Non-Fiction

  • Types

  • Genres

Kindertransport: Tylers Green Hostel for young Jewish Refugees

by Koschland, Bernard (2007); Published by Jewish Historical Society of England

This article in the journal Jewish Historical Studies: Transactions, Volume 41, describes two wartime hostels for young refugees who arrived in Britain under the auspices of the Refugee Children’s Movement. Clearly written, it provides details of the daily life and problems (budgets,etc) of the kind of hostels to which Kinder were sent.

Kindertransports from North Rhine-Westphalia

by Lissner, Cordula, Reuter, Ursula, Stellmacher, Adrian (2016); Published by Kindertransport Project Group of the Yavneh Memorial and Educational Centre

The Project ‘Kindertransports from North Rhine-Westphalia’ had the aim of putting together the full story of the Kindertransport from the Rhineland and Westphalia, about which up until now only fragments had been known, and making the results available to the memorial centres in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, especially their educational departments.

Letters From Children on the First Kindertransport

by Green, Jessica (2016); Published by European Holocaust Research Infrastructure Blog

A mapped series of transcribed letters written by children while in transit on the first Kindertransport on 1 December 1938. The letters are addressed to their families back in Germany while the children are leaving them behind for the safety of England. They were subsequently transcribed by an anonymous source and sent to the JCIO by somebody who identified himself as Herr Flörsheim (or Mr Flörsheim) from Amsterdam. Beyond those few details, nothing is known about the specific provenance of this item or the individual children who wrote the letters themselves.

Lily Renée, Escape Artist: From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer

by Robbins, Trina (2011); Published by Lerner Publishing Group

In 1938, Lily Renée Wilheim is a 14-year-old Jewish girl living in Vienna. Then the Nazis march into Austria, and Lily’s life is shattered overnight. Suddenly, her own country is no longer safe for her or her family. To survive, Lily leaves her parents behind and travels alone to England. In this graphic novel for readers 10-14, follow the story of a brave girl who becomes an artist of heroes and a true pioneer in comic books.

Literatur und Holocaust

by Bayer, Gerd and Freiburg, Rudolf (2009); Published by Koenigshausen & Neumann

The chapter “Die Erfahrung des Kindertransports in der Englischen Literatur,” by Christoph Houswitschka, pages 76-97, may be of interest. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

Little Holocaust Survivors: And the English School That Saved Them

by Wolfenden, Barbara (2008); Published by Praeger

As Europe prepared for war, the newly-founded Stoatley Rough School began to shelter hundreds of traumatized Jewish children fleeing (usually alone) from Nazi persecution. Little Holocaust Survivors, based on dozens of original interviews, tells their stories, and the stories of the teachers and benefactors who created this refuge in a country house on a hillside in Surrey, donated by its philanthropic owner. Author Barbara Wolfenden (wife of one of the boys educated at Stoatley Rough) has interviewed many of the children (both ‘Hut Boys’ and ‘Household Girls’) from the school. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

Making An Entrance, the Biography of Gerard Gould

by Martin, Margaret (2010); Published by D R Green

Gerard Gould is a teacher and director of amateur drama with a uniquely charismatic personality, and those gifts are rare enough to merit attention; but the life of the man behind the work is truly fascinating. He was born Günter Goldstein in Germany in 1922, the youngest child of a prosperous Jewish family. He was a witness (and a perceptive, profoundly intelligent witness) to the gathering horror that was Nazi Germany. He came to England on a Kindertransport.

Margaret Kahn interview

by Kahn, Margaret (2016); Published by Mercy Community

Margaret Kahn, née Jonas, tells her lifer story, from Kindertransport on December 1, 1938 to a teaching hospital in London, marriage and life in Connecticut. At 94, she still volunteers to speak with young students.

Memories that Won’t Go Away: A Tribute to the Children of the Kindertransport

by Gold, Michele (2014); Published by Kotarim International Publishing, Ltd

Memories That Won’t Go Away tells the stories of hundreds of these kinder. Their experiences as strangers in a strange land were often complicated and painful, but as this book illustrates, the rescued children – and their many thousands of descendants – remain grateful to the nation that saved them.

Men of Vision, Anglo-Jewry’s Aid to Victims of the Nazi Regime

by Gottlieb, Amy (1998); Published by London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson

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

Millisle, County Down – Haven from Nazi Terror

by Taylor, Marilyn (2001); Published by History Ireland

The story of the Refugee Resettlement Farm, which existed in Millisle, County Down from 1938 to 1948, is one of the little-known ‘secret histories’ of the Second World War in Ireland. To this remote, disused farm on the beautiful Ards peninsula, came, in the late 1930s, Jewish children who escaped on Kindertransports, together with older members of religious Zionist youth groups, and some adults, all refugees from Nazi terror.

Mit dem Kindertransport in die Freiheit. Vom Jüdischen Flü zum Corporal O’Brian

by Behrendt, Gideon and Claudia Curio (2001); Published by Frankfurt: Fischer

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

Mothers in Children’s and Young Adult Literature: From the Eighteenth Century to Postfeminism

by Rowe Fraustino, Lisa and Coats, Karen, Editors (2016); Published by University Press of Mississippi

Chapter 4: The Women Who Sent Their Children Away: Mothers in Kindertransport Fiction. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

My Knees Were Jumping: Remembering the Kindertransports

by Hacker, Melissa (1996); Published by Bee's Knees Productions

Award-winning documentary film directed by the daughter of a Kind from Vienna.

For more information, and to purchase dvds or to arrange a screening, contact melissa@kindertransport.org

My Train to Freedom: A Jewish Boy’s Journey from Nazi Europe to a Life of Activism

by Backer, Ivan (2016); Published by Skyhorse

The breathtaking memoir by a member of “Nicky’s family,” a group of 669 Czechoslovakian children who escaped the Holocaust through Sir Nicholas Winton’s Kindertransport project, My Train to Freedom relates the trials and achievements of award-winning humanitarian and former Episcopal priest, Ivan Backer. Now an eighty-six-year-old who remains an activist for peace and justice. He has been influenced by his Jewish heritage, his Christian boarding school education in England, and the always present question “For what purpose was I spared the Holocaust?”.

Never Look Back: The Jewish Refugee Children in Great Britain, 1938-1945

by Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, Judith (2012); Published by Purdue University Press

This book charts the history of the Kindertransport movement, focusing on the dynamics that developed between the British government, the child refugee organizations, the Jewish community in Great Britain, the general British population, and the refugee children. Based on archival sources and follow-up interviews with refugee children both forty and seventy years after their flight to Britain, this book gives a unique perspective into the political, bureaucratic, and human aspects of the Kindertransport scheme prior to and during World War II.

Nicholas Winton and the Rescued Generation

by Emmanuel, Muriel and Vera Gissing (1982); Published by Edgware, England: Vallentine Mitchell Publishers

Nightmare’s Fairy Tale: A Young Refugee’s Home Fronts, 1938-1948

by Korman, Gerd (2005); Published by University of Wisconsin Press

Korman movingly recounts his childhood years as a refugee in war-ravaged Europe…. The young adult who emerged was a collage of disjointed personas: an American Jew eager to embrace his new home, an immigrant who never shed the traces of his foreign accent, and a historian eager to tell the story that defines him, his family, and his people.—Publishers Weekly The Korman family scattered from a Polish refugee camp just before WWII. The father sailed to Cuba on the ill-fated St. Louis; the mother left for the United States after sending her two sons on a Kindertransport.

Nuremberg and Beyond: The Memoirs of Sigfried Ramler from 20th Century Europe to Hawaii

by Ramler, Sigfried (2009); Published by Ahuna Press

The book begins with Sig’s childhood in Vienna and follows him at age 14 on the Kindertransport to London, where he experienced the Blitz as well as V-1 and V-2 rocket attacks. After the war, his facility with languages brought him to one of the defining moments of his life: the Nuremberg trials. Working in the new field of simultaneous translation, Sig came face to face with the war’s criminals: Göring, Hess, Höss, and Hitler’s architect, Speer. A meeting with a pretty Hawaiian-Chinese court reporter, Piilani Ahuna, led to marriage and a journey to Hawaii. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

On My Own: Decoding the Conspiracy of Silence

by Schulhof Rybeck, Erika (2013); Published by Summit Crossroads Press

Erika Schulhof Rybeck tells her story as a tribute to the parents who shielded her from the Nazi hor­rors swirling around her, horrors that led to their deportation and disappear­ance. After being a teacher, mother and volunteer, she looks back at age 84 at rare experiences – living in castles and cottages, being sheltered by Catholics, discov­ering her Jewish heritage, and learning of her illustrious family.