Kindertransport is 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 the life, during World War II and afterwards, of a Kindertransport

Kindertransport

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 took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Free City of Danzig...

 child. Though fictitious, it is based upon many real kinder stories. The play is published by Nick Hern Books

Nick Hern Books

Nick Hern Books is a London-based independent specialist publisher of plays, theatre books and screenplays. The company was founded by the former Methuen drama editor Nick Hern in 1988.-History:...

.

Play Content

In November 1938, after nights of violence against Jews across Germany and Austria, the British government introduced a program called the Kindertransport (children’s transport), which gave Jewish children—and only children—safe passage to the UK. Spared the horrors of the death camps, the Jewish “Kinder” were uprooted, separated from their parents and transported to a different culture where they faced, not the unmitigated horror of the death camps, but a very human mixture of kindness, indifference, occasional exploitation, and the selflessness of ordinary people faced with needy children.

Notable Productions

Kindertransport was first performed in the UK by the Soho Theatre Company at the Cockpit Theatre in London on April 13, 1993 and the US at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York on April 26, 1994. Subsequently the play has been produced in Sweden, Japan, Germany, Austria, Canada and South Africa. It was adapted by the author for a BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 production in 1995.

External links

• Author's page
• Samuels, D. (2009) Kindertransport, Nick Hern Books
  Nick Hern Books
  Nick Hern Books is a London-based independent specialist publisher of plays, theatre books and screenplays. The company was founded by the former Methuen drama editor Nick Hern in 1988.-History:...
  
  , London, ISBN: 9781854592279