The Kindertransports: Nearly 10,000 Children Saved from the Nazis

The tragedy of Kristallnacht, Night of the Broken Glass, took place in Germany, Austria, and the Nazi-occupied section of Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland) on November 9-10, 1938. The Nazis damaged or destroyed 1000 synagogues and 7500 Jewish businesses, sent 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps, and beat ninety male Jews to death.

 

These events shocked the world. However, many countries, including the United States, only permitted a small percentage of Jews to immigrate, regardless of guarantees of financial support from relatives, friends, and acquaintances in those countries.

 

Shortly after the events of Kristallnacht, a delegation of prominent Jews in England met with Prime Minister Chamberlain and requested that he allow young German children and teenagers to temporarily enter Britain, retrain, and return to their home countries at a later time.

 

The Jewish representatives were most concerned about teenagers threatened with arrest and those already in concentration camps. Jewish and non-Jewish agencies assured the British Home Secretary that they would meet the financial needs of the refugee children, apart from government funds, and their stay would only be temporary.

As a result, the British government gave permission for unaccompanied refugee children under the age of seventeen years to enter Britain and didn’t announce a limit to the number of children who would be admitted.

The non-Jewish groups consolidated and formed the non-denominational Movement for the Care of Children from Germany (later called the Refugee Children’s Movement, RCM). Agents of the organization traveled to Germany and Austria and set up the selection, processing, and transportation plans.

 

A representative of the Jewish refugee agencies met with Jewish leaders in Berlin, and volunteers gathered the names of the most threatened children. These included teenagers in danger of arrest or already in concentration camps, children in Jewish orphanages, children whose parents were in concentration camps, children who could no longer be financially supported by their parents, and Polish children or teenagers at risk of deportation.

Through radio broadcasts, the BBC Home Service appealed to the British people to provide foster homes. Five hundred people answered the call. Jewish and non-Jewish volunteers visited the homes of these potential foster parents and reported on their suitability.

Several hundred immigrant applications from Germany arrived in London each week, demonstrating the urgency of the situation. British volunteers processed the applications, many of them working around the clock, grouping the children in lists and sending travel arrangements to the parents and guardians in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.

 

The Nazi government only permitted the refugee children to take a small amount of money out of the Reich, but it wasn’t unusual for parents to place valuables in their children’s luggage. Some children were excited about the journey, but others were angry with their parents and felt rejected. Later on, guilt plagued these children for how they had responded.

The first Kindertransport left Berlin on December 1, 1938, and the first transport from Vienna left ten days later. The trains traveled across Germany and into the Netherlands and then Belgium. At the border crossings, German guards terrified the children by looting their baggage. After reaching the coast, they boarded ferries and sailed to either Harwich or Southampton, England. The German adults who had accompanied them returned to Germany as required by arrangements made between England and Germany. One of these adults was later imprisoned in Auschwitz and lost his own wife and child to the gas chambers.

 

For the first three months, most of the Kindertransports were from Germany, but later the number of transports leaving Austria increased. Nicholas Winton, a twenty-nine-year-old stockbroker from Britain, witnessed the plight of the refuge children in Czechoslovakia and organized Kindertransports from Prague. Many of these children had previously fled with their families from Germany, Austria, or the Sudetenland and were living in squalid refugee camps.

The transports continued after the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia in March of 1939, but they were halted when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Hundreds of children waiting to leave Nazi-occupied territory could no longer escape. Most of them did not survive the war.

 

Close to ten thousand lives (70% Jewish) were saved through the Kindertransports, but the majority of these children never saw their parents again. Some of the rescued teens eventually joined the Allied armed services and fought to free their homelands from the vicious grip of the Nazis. Many remained in Britain after the war, but others emigrated and settled in various countries around the world.

 

Source:

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport by Mark Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer