by Reich, Erich (2017); Published by i2i Publishing
The true story of a Jewish refugee boy, Erich, who arrived in this country from Nazi-occupied Europe three days before the start of the war. He was just four, and would never see his parents again. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
(2018) Published by The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide
A cache of 40 letters discovered recently in a UK loft and digitized for The Wiener Library archive, documents the prelude to this more unusual experience from a child’s perspective. The letters were written by a boy in Vienna to his mother, who was already in the UK, over the course of an agonizing four-month separation. During this time each worked frantically towards a reunion that they could not be certain would happen as war clouds gathered. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Lichtenstein, Jonathan (2020); Published by Scribnner UK
A formally audacious and deeply moving memoir in three timeframes that confronts the defining trauma of the twentieth century, and its effects on a father and son. In 1939, Jonathan Lichtenstein’s father Hans escaped Nazi-occupied Berlin as a child refugee on the Kindertransport. Almost every member of his family died after Kristallnacht, and, arriving in England to make his way in the world alone, Hans turned his back on his German Jewish culture.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-berlin-shadow-living-with-the-ghosts-of-the-kindertransport-jonathan-lichtenstein/e062a657c8a2be7c?aid=56539&ean=9780316541015&listref=kindertransport-memoir&next=tby Kushner, Tony (2012); Published by Manchester University Press
This pioneering study of migrant journeys to Britain begins with Huguenot refugees in the 1680s and continues to asylum seekers and East European workers today.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-battle-of-britishness-migrant-journeys-1685-to-the-present-professor-tony-kushner/6993ea7a33f0ab54?aid=56539&ean=9780719066412&listref=if-you-are-interested-in-the-kindertransports-you-might-be-interested-in&next=tby Ford, Mary R (Volume 2, Number 2, 1983); Published by Immigrants & Minorities Journal, Routledge
May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Wasserstein, Bernard (2014); Published by Harvard University Press
A moving account of courage and of all-too-human failings in the face of extraordinary moral challenges, The Ambiguity of Virtue tells the story of Van Tijn’s work on behalf of her fellow Jews as the avenues that might save them were closed off. Between 1933 and 1940 Van Tijn helped organize Jewish emigration from Germany. After the Germans occupied Holland, she worked for the Nazi-appointed Jewish Council in Amsterdam and enabled many Jews to escape. Some later called her a heroine for the choices she made; others denounced her as a collaborator.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-ambiguity-of-virtue-bernard-wasserstein/f037f20123105b71?aid=56539&ean=9780674281387&listref=kindertransport-history&next=tby Barnett, Ruth (2004); Published by Purdue University Press
by Wyman, David S. (1984); Published by New York: Pantheon Books
In this landmark work, David S. Wyman argues that a substantial commitment to rescue European Jews on the part of the United States almost certainly could have saved several hundred thousand of the Nazis’ victims.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-abandonment-of-the-jews-america-and-the-holocaust-1941-1945-professor-david-s-wyman/18480545e418d40a?aid=56539&ean=9781595581747&listref=if-you-are-interested-in-the-kindertransports-you-might-be-interested-in&next=tby Greschler, Lori (2009); Published by BookSurge Publishing
The 10,000 Children That Hitler Missed reveals the largest and most poignant rescue of endangered children from the brutal clutches of the Nazi empire. The movement was coined the Kindertransport. Over a nine month period before the outbreak of World War II, Britain heroically brought children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia in an effort to save their lives. Forced to leave their parents behind, the children were torn apart from their loved ones and said their last goodbyes. With few instructions, they boarded trains, sailed by boat, crossed the English Channel and traveled distances that they could barely comprehend while their parents remained trapped in Nazi territory and many inhaled their final breath under the Nazi regime. Now after seven decades their stories are being told, in their own words from child survivors. The testimonies are chilling and painful; searing with fear and entrenched with tragedy yet beneath their pain they show astonishing resilience.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-10-000-children-that-hitler-missed-stories-from-the-kindertransport/d5a515c608a57a60?aid=56539&ean=9781439243336&listref=kindertransport-history&next=tby Robbins, Sarah Kate, and Zucker, Stanley (2004); Published by Westchester Holocaust Education Center
A group of four short documentary films that tell the history of the Holocaust from 1933 to 1945 through the eyes and words of six survivors. Interweaving the powerful personal accounts of these men and women who were children in Europe during the Holocaust, including KTA member Sel Hubert, the film documents their journeys from persecution through liberation to the shores of America, where they overcame horror and loss to create meaningful, productive lives. Created for use in schools.
by Fox, Anne L. and Eva Abraham-Podietz (1998); Published by Springfield, New Jersey: Behrman House
May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Rice, Gunther (2014); Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing
“Part memoir, part biography, this story recounts the trials and tribulations of Gunther Rice (born Gunther Zloczower), the youngest of nine children raised in a Polish Jewish family in Hamburg, Germany. At age 14, he was deported with his family (and other Polish Jews) to Poland and for months lived as a refugee in the no-man’s land between Germany and Poland. He was rescued by the Kindertransport and brought to Cardiff, Wales, three days before the start of World War II. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Dekel, Mikhal (2019); Published by W. W. Norton & Company
Beginning with the death of the inscrutable Tehran Child who was her father, Dekel fuses memoir with extensive archival research to recover this astonishing story, with the help of travel companions and interlocutors including an Iranian colleague, a Polish PiS politician, a Russian oligarch, and an Uzbek descendent of Korean deportees. With literary grace, Tehran Children presents a unique narrative of the Holocaust, whose focus is not the concentration camp, but the refugee, and whose center is not Europe, but Central Asia and the Middle East.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/tehran-children-a-holocaust-refugee-odyssey-mikhal-dekel/df73e429946c5084?ean=9781665122412&next=t
Online resource for secondary school teachers. Includes classroom videos; a documentary profile of the author, pianist Mona Golabek; and a special performance where Mona retells her mother’s story, weaving in the piano music from the book. The website complements the book’s curriculum guide, created by Facing History and Ourselves.
by Spaans, Leen (2018); Published by Committee Statue for Truus Historical Society Alkmaar
The statue for Truus Wijsmuller is finished and is worthy in Alkmaar for placement and unveiling, that is to say: when the corona crisis is over. In principle, Tuesday, April 21, 2020 would have been the day of the unveiling. With a reception in the Grote Kerk, guests from home and abroad, some surviving children from 1938-1940, the sculptors Annet Terberg-Pompe and Lea Wijnhoven, and many others.
by Brent, Leslie Baruch (2009); Published by Bank House Books
“Professor Leslie Baruch Brent (known in the scientific world as Leslie Brent) arrived in England late in 1938 in the first of the many Kindertransports. His German-Jewish family was among millions who were murdered by the Nazi regime. In 1943, at the tender age of eighteen, he volunteered for the armed forces. Having studied zoology at the University of Birmingham he became an eminent immunologist in the field of tissue and organ transplantation. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Intrator, Joanne (2023); Published by She Writes Press
On his deathbed, Dr. Joanne Intrator’s father poses two unsettling questions: “Are you tough enough? Do they know who you are?”
Joanne soon realizes that these haunting questions relate to a center-city Berlin building at 16 Wallstrasse that the Nazis ripped away from her family in 1938. But a decade is to pass before she will fully come to grasp why her father threw down the gauntlet as he did. Repeatedly, Joanne’s restitution quest brings her into confrontation with yet another of her profound fears surrounding Germany and the Holocaust. Having to call on reserves of strength she’s unsure she possesses, the author leans into her professional command of psychiatry, often overcoming flabbergasting obstacles perniciously dumped in her path.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/summons-to-berlin-nazi-theft-and-a-daughter-s-quest-for-justice-joanne-intrator/f002ee7cfa810423?ean=9781647425135&next=t&aid=56539&listref=second-and-third-generationsby Marcus, Brian and Hersh, June (2016); Published by Itasca Books
The book melds portraits of Holocaust Survivors, including several Kindertransport Survivors, with meaningful quotes to create a living legacy that both honors and informs. Their portraits reveal insight into who they are and their quotes speak volumes of how they feel the world should be. Browse the online gallery of portraits, draw strength from the quotes and join in the conversation by sharing your own family’s story. Profits from the sale of Still Here will go to charities supporting Holocaust education.
by Segal, Lore and Kluger, Ruth (2003); Published by Feminist Press
Stunning contemplation of human relationships, power, and the creation of history through the prism of one woman’s Holocaust survival… Kluger dives in and out of her narrative to consider such topics as her imperfect relationship with her family, her creation of herself as a social being, and the encounters and relationships she’s had with Germans since the war… A work of such nuance, intelligence, and force that it leaps the bounds of genre. – Kirkus
https://bookshop.org/p/books/still-alive-a-holocaust-girlhood-remembered-ruth-kluger/84758303997be6e4?aid=56539&ean=9781558614369&listref=kindertransport-memoir&next=tby Wyden, Peter (1992); Published by Simon and Schuster
The story of Stella Goldschlag, whom Wyden knew as a child, when both were students at the Goldschmidt School in Berlin, and who later became notorious as a “catcher” in wartime Berlin, hunting hidden Jews for the Nazis. A compelling, moving and harrowing chronicle of Stella’s agonizing choice, her three murder trials, her reclusive existence, and the trauma inherited by her daughter in Israel.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/stella-one-woman-s-true-tale-of-evil-betrayal-and-survival-in-hitler-s-germany-peter-wyden/1551b6f19bd7106f?aid=56539&ean=9780385471794&listref=if-you-are-interested-in-the-kindertransports-you-might-be-interested-in&next=t