Kibbutz Lavi, whose founders included children evacuated from Germany to the United Kingdom as part of the Kindertransport program before the Holocaust, has become the main provider worldwide of furniture for synagogues.
In an unassuming suburb of Berlin lies a testament to a truly remarkable tale. A temporary exhibition entitled Am Endes des Tunnels (‘At the End of the Tunnels’) commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransports from Berlin. Between 1938 and 1940, up to 10,000 children from Nazi-occupied territories were transported to Great Britain. Of these, it is estimated that some 7,500 of those rescued were Jewish.
The Garnethill Synagogue in Scotland is home of the Holocaust Archive Center. That Center turned out to be the perfect venue for Andrew Marcus of North Brunswick to search for the Kindertransport records of his mother, Erica. A visit to the center in the spring of 2019 resulted in Marcus being prompted to contact the World Jewish Relief organization(WJR). After writing to the WJR, Marcus received the archived records shortly after Erica celebrated her 95th birthday at her home in New Jersey.
On the eve of World War II many parents faced an impossible choice: stay with their children as the Nazis closed in, or send them away. More than 10,000 children made it to England and other countries as part of the kindertransports or children’s transport, a life-saving program. Today there’s a new kind of kindertransport needed, one that focuses on reuniting separated children and their parents.
“I want to tell you something before I forget,” Dr Ruth Westheimer says at the beginning of our conversation. “Make sure you tell the Jewish Chronicle that every time I come to London, I go to Liverpool Street station and look at the Kindertransport sculpture.”
It is, I think, no melodramatic overstatement to describe the artist Eve Hesse’s life as essentially tragic. As a toddler, she barely survived World War II, having been sent from her Hamburg home to Holland on the Kindertransport with her older sister Helen. Later, she watched her mother destroy herself after learning that her own parents had perished in the camps. And, in 1970, at the age of 34, she died of a brain tumor, just as she was beginning to get recognition for her sculptures.
KTA Board member Rachel Rubin Green is featured in the Los Angeles Times for her work with refugees “Family separation and refugee cap reinvigorate Jews’ activist roots: ‘We’ve always been immigrants’ “
In the footsteps of childhood: In July, former children’s transport children, some with their partners and descendants of those who had once been rescued, made a special journey. The New York-based “Kindertransport Association” organized a commemorative journey, which led from Vienna by train and boat via Berlin and Amsterdam to London.
Frank Meisler’s The Arrival. Amy Williams
is in danger of forgetting its lessons Reports in the UK press on September 1 revealed plans by the home secretary to end the current migration system which reunites refugee children with their families living in Britain in the event of a no-deal Brexit. If legal routes to family reunion close, thousands of children will be at risk. After surviving dangerous journeys, these children, who have already suffered greatly, will be extremely vulnerable to traffickers and exploitation.
The story of the Kindertransport has been well told. But less well known is the story of the 4,000 men – mainly Austrian and German Jews – who were brought to Kent before the outbreak of war in 1939. Now, relatives have traced their footsteps to Sandwich near the site of the refugee camp that became their haven from persecution. Tony Green has the story.
Czech refugees came to live in Beaconsfield, Wendover, Berkhamsted and other places in the area. Some of these escaped through Poland or Hungary and came to England by various routes. Some were Czechoslovak Jewish children who came on Kindertransport organised by Sir Nicholas Winton.
The man who saved close to 700 children from the Nazis will be honoured next week on the first anniversary of a new Holocaust education centre in Yorkshire. Barbara Winton will pay tribute to her late father Sir Nicholas Winton, alongside one of the 669 children he saved, Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines.
Meg Waite Clayton knew she was writing a novel about the Kindertransports, but she didn’t know whether to focus on the transports out of Vienna or Prague. Clayton had made a research trip to Vienna but was not feeling connected to the city. Then she visited an exhibit there featuring the contents of suitcases taken by the children — items such as storybooks, doll clothes, family photos, Band-Aids and a hairbrush.
One school which came to Shropshire early in the war provided a safe haven for Jewish children who had escaped Nazi persecution. A blue plaque on Trench Hall at Tilley Green, near Wem, tells of its noble wartime role. It says: “This progressive Jewish boarding school was founded by Anna Essinger M.A. in Ulm, Germany, in 1926, and was brought to Kent, England, in 1933 and evacuated here to Trench Hall over the war years, 1940-1946.”
Raised in Kensington, west London, Urbach was the child of Jewish refugees who had fled to Britain from Germany in the Thirties. His mother, Eva, arrived as a teenager on the Kindertransport, the British rescue mission that saved almost 10,000 Jewish children from the hands of the Nazis. His family’s only physical connection with their past came in the form of three trunks, which Urbach remembers arriving at the family home when he was a young child.
Dame Stephanie Shirley was among thousands of mostly Jewish unaccompanied children, who were sent by their parents to safety in the UK fleeing the rise of the Nazis in Europe. She was just five years old when her mother put her on a train in Vienna bound for London, not knowing if they would ever meet again. Dame Stephanie tells Witness History about the lasting trauma left by her mother’s “fantastic act of love”
ARD Vienna|Southern Europe covers the Kindertransport Journey Trip. Radio and video as well as text. Journalist Andrea Beer interviewed travelers in Vienna.
Remembering the Helping Hands of a Hero Most people wouldn’t think about visiting a train station for any other reason than travel. But Prague’s Hlavní nádraží has an unexpected and important story to tell.
Dr Christopher Stephens, Head of Southlands College, Vera Schaufeld and, Professor Jean-Noël Ezingeard, Vice Chancellor of the University of Roehampton
A London university has awarded an honorary doctorate to a former Brent teacher who came to the UK on the Kindertransport and later established the Holocaust Centre and Museum.
A man of tremendous integrity, loyalty, determination and kindness, Alfred Cotton, 93, of Oakland, California, passed away peacefully at home on July 19, 2019, with his beloved wife of 63 years, Anita, by his side. Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1925, the only child of Salomon and Amalia Baumwollspinner, his pleasant childhood was ended by the Nazis’ rise to power.