Kindertransport - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Kindertransport is the name given to the rescue mission that took place nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

, Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

and the Free City of Danzig

Free City of Danzig

The Free City of Danzig was a semi-autonomous city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig and surrounding areas....

. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, and farms. Most of the rescued children survived the war. A small number were reunited with parents who had either spent the war in hiding or survived the Nazi camps, but the majority, after the war, found their parents had been killed.

World Jewish Relief

World Jewish Relief

World Jewish Relief is a British Jewish charitable organisation and is the main Jewish overseas aid organisation in the UK.-Founding:WJR was originally called the Central British Fund for German Jewry and was founded in 1933...

(then called 'The Central British Fund for German Jewry') was established in 1933 as a direct result and to support in whatever way possible the needs of Jews both in Germany and Austria. Records for every child who arrived in the UK through the Kindertransports are maintained by World Jewish Relief.

Policy

On 15 November 1938, 5 days after the devastation of "Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...

", the "Night of Broken Glass," in Germany and Austria, a delegation of British Jewish leaders appealed in person to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...

, Neville Chamberlain

Neville Chamberlain

Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the...

. Among other measures, they requested that the British government permit the temporary admission of unaccompanied Jewish children, but without their parents.

The British Cabinet debated the issue the next day and subsequently prepared a Bill to present to Parliament

Parliament

A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...

. That bill stated that the Government would waive certain immigration requirements so as to allow the entry into Great Britain of unaccompanied children ranging from infants up to the age of 17, under conditions as outlined in the next paragraph. No limit upon the permitted number of refugees was ever publicly announced. Initially the Jewish refugee Agencies considered 5,000 as a realistic target goal. However, after the British Colonial Office turned down the Jewish Agencies' separate request to allow the admission of 10,000 children to British-controlled Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

, the Jewish Agencies then increased their planned target number to 15,000 unaccompanied children to enter Great Britain in this way.

On the eve of a major House of Commons of the United Kingdom debate on refugees on 21 November 1938, Home Secretary

Home Secretary

The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...

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 organisation 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. The Agencies promised to find homes for all the children. They also 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 sterling to finance his or her eventual re-emigration, as it was expected the children would stay in the country only temporarily.

Organization and management

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, organising, and transporting the children.

On 25 November, British citizens heard an appeal for foster homes on the BBC Home Service

BBC Home Service

The BBC Home Service was a British national radio station which broadcast from 1939 until 1967.-Development:Between the 1920s and the outbreak of The Second World War, the BBC had developed two nationwide radio services, the BBC National Programme and the BBC Regional Programme...

radio station from Viscount Samuel

Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel

Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel GCB OM GBE PC was a British politician and diplomat.-Early years:...

. Soon there were 500 offers, and RCM volunteers started visiting 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 organisers was established, and these volunteers worked around the clock to make priority lists of those most imperilled: 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. They could only take a small sealed suitcase with no valuables and only ten marks or less in money. Some children had nothing but a manilla tag with a number on the front and their name on the back, others were issued with a numbered identity card with photo: "This document of identity is issued with the approval of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom to young persons to be admitted to the United Kingdom for educational purposes under the care of the Inter-Aid Committee for children. / This Document requires no Visa. / Personal Particulars. / (Name; Sex; Date of Birth; Place; Full Names and Address of Parents)"

World Jewish Relief (formerly Central British Fund) embarked on an operation to rescue Jewish children from Nazism. Within three weeks of Kristallnacht, the first 200 children were assembled in Germany, and travelled to the Hook of Holland, then to Harwich

Harwich

Harwich is a town in Essex, England and one of the Haven ports, located on the coast with the North Sea to the east. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the northeast, Ipswich to the northwest, Colchester to the southwest and Clacton-on-Sea to the south...

in the UK. Most of these unaccompanied children travelled to Liverpool Street Station in London where they were met by their volunteer foster parents. In the following nine months, 10,000 unaccompanied, mainly Jewish, children travelled to the UK. Transports out of Nazi-occupied Europe continued until the declaration of war 1 September 1939.

Upon arrival at a port in Great Britain, children without prearranged foster families were sheltered at temporary holding centres located at summer holiday camps such as Dovercourt

Dovercourt

For the neighbourhood in Toronto see Dovercourt-Wallace Emerson-JunctionDovercourt is a small seaside town in Essex, England. It is older than its smaller but better-known neighbour, the port of Harwich, and appears in the Domesday Book of 1086...

and Pakefield

Pakefield

Pakefield is a suburb of the town of Lowestoft in the Waveney District of the English county of Suffolk. Pakefield is located around 2 miles south of the centre of the town. Although today it forms a suburb of the urban area of Lowestoft, it was until 1934 a village and parish in its own right....

. Between 1939-1941, 160 children without foster families, were sent to the Whittingehame Farm School

Whittingehame Farm School

Whittingehame Farm School operated from 1939 to 1941, and was located at Whittingehame, near the village of Stenton, in East Lothian, Scotland. The school was a shelter for Jewish children seeking refuge in Britain, as part of the Kindertransport mission....

in East Lothian, Scotland. Whittingehame was the family estate and home of the late British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour

Arthur Balfour

Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, KG, OM, PC, DL was a British Conservative politician and statesman...

, author of the Balfour Declaration.

Details, Successes, and Ending of the Program

The first Kindertransport left Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

on 1 December 1938 and arrived in Harwich, England, on 2 December with 196 children from a Berlin Jewish orphanage burned by the Nazis during the night of 9 November. The first train from Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

left on 10 December 1938. For the first three months the children came mainly from Germany and then the emphasis shifted to Austria. In March 1939, after the German army invaded Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

, transports from Prague were hastily organised. Trains of Jewish Polish children were also arranged in February and August 1939.

The Nazis had decreed that the evacuations must not block ports in Germany, so that the trains crossed into the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

. The children would then go by ferry from the port of the Hook of Holland to the British ports of Harwich

Harwich

or Southampton

Southampton

Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...

. From these ports, a train would take the children to Liverpool Street Station

Liverpool Street station

Liverpool Street railway station, also known as London Liverpool Street or simply Liverpool Street, is both a central London railway terminus and a connected London Underground station in the north-eastern corner of the City of London, England...

in London.

The Nazi edict which prohibited Jews from using the tramways or having access to railway stations and German ports was overcome with the assistance of many Quaker representatives, who were present at stations ready to organise the flight of the children. On many trains, the Quakers travelled as far as the Hook of Holland, ensuring that the children got a connection to London. Quakers at Liverpool Street Station in London ensured that there was someone there to receive and care for each child. The statue shown above was created to commemorate these events. Without the help of the Quakers, many of the 10,000 children rescued would have died in the concentration camps.

The RCM ran out of money at the end of August 1939 and decided it could not take more children. The last group of children left Germany on 1 September 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland, and two days later Britain, France and other countries declared war on Germany. An attempted transport left Prague on 3 September 1939 but was sent back.

In total, about 10,000 unaccompanied children escaped to England directly from Germany and Austria (now part of the Greater Reich), and from Czechoslovakia, before the war ended this main program.

Separately, the last known boat transit left the Netherlands on 14 May 1940, the day the Dutch army surrendered to Germany. Hundreds of the children were still in Belgium and the Netherlands when Germany occupied both countries, resulting ultimately in their murder at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators.

During the war years many Kinder served in the British armed forces, the nursing professions, in food production and in war related industries. Several thousand of them remained in Britain when the war ended, and as adults made considerable contributions to Britain's services, industries, commerce, education, science and the arts, for the defence, welfare and development of their country of adoption. No fewer than four Kinder were Nobel Prize winners.

The Habonim Hostels and Kindertransport

In the UK a number of members of Habonim, a Jewish youth movement inclined to socialism and Zionism, were instrumental in running the country hostels of South West England, where some of the Kindertransport children were placed. These members of Habonim were held back from going to live on kibbutz by the effects of the Second World War. Other Jewish youth movements in the UK also subsequently participated in this work by running additional hostels.

These hostels were turned into centers for study of secular and Jewish subjects as well as temporary homes for the children. They were run on communial lines. About 120 of the kindertransport children grew up during the war years at these hostels at Exmouth, Dawlish and Teignmouth, South Devon. The hostels themselves were large family mansions that were made available by their owners and helped by both the British government and the Jewish social and charitable organizations. Some of the Habonim members also participated with the older children in helping to farm and to grow agricultural produce to aid the war effort. The languages used were a mixture of German, Polish, Czeck, Yidish, Hebrew and English which must have given the local residents the impression that the invasion had already begun![19]

Records

Records for every Kind that arrived in the UK through the Kindertransports are still maintained by World Jewish Relief through its Jewish Refugees Committee. On the supply of authorised documentation, copies of these documents can be supplied to family members at a small fee to cover administration costs.

Nicholas Winton

Before Christmas 1938, 29 year old British stockbroker of German-Jewish origin, Nicholas Winton

Nicholas Winton

Sir Nicholas George Winton, MBE is a British humanitarian who organised the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport. Winton found homes for them and arranged for their safe...

was about to fly to Switzerland for a ski vacation when he decided to travel to Prague instead to help a friend who was involved in Jewish refugee work. He established an organization to aid Jewish children from Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

separated from their families by the Nazis, setting up an office at a dining room table in his hotel in Wenceslas Square

Wenceslas Square

Wenceslas Square is one of the main city squares and the centre of the business and cultural communities in the New Town of Prague, Czech Republic. Many historical events occurred there, and it is a traditional setting for demonstrations, celebrations, and other public gatherings...

. Winton found homes for 669 children. Throughout the summer he placed advertisements seeking British families to take them in. The last group, which left Prague on 3 September 1939, was sent back because the Nazis had invaded Poland, marking the start of the Second World War.

Wilfrid Israel

Wilfred Israel (1899–1943) was a key figure in the rescue of Jews from Germany and occupied Europe. He warned the British government, through Lord Samuel, of the impending Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...

in November 1938. Through a British agent, Frank Foley

Frank Foley

Major Francis Edward Foley CMG was a British Secret Intelligence Service officer...

, passport officer at the Berlin consulate, he kept British intelligence informed of Nazi activities. He spoke for the Reichsvertretung, (the German Jewish communal organisation) and the Hilfsverein (the self help body), urged a plan of rescue on the Foreign Office and helped British Quakers to visit Jewish communities all over Germany to prove to the British government that Jewish parents were indeed prepared to part with their children.

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 children were held in makeshift internment camps, and around 400 were transported overseas to Canada and Australia. (see HMT Dunera

HMT Dunera

His Majesty's Transport Dunera was a British passenger ship built as a troop transport in the late 1930s. She also operated as a passenger liner and as an educational cruise ship. Dunera saw extensive service throughout the Second World War....

.) The young men among the interned children, in particular, were offered the chance to do war work or to enter the Auxiliary Pioneer Corps

Royal Pioneer Corps

The Royal Pioneer Corps was a British Army combatant corps used for light engineering tasks.The Royal Pioneer Corps was raised on 17 October 1939 as the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps. It was renamed the Pioneer Corps on 22 November 1940...

. 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.

Notable people saved

A number of children saved by the Kindertransports went on to become prominent figures in public life. These include:

Frank Auerbach
Frank Auerbach
Frank Helmut Auerbach is a painter born in Germany although he has been a naturalised British citizen since 1947.-Biography:Auerbach was born in Berlin, the son of Max Auerbach, a patent lawyer, and Charlotte Nora Burchardt, who had trained as an artist...

(from Germany), British painter
Leslie Brent
Leslie Brent
Leslie Baruch Brent , born Lothar Baruch, in Köslin, Germany , to German-Jewish parents, is a British immunologist and zoologist....

(from Germany), British immunologist
Rolf Decker
Rolf Decker
Rolf Decker is a retired German-American soccer player who played professionally with the New York Hakoah of the American Soccer League and earned four caps with the U.S. national team in between 1953 and 1956. He was a member of the U.S. Olympic soccer team at the 1956 Summer Olympics.-Club...

(from Germany), American professional, Olympic and international footballer
Alfred Dubs, Baron Dubs
Alf Dubs
Alfred Dubs, Baron Dubs is a Czech-born British Labour Party politician and former Member of Parliament.- Youth and education :...

(from Czechoslovakia), British politician.
Susan Einzig (from Germany), Book Illustrator
John Grenville
John Grenville
John Ashley Soames Grenville was a historian of the modern world.-Biography:Grenville was born Hans Guhrauer in Berlin, Germany on 11 January 1928. In 1939, escaped the Holocaust via Kindertransport with his brothers Julian and Walter. He officially changed his name in 1949 to John Ashley Soames...

(from Germany), British historian.
Eva Hesse
Eva Hesse
Eva Hesse , was a German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. -Early life:Hesse was born into a family of observant Jews in Hamburg, Germany...

(from Germany), American artist.
Walter Kaufmann
Walter Kaufmann
Walter Arnold Kaufmann was a German-American philosopher, translator, and poet. A prolific author, he wrote extensively on a broad range of subjects, such as authenticity and death, moral philosophy and existentialism, theism and atheism, Christianity and Judaism, as well as philosophy and...

(from Germany) Australian and German author.
Walter Kohn
Walter Kohn
Walter Kohn is an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist.He was awarded, with John Pople, the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1998. The award recognized their contributions to the understandings of the electronic properties of materials...

(from Austria), American physicist and Nobel laureate.
Hans Jacobus (from Germany), German journalist
Frank Meisler (from Germany), architect and sculptor
Gustav Metzger
Gustav Metzger
Gustav Metzger is an artist and political activist who developed the concept of Auto-Destructive Art and the Art Strike. Together with John Sharkey, he initiated the Destruction in Art Symposium in 1966...

(from Germany), Stateless artist and political activist.
Otto Newman
Otto Newman
Otto Newman is an Adjunct Professor of Sociology at San Diego State University, where he has been since 1987. His extensive writings have been published on four continents. His main works include: Gambling: Hazard and Reward and The Challenge of Corporatism...

(from Austria), British sociologist.
Arno Penzias
Arno Allan Penzias
Arno Allan Penzias is an American physicist and Nobel laureate in physics.-Early life and education:Penzias was born in Munich, Germany. At age six he was among the Jewish children evacuated to Britain as part of the Kindertransport rescue operation...

(from Germany), American physicist and Nobel laureate.
Sir Erich Reich
Erich Reich
Sir Erich Arieh Reich is an Austrian-born entrepreneur based in London, who through his charity challenges company Classic Tours has inspired over 42,000 people to raise £60million for 300+ UK charities.-Early life:...

(from Austria), British entrepreneur.
Joe Schlesinger
Joe Schlesinger
Joe Schlesinger is a veteran Canadian journalist who for four decades has reported for CBC Television News from every corner of the world. Born in Vienna in 1928, Schlesinger was raised in Czechoslovakia. In 1939, after Hitler dismembered the country, Joe's parents sent him for safety to England...

, CM
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...

(from Austria), Canadian journalist and author.
Lore Segal
Lore Segal
Lore Segal , née Lore Groszmann, is an American novelist, translator, teacher, and author of children’s books.-Personal life:...

(from Austria), American novelist, translator, teacher, and author of children’s books. Her adult book In Other People's Houses describes her own knocked-from-house-to-house experiences.
Sir Guenter Treitel
Guenter Treitel
Sir Guenter Heinz Treitel, QC, FBA, is a German-born English academic and retired Vinerian Professor of English Law.Treitel is the son of a leading Berlin lawyer and came to England on the Kindertransport...

(from Germany), British law scholar.
Hanuš Weber (from Czechoslovakia), Swedish TV producer
Kurt Weiler (from Germany), Producer animated cartoons (DEFA)

USA: The One Thousand Children

A similar but much less formal effort to bring unaccompanied mainly Jewish children to the United States did exist. It is known as the "One Thousand Children
One Thousand Children
One Thousand Children refers to approximately 1400 mostly Jewish children who were rescued from Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied or threatened countries by entities and by individuals within the United States of America, but specifically only those who came unaccompanied without their parent...

." It brought to the United States, between November 1934 and May 1945, about 1400 mostly Jewish children, who (like the kinder) were unaccompanied by their parents. In contrast to the Kindertransport, for which the British Government had waived immigration visa requirements, these children received no United States Government visa immigration assistance. Furthermore, it is documented that the State Department deliberately made it more difficult for many of these children to get entrance visas (see the One Thousand Children

One Thousand Children

One Thousand Children refers to approximately 1400 mostly Jewish children who were rescued from Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied or threatened countries by entities and by individuals within the United States of America, but specifically only those who came unaccompanied without their parent...

entry).

Relatedly, the 1939 proposed Wagner-Rogers Bill

Wagner-Rogers Bill

The Wagner–Rogers Bill was proposed United States legislation which would have had the effect of admitting 20,000 Jewish children under the age of 14 to the United States from Nazi Germany.The bill sponsored by Senator Robert F. Wagner and Rep...

to admit 20,000 Jewish children refugees to the United States from Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

, who were unaccompanied and under the age of 14 (necessarily leaving their parents behind), co-sponsored by Sen. Robert F. Wagner

Robert F. Wagner

Robert Ferdinand Wagner I was an American politician. He was a Democratic U.S. Senator from New York from 1927 to 1949.-Origin and early life:...

(D-N.Y.) and Rep. Edith Rogers

Edith Nourse Rogers

Edith Nourse Rogers was an American social welfare volunteer and politician who was one of the first women to serve in the United States Congress. She was the first woman elected to congress from Massachusetts...

(R-Mass.), failed to get Congressional approval in February 1939.(again see the One Thousand Children

One Thousand Children

entry).

In popular culture

The first documentary film made on the subject of the Kindertransport was My Knees Were Jumping: Remembering the Kindertransports which was shown, and nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, at the Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

in 1996 and released theatrically in 1998. The director, Melissa Hacker, is the daughter of the costume designer Ruth Morley who was a Kindertransport child. The film is narrated by Joanne Woodward

Joanne Woodward

Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward is an American actress, television and theatrical producer, and widow of Paul Newman...

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport is a 2000 documentary film directed by Mark Jonathan Harris and narrated by Judi Dench. It tells the story of the kindertransport, an underground railroad that saved the lives of over 10,000 Jewish children...

, narrated by Judi Dench

Judi Dench

Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English film, stage and television actress.Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo...

and released by Warner Bros. Pictures, won the Academy Award

Academy Awards

An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...

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

Mark Jonathan Harris

Mark Jonathan Harris is an American documentary filmmaker probably best known for his films Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport and The Long Way Home...

, is a three-time Oscar winner.

The Children Who Cheated the Nazis
The Children Who Cheated the Nazis
The Children Who Cheated the Nazis is a documentary about the Kindertransport, by the director Sue Read and producer Jim Goulding. This documentary film was broadcast by Channel 4 on September 28th, 2000, and has since been broadcast in America, Israel, France, Australia, Spain and worldwide.The...

, narrated by Richard Attenborough

Richard Attenborough

Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough , CBE is a British actor, director, producer and entrepreneur. As director and producer he won two Academy Awards for the 1982 film Gandhi...

is a British documentary film by Sue Read and Jim Goulding, first shown on Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

in 2000. Attenborough's parents were among those who responded to the appeal for families to foster the refugee children.

Kindertransport
Kindertransport (play)
Kindertransport is a play by Diane Samuels, which examines the life, during World War II and afterwards, of a Kindertransport child. Though fictitious, it is based upon many real kinder stories...

is the name of a play by Diane Samuels

Diane Samuels

Diane Samuels is an author and playwright. She was born in Liverpool in 1960. Samuels studied history at Sidney Sussex College at the University of Cambridge and then studied for a PGCE in drama at Goldsmiths, University of London...

, which examines life, during World War II and afterwards, of a Kindertransport child.

In the novel The Remains of the Day
The Remains of the Day
The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's third published novel. One of the most highly-regarded post-war British novels, the work was awarded the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1989...

and subsequent film adaptation

The Remains of the Day (film)

The Remains of the Day is a 1993 Merchant Ivory film adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant, Mike Nichols and John Calley. It starred Anthony Hopkins as Stevens and Emma Thompson as Miss Kenton with James Fox,...

, two teenage refugee sisters fleeing Germany are employed in Lord Darlington's household, only to be dismissed soon afterwards when Darlington, a Nazi sympathiser, reads the work of Houston Stewart Chamberlain

Houston Stewart Chamberlain

Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a British-born German author of books on political philosophy, natural science and the German composer Richard Wagner. He later became a German citizen. Chamberlain married Wagner's daughter, Eva, some years after Wagner's death...

.

Austerlitz

Austerlitz (novel)

Austerlitz is the final novel of W. G. Sebald, published in 2001. The book received the National Book Critics Circle Award.-Plot summary:...

, by the Anglo-German novelist W G Sebald, is an odyssey of a kindertransport boy brought up in a Welsh manse who later traces his origins to Prague and then goes back there. He finds someone who knew his mother, and he retraces his journey by train

Sisterland, a young adult novel by Linda Newbery

Linda Newbery

Linda Newbery is a British author, who began writing as a young adult author but has now broadened her range to encompass all ages. Now a full-time writer, she published her first novel Run with the Hare in 1988, while still working as an English teacher in a comprehensive school.Linda is a regular...

, concerns a Kindertransport child, Sarah Reubens, who is now a grandmother; sixteen-year-old Hilly uncovers the secret her grandmother has kept hidden for years. This novel was shortlisted for the 2003 Carnegie Medal.

Far to Go, a novel by Alison Pick

Alison Pick

Alison Pick is a Canadian novelist and poet. She has published two novels and two collections of poetry.Pick was born in 1975 in Toronto, Ontario and grew up in Kitchener. In 1999 she graduated from the University of Guelph with a B.A...

, a Canadian writer and descendant of European Jews, is the fictional account of a Sudetenland

Sudetenland

Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...

Jewish family who after fleeing to Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

use bribery to secure a place for their six-year old son aboard one of Nicholas Winton's transports.

In BBC1's The Kindertransport Story, three rescued children, now in their eighties, tell their moving stories. Also taking part in the programme was Lord Attenborough, whose own parents took in two girls after responding to the urgent appeal for foster families.

Personal accounts

Bob Rosner (2005) One of the Lucky Ones: rescued by the Kindertransport, Beth Shalom, Newark (England). ISBN 0-9543001-9-X. --- An account of 9-year-old Robert from Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

and his 13-year-old sister Renate, who stayed throughout the war with Leo Schultz OBE in Hull
Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...

and attended Kingston High School
Kingston High School, Hull
Kingston High School is a secondary school on Pickering Road in West Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England In 2001 the school was adjusted as many schools were reviewed by Hull City Council and became "Pickering High School Sports College".-Ex-pupils:*Amy Johnson*Tom Courtney*John Alderton* Alan...

. Their parents survived the war and Renate returned to Vienna.
Brand, Gisele. "Comes the Dark". Verand Press, (2003). ISBN 1-876454-09-1. Published in Australia. A factional account of the author's family life up to the beginning of the war, her experiences on the kinder-transport and life beyond.
David, Ruth. Child of our Time: A Young Girl's Flight from the Holocaust, I.B. Tauris
I.B. Tauris
I. B. Tauris is an independent publishing house with offices in London and New York.-History:I.B.Tauris was founded in 1983. Its declared strategy was to fill the perceived gap between trade publishing houses and university presses—that is, to publish serious but accessible works on international...

.
Golabek, Mona and Lee Cohen. "The Children of Willesden Lane." --account of a young Jewish pianist who escaped the Nazis by the Kindertransport.
Newman, Otto
Otto Newman
Otto Newman is an Adjunct Professor of Sociology at San Diego State University, where he has been since 1987. His extensive writings have been published on four continents. His main works include: Gambling: Hazard and Reward and The Challenge of Corporatism...

, British sociologist and author; Escapes and Adventures: A 20th Century Odyssey. Lulu Press, 2008
Oppenheimer, Deborah and Harris, Mark Jonathan. "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport is a 2000 documentary film directed by Mark Jonathan Harris and narrated by Judi Dench. It tells the story of the kindertransport, an underground railroad that saved the lives of over 10,000 Jewish children...

" (2008, Bloomsbury/St Martins, New York & London) ISBN 1-58234-101-X.
Segal, Lore
Lore Segal
Lore Segal , née Lore Groszmann, is an American novelist, translator, teacher, and author of children’s books.-Personal life:...

. "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 0-7867-1640-1.
Strasser, Charles. "From Refugee to OBE." Keller Publishing, 2007, ISBN 13: 978-1-934002-03-2 ISBN 10: 1-934002-03-8.
Weber, Hanuš. Ilse: A Love Story Without a Happy Ending, Stockholm: Författares Bokmaskin, 2004. Weber was a Czech Jew whose parents placed him on the last Kindertransport from Prague in June, 1939. His book is mostly about his mother, who was killed in Auschwitz in 1944.
Whiteman, Dorit. "The Uprooted: A Hitler Legacy: Voices of Those Who Escaped Before the "Final Solution." by Perseus Books, Cambridge, MA 1993.
A collection of personal accounts can be found at the website of the Quakers in Britain
Britain Yearly Meeting
The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain, also known as Britain Yearly Meeting , is a religious organisation in England, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, often defined as a denomination of Christianity.It is a part of the international religious...

at www.quaker.org.uk/kinder.
Leverton, Bertha and Lowensohn, Shmuel (editors), "I Came Alone: The Stories of the Kindertransports", The Book Guild, Ltd., 1990. ISBN 0-86332-566-1

Winton train

On 1 September 2009, a special "Winton train" set off from the Prague Main railway station. The train, consisting of an original locomotive and carriages used in the 1930s, headed to London via the original Kindertransport route. On board the train were several surviving "Winton children" and their descendants, who were to be welcomed by the now hundred year old Sir Nicholas Winton

Nicholas Winton

in London. The occasion marked the 70th anniversary of the intended last Kindertransport which was due to set off on 3 September 1939 but never did because of the outbreak of the Second World War. At the train's departure, Sir Nicholas Winton's statue was unveiled at the railway station.

External links

Educational site focusing on the children arriving in Britain.
WWW.kindertransport.org Kindertransport Association of North America - an association of children rescued in the Kindertransport who have settled in North America.
About World Jewish Relief's (formerly the Central British Fund) role in Kindertransport
WWW.ajr.org.uk/kindertransport The Kindertransport Webpage maintained by the Association of Jewish Refugees
Association of Jewish Refugees
The Association of Jewish Refugees is the specialist nationwide social and welfare services agency representing and supporting Jewish victims of Nazi oppression, and their dependants and descendants, living in Great Britain.-Historical overview:...

in London, UK, with links to the Kindertransport Association of the United Kingdom.
A collection of personal reminiscences and tributes from people who were rescued on the Kindertransport, collected by the Quakers in 2008.
Link to information about the film "My Knees Were Jumping: Remembering the Kindertransports" (1996)
Link to information about the Oscar winning film "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport" (2000)
Link to information about the British documentary "The Children Who Cheated the Nazis" (2000)
World Jewish Relief (formally known as The British Jewish Refugee Committee)
Wiener Library in London (holds documents, books, pamphlets, video interviews on the Kindertransport)
Archive of ten refugees in Gloucester in 1939
Through My Eyes website (personal stories of war & identity - including 3 Kindertransport evacuees - an Imperial War Museum online resource)

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Policy

Organization and management

Details, Successes, and Ending of the Program

The Habonim Hostels and Kindertransport

Records

Nicholas Winton

Wilfrid Israel

Internment and war service

Notable people saved

USA: The One Thousand Children

In popular culture

Personal accounts

Winton train

See also

External links