Resources

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Flight and Refuge: Reminiscences of A Motley Youth

by Eisinger, Josef (2016); Published by Josef Eisinger

After a calm, middle-class childhood, the author escapes, at fifteen, from Nazi-occupied Vienna to Britain. He finds work as a farm ‘lad’ in Yorkshire, and then, as a dish washer in a Brighton hotel. Following the fall of France, he is interned as an ‘enemy alien’ and is transported to Canada.

Josef Eisinger, professor emeritus at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, is the author of more than 150 articles in scientific journals. His recent books, Einstein on the Road and Einstein at Home were published by Prometheus Books (2011, 2016).

Finding Sophie

by Watts, Irene N (2003); Published by Tundra Books

Sophie Mandel was only seven years old when she arrived in London on the first Kindertransport from Germany. She has grown up with a friend of her parents, a woman she calls Aunt Em, and despite the war and its deprivations, she has made a good life for herself in England with her foster mother. She has even stopped thinking about the parents she left behind. Now the war is over, and fourteen-year-old Sophie is faced with a terrible dilemma. Where does she belong?

Farewell to Prague

by Darvas, Miriam (2001); Published by San Francisco: MacAdam/Cage Publishing

Faraway Home

by Taylor, Marilyn (2009); Published by O’Brien Press

Karl and Rosa’s family watch in horror as Hitler’s troops parade down the streets of their home city — Vienna. It has become very dangerous to be a Jew in Austria, and after their uncle is sent to Dachau, Karl and Rosa’s parents decide to send the children out of the country on a Kindertransport. Isolated and homesick, Karl ends up in Millisle, a run-down farm in Ards in Northern Ireland, which has become a Jewish refugee centre, while Rosa is fostered by a local family. Teaching Guide available online.

Far to Go

by Pick, Alison (2010); Published by Anansi Press

Pick’s novel, her second, follows two separate narratives. One is the first-person storyline of an unnamed storyteller, an elderly contemporary Canadian academic who has devoted her career to interviewing children of the Kindertransport, and trying to understand the ways in which this traumatic event affected their lives.

Exploring 20th Century London: Kindertransports

A British overview of the Kindertransport, with links to documents pertaining to Kind Grete Glauber, who later took on the surname of her adoptive mother, Quaker schoolteacher Olive Rudkin.

Escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport

by Carlson Berne, Emma (2017); Published by Capstone Press

Escape From the Holocaust 1939

by Moratz, Ralph (2015)

Ralph Moratz writes of his childhood journey from Berlin, via Kindertransport to France, and in September 1941 to New York. One of his childhood companions was concert promoter Bill Graham.

Émigré Voices Conversations with Jewish Refugees from Germany and Austria (Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 21)

by Bea Lewkowicz and Anthony Grenville (2021); Published by Brill

In Émigré Voices Lewkowicz and Grenville present twelve oral history interviews with men and women who came to Britain as Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria in the late 1930s. Many of the interviewees rose to great prominence in their chosen career, such as the author and illustrator Judith Kerr, the actor Andrew Sachs, the photographer and cameraman Wolf Suschitzky, the violinist Norbert Brainin, and the publisher Elly Miller. The narratives of the interviewees tell of their common struggles as child or young adult refugees who had to forge new lives in a foreign country and they illuminate how each interviewee dealt with the challenges of forced emigration and the Holocaust. The voices of the twelve interviewees provide the reader with a unique and original source, which gives direct access to the lived multifaceted experience of the interviewees and their contributions to British culture.

Double Vision, A Self Portrait

by Abish, Walter (2004); Published by New York: Alfred A. Knopf

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

Don’t Wave Goodbye: The Children’s Flight from Nazi Persecution to American Freedom

by Jason, Philip K. and Iris Posners, eds. (2004); Published by Westport, Connecticut: Praeger

The story of the 1,000 children sent directly to the United States between 1938 and 1945.

Dokin: German and Austrian War Children In The Netherlands

by Keesing, Miriam (2014); Published by Duitse Oorlogskinderen In Nederland

Dokin is a Dutch acronym for Duitse Oorlogskinderen In Nederland (German War Children in the Netherlands). Here you will find information about the refugee children from the Third Reich who came to the Netherlands after Kristallnacht. Almost 2000 children came to the Netherlands between November 1938 and September 1939.

Dig World War 2: The Millisle Farm Story

by Snow, Dan and Litvack, Leon (2013); Published by BBC One Television

Dan Snow interviews Leon Litvack about the Millisle Farm Project.

Die leisen Abschiede: Geschichte einer Flucht

by Friedler, Ya'acov (1994); Published by R. Padligur (Hagen)

Friedler became a journalist well known for his work for the Jerusalem Post and the Israeli radio network. As a Jewish school boy in a small Ruhr Valley town, he was transported to Holland and placed with other refugee children into an old orphanage where the treatment reminds the reader of Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”. On the day of Holland’s capitulation he was able to escape to the UK on an old freighter which was strafed at sea by the Luftwaffe. In this book, we follow Friedler from childhood through his life today. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center

Die Kindertransporte Nach Grossbritannien 1938/39: Exilerfahrungen im Spiegel Lebensgeschichtlicher

by Berth, Christine (2005); Published by Munich, Germany: Dolling und Galitz

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

Die Kindertransport 1938/39. Rettung und Integration

by Benz, Wolfgang, Claudia Curio and Andrea Hummel, eds. (2003); Published by Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag

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

Diane Samuels’ Kindertransport: The Author’s Guide to the Play

by Samuels, Diane (2014); Published by Nick Hern Books

The author’s guide to Kindertransport, an invaluable and uniquely authoritative resource for anyone studying, teaching or performing the play. First staged by the Soho Theatre Company in London in 1993, Diane Samuels’ Kindertransport has enjoyed huge success around the world and is widely studied in colleges. The play tells the story of nine-year-old Eva, a German Jewish girl, sent by her parents on the Kindertransport to start a new life with a foster family in Britain just before the outbreak of World War Two. Years later, she has changed her name to Evelyn and denied her roots.

Der olle Hitler soll sterben!: Erinnerungen an den jüdischen Kindertransport nach England

by Salewsky, Anja (2001); Published by Munich: Claassen

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

Der Jüdische Kindertransport von Deutschland nach England 1938/39

by Göpfert, Rebekka (1999); Published by Frankfurt: Campus

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

Das Exil der kleinen Leute. Alltagserfahrung deutscher Juden in der Emigration

by Benz, Wolfgang, ed (1994); Published by Fischer-TB.-Vlg

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