Kindertransport

Kindertransport, the nine-month rescue effort authorized by the British government and conducted by individuals in various countries and by assorted religious and secular groups that saved some 10,000 children, under age 17 and most of them Jewish, from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the free city of Danzig (Gdańsk) by relocating them to the United Kingdom. The program began after the Kristallnacht pogroms of November 9–10, 1938, when Nazis attacked Jewish persons and property and conducted mass arrests, and largely ended on September 1, 1939, with the outbreak of World War II, although children continued to be rescued as late as 1940. The name Kindertransport came into use in the late 20th century.

Origins and operations of the Kindertransport

Within months of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, tens of thousands of Jews left the country. However, that emigration quickly began to slow as it became increasingly difficult to obtain a visa. U.S. Pres. Franklin Roosevelt responded to this “refugee problem”—that is, the inability of Jews stranded in Nazi Germany to find countries willing to offer them refuge—by proposing that a conference be held. Beginning July 6, 1938, representatives from 32 countries met for 10 days in the French resort town of Évian-les-Bains. Despite grand proclamations, little came of the Évian Conference. There were discussions of potential settlement locations, but most countries remained unwilling to admit new immigrants. The participants succeeded only in agreeing to meet again later.

Meanwhile, the persecution of Jews in Germany and Austria escalated dramatically, reaching a crescendo on November 9–10, 1938, with the pogrom that became known as Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”). In state-sanctioned anti-Jewish riots, more than 1,000 synagogues were burned or destroyed while firefighters stood idle, acting only if the fires threatened to spread to neighbouring buildings; more than 7,500 Jewish businesses were vandalized or looted; Jewish hospitals, homes, schools, and cemeteries were damaged; at least 91 Jewish people were killed; and thousands of Jewish men were arrested and conveyed to concentration camps.

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Still, even in the wake of Kristrallnacht, very few countries opened their doors to Jewish refugees, who until the closure of borders at the start of World War II were permitted to leave Germany, provided that they did so without money or possessions. Throughout the Third Reich, Jews struggled futilely to find a country that would offer them refuge.

Following Kristallnacht, the British Parliament responded to calls for action by the British Jewish Refugee Committee with a debate in the House of Commons on November 21, 1938. Although the British government had just imposed a new cap on Jewish immigration to Palestine as part of its mandate there, several factors contributed to the decision to permit an unspecified number of children under age 17 to enter the United Kingdom: the diligence of refugee advocacy, the growing awareness of anti-Jewish atrocities in Germany and Austria, and pro-Jewish sympathies among some high-placed Britons. To “assure their ultimate resettlement” a £50 bond had to be posted for each of these children, who, it was assumed, would reconnect with their parents once the crisis had passed. They were admitted with temporary travel documents.

On December 1, 1938, less than one month after Kristallnacht, the first transport left Germany. It arrived at Harwich, England, the following day, bringing 196 children from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin that had been burned by the Nazis on November 9. Most of the subsequent transports left by train from Vienna, Berlin, Prague, and other major cities (children from small towns traveled to meet the transports), crossed the Dutch and Belgian borders, and from there went on to England by ship. The majority of the children never saw their parents again.

People of a number of faiths—Christians of many denominations, including Quakers, along with Jews—collaborated on this effort to rescue primarily Jewish children. Leaders in the effort included Lola Hahn-Warburg, a member of a prominent German Jewish banking family who established the framework for the rescues in 1933 before immigrating to England herself; German Jewish businessman Wilfrid Israel, who used his extensive network of personal connections to secure passage for countless Jews; former British prime minister Stanley Baldwin, who appealed to British conscience via a BBC broadcast in December 1938 in support of the Lord Baldwin Fund for Refugees; Viscount Walter Horace Samuel; Sir Wyndham Deedes; Rebecca Sieff; Rabbi Solomon Schoenfeld (whose efforts were responsible for the rescue of nearly 1,000 Orthodox Jewish children); Nicholas (later Sir Nicholas) Winton, who, working with Trevor Chadwick, Doreen Warriner, and Bill Barazetti, saved 669 Czechoslovak children; academic Norman Bentwich; Quakers Bertha Bracey and Jean Hoare (cousin of Sir Samuel Hoare), the latter of whom shepherded a plane full of children out of Prague; social workers in the Jewish communities of Vienna, such as Franzi Danneberg-Löw (who later became the guardian of the Jewish children trapped in Vienna after the last Kindertransport); and leaders of the German youth movement in Berlin, such as Norbert Wollheim (who accompanied several transports as an escort and refused a place on what he knew would be the last one because he did not want to leave his wife and young child in Berlin; in 1943 he was deported to Auschwitz).

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One organizer, Geertruida (Truus) Wijsmuller-Meijer, a Dutch Christian, appealed directly to SS officer Adolf Eichmann in Vienna before leading the escape of 600 children on a single train. She also helped smuggle children onto a ship bound from Marseille to Palestine and was largely responsible for the success of the final transport. She sped her charges through burning Amsterdam to the freighter Bodegraven, which left IJmuiden, Netherlands, for Dover, England, on May 14, 1940, the day that Rotterdam was bombed and the Netherlands surrendered to the Germans. The ship was raked by gunfire from German warplanes.

Life in Britain

Those children who already had been assigned sponsors were taken to London; those without prearranged sponsors stayed in summer holiday camps until host families, hostels, or schools could be found for them. Among the organizations that helped settle the children were B’nai B’rith, the Refugee Children’s Movement, the YMCA, the Society of Friends, the Chief Rabbi’s Religious Emergency Council, and a variety of other organizations (both Jewish and non-Jewish). Private donations—from money and clothing to houses—also played an important role.

The children, few of whom knew English, were dispersed to many parts of the United Kingdom. There was a relatively even split between those who lived in group settings and those who lived with foster families. Those over age 14 who lacked sponsors or who had not been fostered or sent to boarding schools often underwent a short course of training and joined the British labour force, usually performing domestic service or agricultural work.

Most of the families (both Jewish and non-Jewish) who took in children treated them well and developed strong bonds with their guests. Some children, however, were abused or maltreated. Upon reaching age 18, some of the children took up arms against Nazi Germany by volunteering for the British or Australian military.

In the spring of 1940 hysteria raged over a supposed “Fifth Column” threat by domestic Nazi sympathizers within Britain. Ostensibly to prevent them from collaborating with the Nazis, Jewish refugees, Austrian and German non-Jews, Italians, and others were interned by the British government. More than 1,000 Kindertransportees (boys and girls) over age 16 were interned on the Isle of Man and other sites. Moreover, some male Kindertransportees were shipped to Canada on the same vessels as German prisoners of war, and others were transported to Australia aboard the notorious Dunera, labeled a “hell-ship” because of the overcrowded conditions and terrible treatment of foreign nationals meted out by the British escort troops. Opposition to further internment mounted among the British public in July 1940 after a German U-boat sank the Arandora Star, carrying more than 1,200 internees (including Italians as well as German and Austrian refugees), with the loss of some 800 lives. A large number of all of those who had been deported were returned to Britain.

Fiftieth anniversary and organized remembrance

Kindertransport children had gathered in small groups over the years, reunited by the hostel they lived in or by the school they attended. In June 1989, however, what had begun as a local 50th anniversary reunion of the Kindertransportees in London (organized by Bertha Leverton, a Kindertransport child still living in that city) became an international reunion, the very first gathering of Kindertransportees regardless of where they had lived during World War II. More than 1,200 Kinder (as the refugees now called themselves, their spouses, and their children) arrived from all parts of the United Kingdom, Israel, Australia, and elsewhere, as well as from Canada and the United States, where some 2,500 Kinder had immigrated. They gathered to reconnect with old friends, to celebrate their survival, to express their gratitude to the British people, and to honour the parents who had selflessly sent away their children in order to save their lives.

The success of the reunion spurred the formation of the Kindertransport Association in 1989. It is based in New York, and its mission is to locate, reunite, and bring together Kinder and their families, to educate the public about this little-known chapter in Holocaust history, and to assist with charitable work dedicated to helping children without parents, regardless of race or religion. The Kindertransport Association established World Kindertransport Day on December 2, 2013, the 75th anniversary of the day the first Kindertransport arrived in Great Britain.