by Intrator, Joanne (2023); Published by She Writes Press
On his deathbed, Dr. Joanne Intrator’s father poses two unsettling questions: “Are you tough enough? Do they know who you are?”
Joanne soon realizes that these haunting questions relate to a center-city Berlin building at 16 Wallstrasse that the Nazis ripped away from her family in 1938. But a decade is to pass before she will fully come to grasp why her father threw down the gauntlet as he did. Repeatedly, Joanne’s restitution quest brings her into confrontation with yet another of her profound fears surrounding Germany and the Holocaust. Having to call on reserves of strength she’s unsure she possesses, the author leans into her professional command of psychiatry, often overcoming flabbergasting obstacles perniciously dumped in her path.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/summons-to-berlin-nazi-theft-and-a-daughter-s-quest-for-justice-joanne-intrator/f002ee7cfa810423?ean=9781647425135&next=t&aid=56539&listref=second-and-third-generationsby Brent, Leslie Baruch (2009); Published by Bank House Books
“Professor Leslie Baruch Brent (known in the scientific world as Leslie Brent) arrived in England late in 1938 in the first of the many Kindertransports. His German-Jewish family was among millions who were murdered by the Nazi regime. In 1943, at the tender age of eighteen, he volunteered for the armed forces. Having studied zoology at the University of Birmingham he became an eminent immunologist in the field of tissue and organ transplantation. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Dekel, Mikhal (2019); Published by W. W. Norton & Company
Beginning with the death of the inscrutable Tehran Child who was her father, Dekel fuses memoir with extensive archival research to recover this astonishing story, with the help of travel companions and interlocutors including an Iranian colleague, a Polish PiS politician, a Russian oligarch, and an Uzbek descendent of Korean deportees. With literary grace, Tehran Children presents a unique narrative of the Holocaust, whose focus is not the concentration camp, but the refugee, and whose center is not Europe, but Central Asia and the Middle East.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/tehran-children-a-holocaust-refugee-odyssey-mikhal-dekel/df73e429946c5084?ean=9781665122412&next=tby Rice, Gunther (2014); Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing
“Part memoir, part biography, this story recounts the trials and tribulations of Gunther Rice (born Gunther Zloczower), the youngest of nine children raised in a Polish Jewish family in Hamburg, Germany. At age 14, he was deported with his family (and other Polish Jews) to Poland and for months lived as a refugee in the no-man’s land between Germany and Poland. He was rescued by the Kindertransport and brought to Cardiff, Wales, three days before the start of World War II. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Lichtenstein, Jonathan (2020); Published by Scribnner UK
A formally audacious and deeply moving memoir in three timeframes that confronts the defining trauma of the twentieth century, and its effects on a father and son. In 1939, Jonathan Lichtenstein’s father Hans escaped Nazi-occupied Berlin as a child refugee on the Kindertransport. Almost every member of his family died after Kristallnacht, and, arriving in England to make his way in the world alone, Hans turned his back on his German Jewish culture.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-berlin-shadow-living-with-the-ghosts-of-the-kindertransport-jonathan-lichtenstein/e062a657c8a2be7c?aid=56539&ean=9780316541015&listref=kindertransport-memoir&next=t(2018) Published by The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide
A cache of 40 letters discovered recently in a UK loft and digitized for The Wiener Library archive, documents the prelude to this more unusual experience from a child’s perspective. The letters were written by a boy in Vienna to his mother, who was already in the UK, over the course of an agonizing four-month separation. During this time each worked frantically towards a reunion that they could not be certain would happen as war clouds gathered. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Reich, Erich (2017); Published by i2i Publishing
The true story of a Jewish refugee boy, Erich, who arrived in this country from Nazi-occupied Europe three days before the start of the war. He was just four, and would never see his parents again. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Locke, Tim (2014)
Perspectives on family stories of Görlitz, Dachau, the Kindertransport and the Holocaust. Tim Locke, whose mother Ruth(nee Ruth Neumeyer) and uncle Raimund escaped Nazi Germany on a Kindertransport to England, investigates and shares his family history from the 18th century forward.
(2018) Published by Girl Museum
A lovely online resource, showcasing photographs, documents, and videotaped oral histories, with a robust study guide that meets common core educational goals.
by Baram, Myra (1988); Published by Sussex, England: The Book Guild
Kindertransport Survivor Myra Baram tells the story of her life from Berlin to Nethanya, Israel. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Shmuel, Naomi Anne (2024); Published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing
In a variety of genres and narrative styles, author and poet Karen Gershon chronicled her European childhood, rescue on the Kindertransport, and life in the aftermath of the Holocaust, with unmatched candor and stunning insight. Based on Gershon’s private archives and letters to her sister, this biography presents a fascinating portrait of a child survivor whose talent for writing crowned her the voice of a whole generation. The major events of Gershon’s life are presented with great perspicacity alongside her development as a writer forced to change languages.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-legacy-of-karen-gershon-child-survivor-to-author-and-poet-naomi-anne-shmuel/5aa31747b5b9036f?aid=56539&ean=9781036406134&listref=kindertransport-memoir&next=tby Zurndorfer, Hannele (1983); Published by London: Quartet Books
Hannele Zurndorfer left Dusseldorf in May 1939 on a children’s transport with her younger sister. She ends her story with the last letter she received from her father. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Lieberman, J. Nina (2004); Published by New York: Vantage Press
May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Milton, Edith (2005); Published by Chicago: University of Chicago Press
In 1939, on the eve of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, seven-year-old Edith Milton (then Edith Cohn) and her sister Ruth left Germany by way of the Kindertransport, the program which gave some 10,000 Jewish children refuge in England. The two were given shelter by a jovial, upper-class British foster family with whom they lived for the next seven years. Edith chronicles these transformative experiences of exile and good fortune in The Tiger in the Attic, a touching memoir of growing up as an outsider in a strange land.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-tiger-in-the-attic-memories-of-the-kindertransport-and-growing-up-english-edith-milton/6e659ca42ff184b3?aid=56539&ean=9780226529479&listref=kindertransport-memoir&next=tby Bentwich, Norman (1956); Published by London: Cresset Press
Norman Bentwich writes of his involvement with the Kindertransport movement.
by Selo, Laura (1992); Published by London: Excalibur Press
The autobiographical story of three sisters who traveled from Prague to London.
by Stolzberg Korobkin, Frieda (2008); Published by Devora Publishing
In Throw Your Feet Over Your Shoulders: Beyond the Kindertransport, Frieda Stolzberg Korobkin presents a compelling, powerful and vividly described odyssey of her life as a six-year- old child sent by her parents (along with her siblings) from their home in Vienna, Austria to the relative safety of England. It is December 1938, and Friedl’s parents make the heart-wrenching decision to send her and her sisters and brother on a kindertransport to England — organized by Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/throw-your-feet-over-your-shoulders-beyond-the-kindertransport-frieda-korobkin/e6271006b4e3ff43?aid=56539&ean=9781434930712&listref=kindertransport-memoir&next=tby Schlesinger, Joe (1990); Published by Toronto: Random House Canada
May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Heckscher, Helmut (2017); Published by Xlibris
In this lively memoir, Helmut shares his experiences and adventures, starting with his childhood growing up as a Jew in Nazi Germany and his escape to the UK with the Kindertransport. He writes of working in a factory in England, his interment at the start of World War II, and nights in the subways of London during the Blitz. Helmut eventually reunited with his parents in Wisconsin, then was drafted into the Army. With a lively voice, Helmut tells the story of his remarkable life, and paints a picture of a refugee becoming an American in the 20th Century.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/uprooted-and-replanted-the-memoir-of-helmut-heckscher-from-hamburg-to-the-kindertransport-to-america-helmut-heckscher/30c2e4a3fa2c4223?aid=56539&ean=9781543430288&listref=kindertransport-memoir&next=tby Zeller, Frederic (1989); Published by Sag Harbor, New York: Permanent Press
Frederic Zeller’s story of his childhood in Berlin and escape to Holland, where he joined a Kindertransport. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.