Kindertransport

Kindertransport is the name given to the rescue mission that took place nine months prior to the outbreak of World War II. The Britain took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, and the occupied territories of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, and farms.

On November 15, 1938, a few days after the events of "Kristallnacht", the anti-Jewish pogrom on November 9 and 10, 1938, a delegation of British Jewish leaders appealed in person to the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Among other measures, they requested that the British government permit the temporary admission of Jewish children and teenagers who would later re-emigrate. The Jewish community promised to pay guarantees for the refugee children.

The British Cabinet debated the issue the next day and subsequently decided that the nation would accept unaccompanied children ranging from infants up to teenagers under the age of 17. No limit to the number of refugees was ever publicly announced. A comparable U.S. effort to absorb up to 10,000 refugee children by relaxing restrictive immigration statutes failed to even make it out of Congressional committees debating the issue.

The rescue operation is, in general, considered a success as most of the Kinder survived the war. A small percentage were reunited with parents who had either spent the war in hiding or survived the Nazi camps. The majority of children, however, lost home and family forever. The end of the war brought confirmation of the worst: their parents were dead. In the years since the Kinder had left the European mainland, the Nazis and their collaborators had killed nearly six million European Jews, including nearly 1.5 million children.

Organization and Managment

On the eve of a major House of Commons debate on refugees on November 21, Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare met a large delegation representing various Jewish and non-Jewish groups working on behalf of refugees. The groups were allied under a nondenominational organization called the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany. The Home Secretary agreed that to speed up the immigration process, travel documents would be issued on the basis of group lists rather than individual applications. But strict conditions were placed upon the entry of the children. The agencies promised to fund the operation and to ensure that none of the refugees would become a financial burden on the public. Every child would have a guarantee of £50 (approximately US$4000 in today's currency) to finance his or her eventual re-emigration, as it was expected the children would stay in the country only temporarily.

Within a very short time, the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany, later known as the Refugee Children's Movement (RCM), sent representatives to Germany and Austria to establish the systems for choosing, organizing, and transporting the children. On November 25, British citizens heard an appeal for foster homes on the BBC Home Service radio station. Soon there were 500 offers, and RCM volunteers started visiting these possible foster homes and reporting on conditions. They did not insist that prospective homes for Jewish children should be Jewish homes. Nor did they probe too carefully into the motives and character of the families: it was sufficient for the houses to look clean and the families to seem respectable.

In Germany, a network of organizers was established, and these volunteers worked around the clock to make priority lists of those most imperiled: teenagers who were in concentration camps or in danger of arrest, Polish children or teenagers threatened with deportation, children in Jewish orphanages, children whose parents were too impoverished to keep them, or children with a parent in a concentration camp. Once the children were identified or grouped by list, their guardians or parents were issued a travel date and departure details.

Upon arrival at port in Great Britain, Kinder without prearranged foster families were sheltered at temporary holding centers located at summer holiday camps such as Dover Court and Pakefield. Finding foster families was not always easy, and being chosen for a home was not necessarily the end of the discomfort or distress. Although many children were well-treated and grew up to develop close ties to their British hosts, some were mistreated or abused. Some families took in teenage girls as a way of acquiring a maid. There was little sensitivity toward the cultural and religious needs of the children and, for some, their heritage was all but erased.

Transports

The first Kindertransport from Berlin departed on December 1, 1938, and the first from Vienna on December 10. For the first three months, the children came mainly from Germany, then the emphasis shifted to Austria. In March 1939, after the German army entered Czechoslovakia, transports from Prague were hastily organized. Trains of Polish Jewish children were also arranged in February and August 1939.

Since the German government decreed that the evacuations must not block ports in Germany, the trains crossed from German territory into the Netherlands and arrived at port at the Hook of Holland. From there, the children traveled by ferry to the British ports of Harwich or Southampton.

The last group of children from Germany departed on September 1, 1939, the day the German army invaded Poland and provoked Great Britain, France, and other countries to declare war. The last known transport of Kinder from the Netherlands left on May 14, 1940, the day the Dutch army surrendered to Germany. Tragically, hundreds of Kinder were caught in Belgium and the Netherlands during the German invasion, making them subject once more to the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

Internment and War Service

In 1940, the British government ordered the internment of 16- to 70-year old refugees from enemy countries — so-called "enemy aliens." Consequently, approximately 1,000 of the older Kinder were held in makeshift internment camps, and around 400 were transported overseas to Canada and Australia. The young men among the interned Kinder, in particular, were offered the chance to do war work or to enter the Auxiliary Pioneer Corps. About 1,000 German and Austrian teenagers served in the British armed forces, including combat units. Several dozen joined elite formations such as the Special Forces, where their language skills could be put to good use.

Audio-Visual Presentations

The first documentary film made on the subject of the Kindertransport was "My Knees Were Jumping; Remembering the Kindertransports" which was shown in the Sundance Film Festival in 1996 and released theatrically in 1998. The director, Melissa Hacker, is the daughter of a Kind, the costume designer Ruth Morley.

"Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport," narrated by Judi Dench and released by Warner Bros. Pictures, won the Academy Award in 2001 for best documentary feature. There is also a companion book by the same name. The film's producer, Deborah Oppenheimer, is the daughter of a Kindertransport survivor. The director, Mark Jonathan Harris, is a three-time Oscar winner.

"Kindertransport" is the name of a play by Diane Samuels, which examines the later life of a Kindertransport child. It was first performed by the Soho Theatre Company at the Cockpit Theatre in London on April 13, 1993.

Personal Accounts

David, Ruth. Child of our Time: A Young Girl's Flight from the Holocaust, I.B. Tauris.
Golabek, Mona and Lee Cohen. "The Children of Willesden Lane." --account of a young Jewish pianist who escaped the Nazis by the Kindertransport.
Segal, Lore. "Other People's Houses." --the author’s life as a Kindertransport girl from Vienna, told in the voice of a child. The New Press, New York 1994.
Smith, Lyn. "Remembering: Voices of the Holocaust." Ebury Press, Great Britain, 2005, Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, 2006. ISBN 0-78671-640-1.
Whiteman, Dorit. "The Uprooted: A Hitler Legacy: Voices of Those Who Escaped Before the "Final Solution." by Perseus Books, Cambridge, MA 1993.

External links

Kindertransport Association of North America - an association of children rescued in the Kindertransport who have settled in North America.
[1] - Link to information about the film "My Knees Were Jumping: Remembering the Kindertransports" (1996)
[2] - Link to information about the Oscar winning film "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport" (2000)
[3] – World Jewish Relief (formally known as The British Jewish Refugee Committee)