Fiction

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Remember Me: A Search for Refuge in Wartime Britain

by Watts, Irene N (2000); Published by Tundra Books

Young Marianne is one of the lucky ones. She has escaped on one of the first kindertransporte organized to take Jewish children out of Germany to safety in Britain.

At first Marianne is desperate. She does not speak English, she is not welcome in her sponsors’ home, and, most of all, she misses her mother terribly. As the months pass, she realizes that she cannot control the circumstances around her. She must rely on herself if she is to survive.

In this exciting companion to Good-bye Marianne, Irene N. Watts has created a memorable character, and a story that is ultimately about hope, not war. Based on true events, this fictional account of hatred and racism speaks volumes about history and human nature.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/remember-me-a-search-for-refuge-in-wartime-britain-irene-n-watts/83beb71dfef8d9b6?aid=56539&ean=9780887765193&listref=kindertransport-for-young-readers&next=t

Shakespeare’s Kitchen: Stories

by Segal, Lore (2007); Published by New Press

What began as seven interrelated short stories published in The New Yorker is now a full-length collection of thirteen stories featuring Austrian Kind Ilka Weisz, who accepts a position at a think tank called the Concordance Institute, and her struggle to form a new family out of friends and coworkers. Shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/shakespeare-s-kitchen-stories-lore-segal/8e85384293b5bb66?aid=56539&ean=9781595583468&listref=kindertransport-fiction&next=t

Sisterland

by Newberry, Linda (2003); Published by Random House

There are two time frames in this novel for young adults that deals with issues of ethnicity, otherness and prejudice. In contemporary Northampton we find Hilly and her friends and family. Her grandmother, Heidigran, suffers from Alzheimer’s. The second time frame – before, during and immediately after the second world war, follows young Sarah Reubens, who is sent from Cologne on the Kindertransport to safety in Northampton. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

The Children’s Train, Escape On The Kindertransport

by Zinser, Jana (2015); Published by BQB Publishing

May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

The Convention of Wives

by Debra Green (2022); Published by She Writes Press

A novel written by KT2 Debra Green.

When Dina and Julia meet at a surgical convention, they bond over frustrations with their husbands’ demanding schedules. But geography, time, and growing families make maintaining their friendship difficult and their relationship eventually falls apart. One of them is left to wonder why; the other has a secret. But neither of them knows that decisions made by family members decades earlier have set them on a collision course.

A sweeping saga that follows generations from a shtetl in Odessa to the comforts of Scarsdale, an uprising in Glasgow to servitude in the Caribbean, and a trek through the Alps to a displaced persons camp in Italy, The Convention of Wives is a story about the ever-evolving messiness of friendship and marriage, and the wonder of survival.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-convention-of-wives-debra-green/17847927?ean=9781647422417&next=t&next=t

The Emerald Horizon (The Star and the Shamrock Book 2)

by Grainger, Jean (2019); Published by Independently Published

Liesl and Erich have found a home in Ireland away from the chaos of war-ravaged Europe. As the dark news of what has happened to their fellow Jews filters through, they are torn – love for their mother and their home on one hand, and the profound sense of peace and belonging they have in Ballycreggan on the other. Like all of the other children who escaped Nazi territory on the Kindertransport, they must wait to hear the fate of their loved ones.

The English German Girl

by Simons, Jake Wallis (2011); Published by Polygon: An Imprint of Birlinn Limited

‘Rosa must carry her suitcase herself. She heaves it up, walks through the doorway, looks back one final time: Papa and Mama are standing arm in arm, they are waving, but their masks have fallen away, they look hopeless, and that is the worst thing of all; Rosa turns her back and they are gone.” The Klein family is slowly but surely losing everything they hold dear or ever took for granted as Hitler’s anti-Jewish laws take hold in 1930s Berlin. In desperation, fifteen-year-old Rosa is put on a Kindertransport train out of Germany, to begin a new life in England.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-english-german-girl-a-novel-jake-wallis-simons/cbf3839bce241841?aid=56539&ean=9781510718050&listref=kindertransport-fiction&next=t

The Fortunate Ones

by Umansky, Ellen (2017); Published by William Morrow

One very special work of art – a Chaim Soutine painting – will connect the lives and fates of two different women, generations apart, in this enthralling and transporting debut novel that moves from World War II Vienna to contemporary Los Angeles. It is 1939 in Vienna, and as the specter of war darkens Europe, Rose Zimmer’s parents are desperate. Unable to get out of Austria, they manage to secure passage for their young daughter on a kindertransport, and send her to live with strangers in England.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-fortunate-ones-a-novel-ellen-umansky/ef760cae29a25031?aid=56539&ean=9780062382498&listref=kindertransport-fiction&next=t

The Last Train to London

by Waite Clayton, Meg (2019); Published by Harper Books

From New York Times bestselling novelist Meg Waite Clayton comes a powerful pre-WWII era novel based on the true story of the Kindertransport rescue of ten thousand children from Nazi-occupied Europe – and one brave woman, Truus Wijsmuller, who helped them escape.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-last-train-to-london-a-novel-meg-waite-clayton/2ecc27f706892701?aid=56539&ean=9780062946942&listref=kindertransport-fiction&next=t

The Nature of Blood

by Phillips, Caryl (1997); Published by New York: Alfred A. Knopf

May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

The One I Was

by Graham, Eliza (2015); Published by Lake Union Publishing - Amazon

The Star and the Shamrock

by Grainger, Jean (2019); Published by Independently Published

Could you put your children on a train to save their lives? Ariella Bannon is alone except for her two Jewish children. With every passing day, life is becoming more and more dangerous for Liesl and Erich in Berlin. The Nazis are allowing some children out on the Kindertransport, but can she bear to let them go? Amazon bestsellers, The Star and the Shamrock, and its sequel The Emerald Horizon are stories of the darkest days in human history, but amid the terror is the indominable human spirit, and the incredible kindness of strangers.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-star-and-the-shamrock-jean-grainger/2211b3708b5208b5?aid=56539&ean=9781914958540&listref=kindertransport-fiction&next=t

Total Recall

by Paretsky, Sara (2001); Published by New York: Delacorte Press

Lotty was a girl of nine when she emigrated from Austria to England, one of a group of children wrenched from their parents and saved from the Nazi terror just before the war broke out. Now stunningly—impossibly—it appears that someone from that long-lost past may have returned.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/total-recall-sara-paretsky/60cda17acaffebf7?ean=9780440334446&next=t&aid=56539&listref=kindertransport-fiction&next=t

War Story

by Edelman, Gwen (2001); Published by New York: Penguin Putnam