarded by the Queen in the New Year Honours list.

Ingrid Wuga, who escaped from Hitler’s Germany at the age of 15, has been awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) for services to Holocaust Education and Awareness.

In the last five years alone, more than 5,000 adults and children have heard her testimony through the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Outreach Programme.

In a double celebration, Ingrid and husband Henry, both aged 95, reached their 75th wedding anniversary on Friday.

Henry, also a Holocaust survivor, and Ingrid married in Pollokshields Synagogue in 1944, at the start of a remarkable life together.

Ingrid, who lives in Giffnock, told the Barrhead News she is “absolutely delighted” to have been honoured for her Holocaust educational work.

Born in Dortmund in 1924, she was able to escape occupied Germany on the Kindertransport a few weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War.

She was not given the opportunity to continue her education in the UK and, soon after arriving in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, she took up a position of a nanny to a baby.

After a few months in England, her parents were offered jobs in the coastal town of West Kilbride, Ayrshire, and the family moved to Scotland. 

As the war progressed, ‘Enemy Aliens’ were no longer allowed to live on the coast, as it was feared they may send signals to the German Army, so the family relocated to Glasgow. 

Ingrid worked in a dress shop, sewing collars on British Army uniforms.

Along with Henry, she has worked tirelessly for charities, especially BLESMA (British Limbless ex-Servicemen’s Association) and the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice, in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow.

Henry spent 25 years giving skiing lessons to BLESMA members and was awarded the MBE six years ago for services to sport for the disabled.

Speaking on their anniversary, Henry said: “We are both 95, still enjoy good health and are very happy together.

“We arrived here as two penniless Jewish people and, through our work with BLESMA and fundraising for the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice, we have been able to give something back to the country which was so welcoming to us all these years ago.”