Ellen Umansky’s debut novel The Fortunate Ones traces a stolen work of art from World War II Vienna to contemporary Los Angeles. The painting is “The Bellhop,” a fictional reimagining of the real-life painter Chaim Soutine‘s portraits of bellboys and porters. “The Bellhop” is stolen from Rose’s apartment after Nazis invade Vienna. Rose’s life has been uprooted – she and her brother have been sent from Austria to England via Kindertransport.
Ivan Backer is the author of “My Train to Freedom: A Jewish Boy’s Journey from Nazi Europe to a Life of Activism.” Backer was able to flee Nazi Europe on the Kindertransport, the “children’s trains,” organized by Sir Nicholas Winton who almost single-handedly rescued 669 children. Other Kindertransports from Europe were supported by British charities and moved thousands of children to safety in England.
Vera Coppard-Leibovic had a cause, to educate others about the horrors of the Holocaust, and nothing would stop her from sharing her own experiences, as one of about 10,000 children to escape the Nazis on the Kindertransport trains.
Gustav Metzger, one of the most provocative and politically-minded anti-artists of the late 20th century, died last week in London, the city where he arrived as a 13-year-old in 1939 on a Kindertransport from Nazi Germany.
There is a ‘real will’ to find homes for child refugees in the UK, campaigners have said, despite a Parliamentary defeat on the issue. On Tuesday, MPs knocked back an attempt to revive a scheme to provide shelter for unaccompanied youngsters fleeing warzones in Syria. Known as the Dubs Amendment, it was inspired by Lord Alf Dubs, who was brought to Britain with the Kindertransport organised by Maidenhead’s Sir Nicholas Winton on the eve of the Second World War.
In 1939, a refugee ban kept 20,000 Jewish children out of the U.S. Our rejection of refugees is an inextricable part of the American story, and Trump’s ban hews to that narrative more than we’d prefer to recall. One such black spot on our history mirrors the present moment particularly closely. In the late 1930s, the United States had a chance to save 20,000 Jewish children fleeing Nazi persecution, by means of a program that would have mirrored the British Kindertransport.
The life story of a woman who escaped the Nazis on one of the last Kindertransport trains has been published six months after her death. Sylvia’s first book, Laugh or Cry about her childhood growing up in Nazi Germany was published in 2015 and she died as her second book Cry or Laugh was being completed.
At the age of four, Mrs Barnett and her seven-year-old brother travelled across Germany and Holland by train with hundreds of other children from Berlin and arrived in the British port of Harwich. Having been moved several times around South-East England between various foster families, she was finally able to settle in London after the end of the Second World War.
Theresa May’s Conservative government has reneged on any commitment to provide asylum in the UK to lone child refugees languishing in desperate conditions near the port of Calais in France.
On February 13, over 200 Kindertransport survivors and descendants sent a letter to President Trump, urging him to keep America’s doors open to today’s refugees. Noting that “more than 10 million of today’s 21 million refugees are children,” the letter urges President Trump to keep America’s doors open to refugees. It reads, in part:
Herta Stanton, from Windlesham Manor in Crowborough, has turned 100.
A Crowborough woman who fled the Nazis as the escort of a young boy on the Kindertransport before the start of the Second World War has celebrated her 100th birthday.
Several times a week for the past decade, as I have left Liverpool Street Station from the Ipswich train, I walk past a bronze statue of an anxious-looking boy and girl with their suitcases. The statues, part of a series in the station commemorating the Kindertransport and its leader, Sir Nicholas Winton, are a reminder of the heroes who faced down fascism.
Jewish Holocaust survivors who fled Nazi Germany and other countries as children have a request for President Donald Trump: “Keep the doors open to refugees.” In a letter to Trump released Monday, more than 200 family members and survivors of the Kindertransport a program that sent around 10,000 Jewish child refugees to Britain from Nazi Germany and other European nations urged Trump to continue to resettle refugees, especially children, in America.
A refugee rights campaigner has said he is ‘bitterly disappointed’ by the government’s decision to stop providing sanctuary for lone child refugees. Lord Dubs, who came to the UK shortly before the Second World War as part of the Kindertransport organised by Maidenhead’s Sir Nicholas Winton, blasted the announcement from the Home Office on Wednesday, February 8, that the scheme is to end.
Lord Dubs, who was a Kindertransport refugee himself, is launching a fund to help bring children fleeing war and persecution to Britain, the JC can reveal. The Jewish Labour peer and 10 of his fellow Kinder have set up the Alf Dubs Children’s Fund and donated between £500 and £1,000 each. They say they were inspired Sir Nicholas Winton, the man who rescued them.
I think often about the refugees that we in the UK aren’t helping, especially the unaccompanied children wandering about Europe. I probably feel so strongly because at the age of eight (I am now 86), I acquired a big sister who was a refugee.
In the summer of 2011, I was sent to interview a Jewish couple at their home in Giffnock, just south of Glasgow. Henry and Ingrid Wuga: Holocaust survivors in their late 80s who had come to the UK on the Kindertransport when they were 15 and 14. They had already told their story once that day to a group of teachers in Ayr but they told it again, with grace, generosity and the occasional jolt of black humour.
In the summer of 2011, I was sent to interview a Jewish couple at their home in Giffnock, just south of Glasgow. Henry and Ingrid Wuga: Holocaust survivors in their late 80s who had come to the UK on the Kindertransport when they were 15 and 14. Henry and Ingrid’s capacity for remembering is inexhaustible, their humanity intoxicating and their willingness to see good unshakeable. They are my inspiration
Britain is ending a program to take in child refugees proposed by a politician who arrived in the country by Kindertransport during World War II. Proponents of the program had wanted the United Kingdom to take in as many as 3,000 lone child refugees, but the government said Wednesday that the initiative would end in March after the resettling of 350 children, according to The Guardian
The daughter of Sir Nicholas Winton, the British humanitarian who organised the Czech Kindertransport operation that saved 669 children on the eve of the second world war, has called on Theresa May to remember her father’s example and “do the right thing” by reconsidering the decision to close the Dubs scheme for vulnerable refugee children.