A new book reveals the darker side of the operation that rescued 10,000 children from Nazi Germany.
In the late 1930s, as the Nazis began targeting Jews and sending them to ghettos, work camps, and to their deaths, the British government came up with a plan to save Jewish children. They were going to introduce the Kindertransport, where unaccompanied minors who were under 17 years of age and from the German Reich could gain refugee status and enter Great Britain.
In between 1938 and 1940, around 10,000 children and young people fled from Germany, Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia on the Kindertransport to the UK. British child welfare organizations made sure the children would have shelter and education, and Jews, Quakers, and Christians worked together to ensure the safety and protection of these children. The Kindertransport was seen as a success story, and Great Britain was praised for its effort to save thousands of young Jewish refugees.
However, as time went on, stories came out that showed the darker side. And now, in her new book “The Kindertransport: What Really Happened” (Polity, Jan 2024), author Andrea Hammel is setting the record straight on the operation.
Kindertransport couple receive lifetime achievement award
Posted on January 15, 2024
A couple who both came to the UK on the Kindertransport have won a prestigious award for their contribution to the Jewish community.
Ann and Bob Kirk, who have been volunteering at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St John’s Wood for over 70 years, were recognised for their “service, dedication, love and loyalty” on receiving the Jewish Voluntary Network’s Outstanding Lifetime Achievement award on Sunday.
Ann, 95, who escaped Berlin in 1939, aged 10, began attending the Liberal Jewish Synagogue with her sponsor family, who were members. After finishing at cheder, she continued as a classroom assistant.
Bob, 98, came on the Kindertransport from Hanover, two weeks later, aged 14.
The couple met in 1949, getting married at LJS, with Bob then volunteering at the synagogue’s religious school.
The Kindertransport’s complex legacy
Posted on January 10, 2024
When 200 unaccompanied child refugees arrived in Harwich, Essex, in early December 1938, they did so through a new visa-waiver system. These children from Berlin were escaping Nazi persecution, and eventually more than 10,000 children — mostly from Jewish families — would arrive in Britain via the same process.
Last month marked the 85th commemoration of the Kindertransport. Compared to some of the anti-refugee rhetoric or policies of politicians and governments today, the Kindertransport looks like a model of a successful state-run rescue mission. But is that true?
This sculpture in London commemorating the Kindertransport is part of a series created by Jewish architect and artist Frank Meisler. Each of the five pieces are located in different European cities, roughly representing key points from Meisler’s own journey in 1939. Photo by Steve Daniels via Wikimedia Commons
After Kristallnacht in November 1938, when state-sponsored violence was perpetrated against Jewish citizens across the German Reich, the British government was under pressure from the public to help continental Jewish citizens. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s government was reluctant to offer refuge to Jews, however, fearing for the U.K.’s security, the financial cost and the xenophobic and antisemitic sentiments of some of the electorate. The government refused to commit financial or organizational help, but came up with the compromise of admitting unaccompanied minor children into the U.K.
The decision to only admit the children but not their families is one of the most controversial aspects of the Kindertransport. Some experts have suggested that parting from your own children was seen as more normal in the 1930s; but even in 1938 Home Secretary Samuel Hoare noted the pain that the parents were likely to experience when parting from their children:
“I could not help thinking what a terrible dilemma it was to the Jewish parents in Germany to have to choose between sending their children to a foreign country, into the unknown, and continuing to live in the terrible conditions to which they are now reduced in Germany.”
My own research has shown that child refugees were adversely affected by this separation. For example, Kindertransport refugee Eva Mosbacher was a well-adjusted 12-year-old from Nuremberg, Germany, who settled in successfully with her foster family in Cambridge. Nevertheless, she continuously expressed her longing to be reunited with her birth parents in her letters. In 1942, her parents were deported with 1,000 other Jews and murdered in the Belzyce ghetto in Poland. After the war, Eva stayed in the U.K. and worked as a nurse, but took her own life in 1963.
Some MPs expressed the view that only children who would be of benefit to the U.K. should be admitted. This was reflected in the selection criteria of the Refugee Children’s Committee, an interdenominational umbrella organisation based in the U.K. and tasked with overseeing the Kindertransport. Largely staffed by volunteers, it tried to only admit children who did not have any special needs or health issues. This seems especially cruel when one considers that by 1938 many of the youngsters had lived under the stressful conditions of discrimination and persecution for years.
In addition to rejecting applications if any illnesses or special needs were mentioned, children whose parents had a history of mental health problems were also rejected. Born on April 26, 1926, Herta Baumfeld was not accepted for the Kindertransport because her mother was in a psychiatric institution. Herta was subsequently murdered at the Maly Trostinec concentration camp in Belarus on Sept. 18, 1942.
Financing the escape of the child refugees and their resettlement in the U.K. was especially difficult without the help of the U.K. government. In fact, the government demanded that a “guarantee” of £50 per child was raised by volunteers to indemnify against any expense. This rule limited the number of children that could be given refuge.
What ultimately made the Kindertransport possible? It was the generosity and commitment of private citizens, charities and voluntary organizations in the U.K.
Walter Bingham, Kindertransport Survivor, Celebrates 100th Birthday
Posted on January 8, 2024
“I could never have imagined that at the age of 100 I would be a witness to the horrific pogrom against Jews that took place on October 7 and the terrifying resurgence of antisemitism since. As I celebrate today, I also pray for the future of the State of Israel and the Jewish people”
— Walter Bingham
JERUSALEM, January 4, 2024 – Today marks a historic milestone as Kindertransport survivor Walter Bingham celebrates his 100th birthday in Jerusalem. Walter, the world’s oldest active journalist, has led an extraordinary life, overcoming the challenges of the Holocaust and emerging as a decorated war hero before embarking on a distinguished career in journalism.
Born Wolfgang Billing in 1924 in Karlsruhe, Germany, Walter’s childhood took a dramatic turn as Hitler rose to power. Expelled from school during the events leading to Kristallnacht in 1938, Walter witnessed the burning of books in 1933 and the arrest of his father, who later died in the Warsaw ghetto.
Sent on the Kindertransport to Britain, Walter vividly recalls the heartbreaking farewell from his mother at the train station. In England, he served in the British Army, earning honors for rescuing soldiers in the Battle of Normandy.
Post-war, Walter became a journalist, a profession in which he still works today, recently entering the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest active journalist. He also found success as an actor, landing a role in the Harry Potter movie. Today, living in Jerusalem, Walter is a proud father, grandfather, and an enduring symbol of resilience.
Reflecting on his journey, Walter said, “I’ve always felt a deep connection to the Jewish people and our homeland. I value the moments I’ve spent fighting against tyranny and promoting the truth through journalism. I could never have imagined that at the age of 100 I would be a witness to the horrific pogrom against Jews that took place on October 7 and the terrifying resurgence of antisemitism since. As I celebrate today, I also pray for the future of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.”
BBC is facing furious backlash after omitting the word ‘Jewish’ from promotional material for film telling the story of WWII hero Sir Nicholas Winton who saved kindertransport children from the Nazis
Posted on January 5, 2024
The BBC is facing furious backlash after omitting the word ‘Jewish’ from promotional material for a film starring Sir Anthony Hopkins about WWII hero Sir Nicholas Winton, who saved children from the Nazis with the kindertransport scheme.
The new film, One Life, tells the story of Sir Nicholas’ efforts to rescue hundreds of predominantly Jewish children from the expanding Nazi invasion across Europe.
However, the word ‘Jewish’ was not featured on the website of film co-producer BBC Film in its information page, saying only that Sir Nicholas saved ‘669 children’, leading to claims that Jews were being ‘written out of history’.
Co-producers See-Saw Films and distributors Warner Bros used the same wording on their websites.
HMV and several cinemas in the UK, including the Peckhamplex in London, posted on Twitter, formerly X, a promotion for the film which described it as the story of a man ‘who helped save Central European children from the Nazis’.
OPINION: Kindertransport legacy: Confronting antisemitism in today’s world
Posted on January 4, 2024
The decision to allow Jewish children into the UK took time, persuasion and campaigning. Despite all of that work, it was really the November pogrom, known as Kristallnacht, that served as a wake up call for the rest of the world, showing as it did that the anti-Jewish hate had reached a crescendo and that there was a real risk to Jewish life. Seeing the annexation of Czechoslovakia, it became clear to many that this threat spread beyond Germany and Austria.
The Kindertransport has long been heralded as Britain’s response – seeing the risk, this country led by example, using British values to save Jewish lives. But like so much of the history of the Holocaust, it was complex.
Because while 10,000 Jewish children were saved, the majority of them would never see their parents again – they were not permitted entry and most of them were later murdered by the Nazis.
It took time for the British Government to make the decision to allow these children access. The violence seen rampaging through German towns and cities during Kristallnacht finally tipped the balance, proving to the onlooking world that Jewish people under Nazi control were at imminent risk. But this did not come out of nowhere, it came after years of increasing persecution and antisemitism.
And this ‘rescue’ of children did not come cheap – the bond required for each child was £50, equivalent to £2,780 in today’s money. Private citizens or organisations had to guarantee payment for each child’s care, education, and eventual emigration from Britain. The original plan by the British Government was for these unaccompanied children to return home to their families once the “crisis was over”.
The Kindertransport is not simply a story of rescue and survival. At its heart it is also a story of loss. It is a story of children who came here, many alone and without speaking a word of English, and who managed to rebuild their lives. It is a story of parents, who were forced to make the impossible decision to send their children away to unknown lands. It is the story of the murder of most of those loved ones left behind.
‘The worst meeting I have ever had’: why a Kindertransport hero rejected a film about his life
Posted on December 31, 2023
As One Life is released, producer says that Nicholas Winton – the ‘British Schindler’ who saved 669 children – was reluctant for his story to be told
Sir Nicholas Winton, who saved hundreds of children from the Nazis, was so modest that he rejected an initial proposal to make a film about him, according to the producer of One Life, the soon-to-be released biographical drama about the British humanitarian.
Iain Canning told the Observer that, about five years before Winton’s death in 2015 aged 106, he and fellow producer Emile Sherman visited him at his Maidenhead home during a break from shooting their film, The King’s Speech.
Over tea, they broached the subject of making a film about the man who helped save 669 children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia, just before the beginning of the second world war, but Winton politely turned them down.
“I still to this day call it the worst meeting I have ever had,” said Canning. “He was 99 or 100 at the time. We said, ‘We think what you did was absolutely incredible and we would love to make a film about that particular moment in your life.’ He said, ‘Oh, no one else needs to know what I did. No one else. Anyone who needs to know about this, already knows about it.’ ”
Canning added: “He was a man with such kind eyes. We were humbled by him.”
This is what really happened to the children of the Kindertransport
Posted on December 23, 2023
The story of the 10,000 children is seen as a tale of British compassion, but a new book claims the reality was more nuanced
The story of the 10,000 Jewish children — to whom Britain decided to give a home 85 years ago last month — has produced countless books, films and memorials. Etched into the national consciousness, the Kindertransport is widely seen as a heroic tale of escape, survival, and a noble British tradition of generosity and compassion towards those in need.
Many of the Kinder suffered multiple trauma, both before and after their arrival in the UK. They had experienced antisemitic persecution by the Nazis first-hand. “I shrink against the privet hedge, trying to be invisible,” one refugee, Edith Militon, recalled of her journey to and from school. Another, Beate Siegel, remembered seeing her father’s bloodied shirt after he had been attacked by stormtroopers, while Ruth Oppenheimer talked of the hours she and her sister spent “shivering of cold and panic” as they hid in the family car on Kristallnacht. Their rescue was near miraculous.
But, argues German-born academic Andrea Hammel in a new book, many Britons don’t grasp some of the most crucial – and perhaps less laudable – aspects of the Kindertransport.
Combining scholarly rigour with an array of stories about the children and their families, The Kindertransport: What Really Happened aims to correct the “rose-tinted view” that has long prevailed, says its author.
Hammel, the director of the University of Aberystwyth’s Centre for the Movement of People, doesn’t deny that Britain’s rescue of thousands of children from Nazi Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia was the biggest and most successful effort of any such scheme. And she is clear that any criticism of the limitations of the Kindertransport doesn’t detract from the key role played by the British public.
‘I went from a life of luxury to a straw bed in Stoke-on-Trent’
Posted on December 22, 2023
THE card is faded and yellowed with time, but the smile of the little girl in the black and white photograph is still bright.
She was just three when it was taken, wearing her Sunday best, with her hair neatly parted and smoothed down in a wave.
Beside the picture someone has written her name, date of birth, parents’ contact details and identification number: 5097.
Eighty-four years have passed since Dr Lisa Midwinter, then Liesa Dasch, arrived in Britain – 1,000 miles from her home in the Czech Republic and wearing the document on a string around her neck.
She has kept it, tucked away in a special place, all this time, fondly calling it her ‘ticket to life’.
For Lisa, now 88, was one of the 669 children who escaped the Nazis on the Czech ‘Kindertransport’, a network of trains that helped young refugees from Jewish families flee central Europe and set up new lives in the UK, organised by humanitarian Sir Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Winton.
Kindertransport — In 1938 London let a few Jewish children in
Posted on December 16, 2023
LONDON — Kindertransport, the evacuation to the U.K. of 10,000 mainly Jewish children fleeing Nazi persecution in 1938-39, is touted by capitalist politicians and the media as an example of the British government coming to the aid of the Jewish people.
The children came from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Poland over a 10-month period beginning in December 1938. But, “there is history and there is myth,” Andrea Hammel writes in The Kindertransport — What Really Happened, just published by Polity Press. Hammel is a professor of German at Aberystwyth University in Wales. She presented the book at the Wiener Holocaust Library here Dec. 6.
The library itself had been the target of a Jew-hating attack Nov. 2 when its entry sign was spray-painted with the word “Gaza.”
“I wrote the book to make a critical history of the Kindertransport available to a wider audience,” Hammel said, describing the real record of the immigration policies of successive U.K. governments before the Kindertransport program began. The Aliens Act of 1905 was adopted to limit Jewish immigration after tens of thousands of Russian and Eastern European Jews arrived “to escape anti-Semitic pogroms and persecution after 1880,” she writes. Further legislation in 1914 and 1919 added more restrictions.
“It is a fact that in the 1930s the U.K. government’s policy was not laying the foundation for a noble tradition. It was mainly concerned with keeping refugees fleeing Nazism away,” she said.
Between 1933 and 1945, an annual average of just 6,000 Jews were permitted entry. London also put strict limits on Jews trying to get to British-controlled Palestine.
Humble hero who rescued 100s of children from Nazis haunted by the kids he couldn’t save
Posted on December 16, 2023
Sir Nicholas Winton never liked being called a hero, but to the hundreds of children whose lives he saved there is no better word.
During the nine months leading up to the Second World War, the London stockbroker, known as Nicky, organised the rescue of 669 children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. In a race against time before the borders closed, Sir Nicholas and a handful of volunteers arranged train travel to England, visas, funding and foster homes to save the children, who were mainly Jewish, from the Nazis.
The story of his remarkable feat is coming to the big screen in the film One Life, featuring Anthony Hopkins as the older Nicky, and Helena Bonham Carter. Sir Nicholas’s incredible efforts came to light 50 years later in an article in the Sunday Mirror, which led to his being reunited with many of the children he saved on BBC1’s That’s Life! in 1988.
Kindertransport remembered at Vienna ceremony marking 85th anniversary
Posted on December 12, 2023
The British-Austrian Jewish journalist Hella Pick, a Kindertransport child who arrived in Britain in March 1939, was the guest of honour at an event in Vienna to mark the 85th anniversary of the legendary railway rescue project.
Ms Pick spent the war in the Lake District and went on to have a distinguished career in journalism, largely on the Guardian.
The event was held at the residence of UK ambassador Lindsay Skoll, herself the granddaughter of a Kindertransport refugee.
Kindertransport: Saving Jewish children from Nazi Germany
Posted on December 6, 2023
85 years ago, 200 Jewish children arrived in Great Britain from Germany. It was the first of many so-called Kindertransport rescue missions. The children were brought out of Nazi Germany to safety. Until September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany attacked Poland and World War II started, around 10,000 minors were saved that way. But for other children, it was too late.
I remember being on the Kindertransport – my journey was easier than that faced by today’s refugees
Posted on December 5, 2023
t is a bitter irony that the 85th anniversary of the first Kindertransport should coincide with my most recent visit to the Calais camps, where I witnessed the shocking conditions endured by the refugees of today.
The Kindertransport saved the lives of many (mostly Jewish) refugee children by bringing them to safety in the UK. I was one of them.
Although, at six, I was one of the youngest children on the train, I remember the journey.
Kindertransport refugees mark 85th anniversary of rescue from Nazis
Posted on December 5, 2023
Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis has told Kindertransport refugees that they are a source of “inspiration” at a time of rising anti-Semitism, as they gathered to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the rescue operation.
A ceremony was held to mark the occasion on Sunday afternoon at Liverpool Street station in London, where many of the child refugees arrived in the UK before the start of the Second World War.
The humanitarian rescue effort, which ran between November 1938 and September 1939, gave 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, safe passage to the UK from Nazi-controlled territory in Europe.
The Chief Rabbi said the kinder (children) refugees were a “source of enormous hope and positivity, guidance and inspiration” while “war is raging in Israel”.
85 years on, child refugees set out to keep history alive
Posted on November 27, 2023
At the end of 1938 Hilde Auerbach faced an invidious choice. The Gestapo had arrested her husband in the midst of the Kristallnacht pogrom, taking him to the Dachau concentration camp. She and the rest of the family had found temporary shelter in Berlin after fleeing from their farm in Austria, hiding in a cart of hay.
The story of a kindertransport survivor, a surprising friendship and happy coincidences
Posted on November 27, 2023
Arthur Kern wanted to see his family’s old apartment in Vienna, Austria, where he and his family lived before his parents helped him escape on the kindertransport, an act that ultimately saved his life. The organized rescue effort mainly took Jewish children from Nazi-controlled territory to the United Kingdom during a nine-month period between 1938 and 1939. It saved an estimated 10,000 children and Kern was one. He was the only member of his family to survive.
His decision to see his family home 65 years later, in 2003, started a chain of events he could never have anticipated. Lilly Maier, the 11-year-old girl who answered his knock at the door — only a year older than he was when he was rescued — would become his pen pal, his friend, his biographer and a historian of the Holocaust.
Maier is currently touring the United States with “Arthur and Lilly,” her biography of Kern and their lifelong friendship, the English translation of which was published in October. The book covers Kern’s life but also describes Maier’s travels to the places along his escape route, the people she met and the conversations she had with Kern, who died in 2015.
On Friday, Dec. 1, Maier will be in person at Temple Solel in Paradise Valley during its erev Shabbat service to talk about her book. Dec. 2 marks the 85th anniversary of the first kindertransport.
“It is remarkable how one person’s life can influence another’s,” said Solel Rabbi Debbie Stiel.
Jane and Ros Merkin stage a unique play in memory of the Kindertransport
Posted on November 26, 2023
Sisters Jane and Ros Merkin have teamed up to produce a play to mark the 70th anniversary of the Kindertransport.
The performance, Suitcase, focuses on the moment when the Kinder arrived at Liverpool Street, following Parliament’s decision to admit 10,000, mainly Jewish, children as refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe.
Jane, 46, a freelance producer, and Ros, 48, a drama teacher at John Moores University in Liverpool, have spent the past few months working on the production, which is being directed by Max Reinhardt.
It will be staged at Liverpool Street Station on Tuesday.
Ros (pictured left) tells People: “Our mother [Johanna Merkin née Hacker] arrived on the Kindertransport. “I think it’s important, as the first generation is kind of disappearing, that we pass the information on.
“I think this is going to be more of an issue in the Jewish community.”
Jane adds: “The reason we wanted to do it at Liverpool Street was because we wanted to do it in front of people that don’t know what is happening. For instance, those on their way to work. This is similar to the way in which people at the station didn’t know what was going on when the Kinder first arrived.
“There are many non-Jewish British people who don’t know this happened.”
Jane lives in North London, while Ros lives in Liverpool.
My Kinder refugee grandfather inspired me to protect my homeland
Posted on November 24, 2023
British-Israeli law student Kinneret Hamburger was on holiday with her family in Israel on October 7 when she was woken up by an air raid siren.
She received a message calling her “to base” — just a day before she was due to move into a new flat.
Kinneret, a reserve officer in the IDF, jumped into her car and sped to her army post without even packing her bag.
It was a self-defining moment. “When terrorists declare war upon your people, you have no other choice than fight for your life and everyone else’s,” she tells the JC.
Kinneret’s urge to protect her homeland is deeply intertwined with her own family past.
Her grandfather, John Horn, was an 11-year-old Kindertransport refugee to Britain from Berlin, and that story — a family member rescued from monsters by a free, democratic society — is key in her drive to protect the Jewish state.
Kindertransport refugee who escaped Nazis during WWI meets Ukrainian exiles in UK
Posted on November 18, 2023
Nataliia Nahornya (left) with Renate Beigel and daughter Yevheniia
It was a truly moving moment as the two strangers tearfully embraced, united by an extraordinary bond. Because both women are war refugees who fled to Britain – from conflicts fought more than 80 years apart.
One is 90-year-old Renate Beigel, an Austrian Jew sent to the safety of England in May 1939, just months before the Second World War began. The other is Nataliia Nahornya, 45, who came here in May 2022 with her daughter Yevheniia, 15, as part of the Homes for Ukraine scheme – but without her her son Nazarii Nahornyi, 20, who had to stay behind.
The women’s emotional meeting took place near Renate’s Cotswolds home to mark the 85th anniversary of the Kindertransport – a rescue effort launched in 1938 that saved almost 10,000 children from Nazi tyranny by bringing them here. Renate told how hearing what the war in Ukraine had done to her new friend brought back memories of her own escape from hell alongside her sister Trudi.
