Posted on April 8, 2009
In a sombre ceremony at the University of Toronto, the Czech Republic recently marked the 70th anniversary of two separate – but ultimately related – events. On March 14, 1939, the first rescue train of Jewish children, known as the kindertransport, pulled out of Prague, bound for Britain. One day later, the German army marched into Prague, the Czech capital, transforming a democratic nation into a protectorate of Nazi Germany and dooming its Jewish population.