by Jennifer Norton (2010)
Norton’s thesis provides a historical overview of the Kindertransport and examines how its memory has been shaped over time. She traces the rescue operation’s context, the experiences of the children involved, and the ways in which public remembrance, survivor narratives, and commemorative practices have constructed the Kindertransport as a historical event. The work combines archival research with memory studies to show how history and remembrance interact in shaping our understanding of the Kindertransport.
by Fry, Helen (2007); Published by Sutton Publishing
This book tells the compelling story of the 10,000 German and Austrian nationals who, fleeing Nazi persecution, arrived in Britain between 1933 and 1939, and at the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939 became ‘enemy aliens’. Many volunteered to serve in the British forces, swore allegiance to George VI and became known as ‘the King’s most loyal enemy aliens’. Interviews with several KTA members are featured, as well as an impressive selection of archive photographs, many of which are reproduced for the first time. 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 Schindler, Meriel (2024); Published by W. W. Norton & Company
Meriel Schindler spent her adult life trying to keep her father, Kurt, at bay. But when he died in 2017, he left behind piles of Nazi-era documents related to her family’s fate in Innsbruck, Austria, and a treasure trove of family albums reaching back to before World War I. Meriel was forced to confront not only their fractured relationship, but also the truth behind their family history.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-lost-caf-schindler-one-family-two-wars-and-the-search-for-truth-meriel-schindler/0728eca3be537c1e?aid=56539&ean=9781324074571&listref=if-you-are-interested-in-the-kindertransports-you-might-be-interested-in&next=tPublished by Down County Museum
Jewish children, who escaped on Kindertransports, and other refugees from Nazi terror found refuge in a remote farm on the Ards peninsula in the late 1930s. The Belfast Jewish community had leased the farm to provide a home and living for these refugees. In Millisle and Donaghadee the local communities, including Millisle Primary School, proved to be firm friends of the farm, providing help with whatever was needed.
by Chadwick, W.R. (2010); Published by Matador
May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Stephanie Homer (2019); Published by UCL Press
The article examines how Kindertransport memoirs challenge simplified ideas of “resilience.” By analysing autobiographical writings of former Kindertransport refugees, the author shows that their experiences do not fit neatly into heroic or triumphant narratives. Instead, the memoirs reveal emotional complexity: ongoing trauma, ambivalent identities, and the long‑term struggle to rebuild life after forced separation and displacement. The article argues that the popular use of “resilience” can obscure these nuanced realities and oversimplify refugee experiences.
by Deborah Cadbury (2022); Published by PublicAffairs
In 1933, the same year Hitler came to power, schoolteacher Anna Essinger saved her small, progressive school from Nazi Germany. Anna had read Mein Kampf and knew the terrible danger that Hitler’s hate-fueled ideologies posed to her pupils, so she hatched a courageous and daring plan: to smuggle her school to the safety of England.
As the school she established in Kent, England, flourished despite the many challenges it faced, the news from her home country continued to darken. Anna watched as Europe slid toward war, with devastating consequences for the Jewish children left behind. In time, Anna would take in orphans who had given up all hope: the survivors of unimaginable horrors. Anna’s school offered these scarred children the love and security they needed to rebuild their lives.
Featuring moving firsthand testimony from surviving pupils, and drawing from letters, diaries, and present-day interviews, The School that Escaped the Nazis is a dramatic human tale that offers a unique perspective on Nazi persecution and the Holocaust. It is also the story of one woman’s refusal to allow her belief in a better world to be overtaken by hatred and violence.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-school-that-escaped-the-nazis-the-true-story-of-the-schoolteacher-who-defied-hitler-deborah-cadbury/17442655?ean=9781541751187&next=t&next=tby Whiteman, Dorit Bader (1993); Published by New York: Insight Books
Dorit Bader Whiteman has woven together the stories of 190 escapees, including several who left via the Kindertransports.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-uprooted-a-hitler-legacy-voices-of-those-who-escaped-before-the-final-solution-dorit-bader-whiteman/a76f09b76b4773ac?aid=56539&ean=9780738205793&listref=kindertransport-history&next=tby Bentwich, Norman (1956); Published by London: Cresset Press
Norman Bentwich writes of his involvement with the Kindertransport movement.
by Guske, Iris (2009); Published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing
The present volume is the result of an interdisciplinary oral history research project, which was carried out at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex. While each Holocaust survivor’s developmental story is unique, it is, however, linked to the others’ by the common experience of negotiating an identity between two countries, cultures, and religions against the background of unparalleled political upheavals, and as such also sheds light on, and offers ways out of, the traumata suffered in present-day contexts of enforced migration and displacement.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/trauma-and-attachment-in-the-kindertransport-context-german-jewish-child-refugees-accounts-of-displacement-and-acculturation-in-britain-iris-guske/158ab50e8bc48cca?aid=56539&ean=9781443805032&listref=kindertransport-history&next=tby Baumel, Judith Tydor (1990); Published by Juneau, AK: Denali Press
A scholarly book by the author of two theses on the Kindertransport movement. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Curio, Claudia (2006); Published by The Zentrum fuer Antisemitismusforschung of the Technische Universitaet Berlin
In this book, her doctoral dissertation, Claudia Curio delves into the question of why for so long pre-WWII emigration studies tended to overlook the Kindertransport experience in contrast to the attention given to the Youth Alijah. Through use of well documented case studies and extensive analysis Curio provides raises many issues of intimate concern to Kinder, and which, as she skillfully shows, had lasting influence on their lives. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Gershon, Karen (1966); Published by New York: Harcourt Brace and World
May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Sonnert, Gerhard and Holton, Gerald (2006); Published by New York, Palgrave Macmillan
This book aims to create a collective biography of Jewish young people who were born in Germany or Austria between 1918 and 1935 and fled to the United States. It endeavors to present a statistical picture as well as to capture personal experiences based on a five-year, in-depth study. One of the book’s aims is to provide readers with information to influence the view of immigrant newcomers in the United States today.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/what-happened-to-the-children-who-fled-nazi-persecution-g-holton/29346a6afc2af70a?aid=56539&ean=9781403976253&listref=kindertransport-history&next=tby London, Louise (2000); Published by Cambridge University Press
Whitehall and the Jews is the fullest study yet of the British response to European Jewry under the Nazis, and the first detailed account of British immigration policy toward refugee Jews. The British government always put self-interest first and sought to avoid long-term responsibility for large numbers of homeless Jews. Nonetheless, aided by the sympathy of certain officials and ministers, many Jews obtained refuge, albeit subject to severe restrictions.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/whitehall-and-the-jews-1933-1948-british-immigration-policy-jewish-refugees-and-the-holocaust-louise-london/7293289854aa03fb?aid=56539&ean=9780521534499&listref=kindertransport-history&next=tby Firestone, Rabbi Tirzah (2019); Published by Monkfish Book Publishing
Our past does not simply disappear. The painful history of our ancestors and their rich cultural wisdom intertwine within us to create the patterns of our future. Even when past trauma remains unspoken or has long been forgotten, it becomes part of us and our children―a legacy of both strength and woundedness that shapes our lives.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/wounds-into-wisdom-healing-intergenerational-jewish-trauma-new-preface-by-author-new-foreword-by-gabor-mat-reading-group-and-study-guide-tirzah-f/053179da5dcaf641?aid=56539&ean=9781948626828&listref=second-and-third-generations&next=t