Posted on March 23, 2022
There has been much talk of Britain’s “noble tradition of looking after refugees” and journalists and politicians have taken the story of the Kindertransport as the defining moment in the history of Britain’s policy towards refugees.
There are several problems here. First, the Kindertransport is misleading in several crucial respects. In his important book, Journeys from the Abyss, the historian Tony Kushner shows what is missing from the prevailing account and asks some troubling questions.