
Hundreds of documents detailing the personal stories of children who escaped the Nazis before the Second World War have been unearthed by Nottingham experts.
The remarkable finds relate to the Kindertransport programme – one of the largest organised rescue operations in history.
Between 1938 and 1940, thousands of Jewish children were transported to safety from parts of Nazi-controlled Europe ahead of the outbreak of war.
Many Jewish families already felt unsafe in the years before the conflict, due to a string of discriminatory laws implemented by the Nazi party in Germany that saw many people being murdered. The UK agreed to take thousands of Jewish children under 17 into temporary refuge.
Many families were separated and children were told there was a chance they would never see their parents again as they crossed the border into Holland after leaving Germany and other areas controlled by the Nazis.
Records collected by officials as the children caught trains to the UK were thought to have since been lost or thrown away, leaving many of the rescued with little information about how they reached safety.
A researcher from Nottingham Trent University has now found details of the journey. Dr Amy Williams discovered the documents in the archives at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Israel, while working on her second book.
The records are copies of original files held in Holland and list the names of almost all of the 9,000 children who fled to the UK and Holland on the Kindertransport.
“I essentially found them the second week I was there,” Dr Williams told Notts TV.