The Journey

The Kindertransport Journey: Memory into History

The first transport from Berlin embarks at the Hook of Holland, December 1, 1938

In 1938, immediately after the November 9, 1938 Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”) pogrom in the German Reich, the Jews of Britain initiated the unique rescue operation now known as ‘Kindertransport’. Within days they obtained the permission of the government and, in the nine months leading up to World War II, with aid from Quaker and other non-Jewish refugee organizations, brought approximately ten thousand unaccompanied children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to safety in Britain. Most of the children, but not all, were Jews. Most of the parents who had sent them to safety perished in the Holocaust. Most of the children settled in Britain; others re-emigrated to Israel, the Americas, and elsewhere, scattering over the world.

About the author and designer

Panel 12: Retribution

Robert Sugar was eight when he left Vienna on a Kindertransport in January 1939. He spent the next nine years on the Millisle refugee farm in Northern Ireland, and arrived in New York in 1948. A graphic designer, art director, and author, Robert Sugar lives in New York. He has written and designed extensive material on Jewish history.

His previous exhibit, From Vienna to Belfast: Children of the Farm, recounted his personal experience. The present exhibit tells the larger story of Kindertransport. He is a former member of the Executive Board of KTA.

The exhibit The Kindertransport Journey: Memory into History is composed of 17 panels (16 are 30″ x 40″; 1 is 20″ x 30″), laminated and framed sealed in non-glare plexiglass. It is available for display and use in schools, community centers, synagogues, Holocaust Centers.

For availability and more information please email: exhibits@kindertransport.org.

“I keep remembering the young mother who placed her child on the train and then took her back; she repeated this three times… The Kindertransport exhibit explores a little-known chapter of Holocaust history and offers the viewer an opportunity to meet the Kinder and learn their story.”

-Eva London Ritt, Assistant Administrator, Holocaust Memorial Resouce and Education Center of Central Florida