Nicholas Winton with one of the 669 children he rescued from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the second world war. Photograph: PA
It was long after I arrived on a Kindertransport in London in the summer of 1939 that I heard of Nicky Winton. I simply knew I had arrived on a Kindertransport, but had no idea who had made it possible for me, and hundreds of other mainly Jewish children to escape the Nazis. Then, in 1988 Esther Rantzen featured Nicky on her TV show That’s Life, and described what he had done. All of us who came on a Kindertransport from Prague soon began to meet him, and we kept in touch regularly.
JOHN KISH IV, MORAVIAN COLLEGE
The perpetual question, which has been with me ever since the Kindertransport, is: Why was I saved when so many others perished? Why did that happen? said the 86-year-old Backer, whose memoir, “Train to Freedom: A Jewish Boy’s Journey from Nazi Europe to a Life of Activism,” will be published next year. “I concluded that, out of gratitude, I needed to do something for other people.”
On 25 November the BBC Home Service broadcast a nationwide appeal for foster homes: and by the end of the year representatives of the MCCG were scouring Germany and Austria for those children most at risk. Among those who immediately responded to the appeal for homes for them was Althea Davis from Crawley Down.
KTA member Alice Masters is interviewed. Watch online
Dubbed the “British Schindler”, Sir Nicholas Winton rescued 669 children destined for Nazi concentration camps from Czechoslovakia as the outbreak of World War Two loomed. His death at the age of 106 came on the same day 76 years ago when the train carrying the largest number of children – 241 – departed from Prague.
A family picture of Nicholas Winton with one of the hundreds of Jewish children whose lives he saved during World War II. Credit Press Association, via Associated Press
Nicholas Winton, a Briton who said nothing for a half-century about his role in organizing the escape of 669 mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II, a righteous deed like those of Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, died on Wednesday in Maidenhead, England. He was 106.
Those who survived thanks to his efforts still refer to themselves as “Winton’s Children.” “One saw the problem there, that a lot of these children were in danger, and you had to get them to what was called a safe haven, and there was no organization to do that. Why did I do it? Why do people do different things. Some people revel in taking risks, and some go through life taking no risks at all.”
Anita’s passport when she traveled to London, June 1939. COURTESY OF ANITA HOFFER
Anita was six when she said good bye to her mom. She was crying on a train during her trip from Berlin to Holland. Her dad didn’t know she was leaving Germany. She felt alone, but she wasn’t. She was part of a group of European Jewish children who boarded a ferry in Holland on their way to England. Hoffer said most of the children were too young to understand that they had been saved from Adolf Hitler.
Bill Graham launched the psychedelic music era at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco and the Fillmore East in New York, with bands such as The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Graham was a child of the Holocaust, and this exhibition brings that story to light.
The late Anne Forchheimer in 2008 with her daughter, Rachel Green. Photo courtesy of Rachel Green
Every morning in 1936, Anne Forchheimer would bicycle to school, over a bridge in the German town of Coburg. She tried not to notice the signs of hate she passed along the way. Hate for Jews and the call for their removal from German society. German law had forbidden Jewish students from attending public schools. Anne’s destination on this November morning, as it had been for the last 18 months, was a special school for Jewish children.
THE memories of children rescued from Nazi Germany and brought to Dovercourt more than 75 years ago have been shared with pupils. Five of the children saved as part of Kindertransport have relived their experiences during a visit to Harwich and Dovercourt High School. They were helping pupils with an Exits and Entrances project, in which the youngsters are examining the part played by the town in rescuing the children.
Article in the Suddeutsch Zeitung about young historian Lilly Maier and the research and writing she is doing on the Kindertransports.
Memorabilia belonging to Inge Joseph on display at the Kindertransport museum in Vienna.. (photo credit:RONEN ZVULUN / REUTERS,RONI GORDON,ROOM NO. 4)
After a decade traveling the world, the ‘Für Das Kind’ Kindertransport exhibition finds a permanent home in Vienna.
A Kindertransport Museum has recently opened in Vienna: FÜR DAS KIND Memorial Museum, 1030 Vienna, Radetzkystraße 5/Pfefferhofgasse 5 “Für das Kind” is dedicated to all who helped ten thousand – mostly Jewish – children in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland to escape and to survive the Nazi machinery of death between 1938 and 1939. Visits must be arranged in advance.
KTA member Olga Drucker writes about the very first Kindertransport Reunion: “We came alone. We were as young as 4 months, as old as 17 years. Most were never to see their parents again. I was one of the luckier ones. After 6 years in England, I was reunited with my parents in New York. In 1989, I attended the 50-year Reunion of Kindertransport (Children’s Transport)held in London, England. It was the brainchild of one woman, Bertha Leverton, herself a Kind from Munich….”