Books

  • Types

  • Genres

A Boy in Your Situation

by Hannam, Charles (1977); Published by London: Andre Deutsch

Charles Hannam’s Kindertransport memoir. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

A Child Alone

by Blend, Martha (1996); Published by Edgware, England: Vallentine Mitchell Publishers

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

A Cracked River

by Hirschhorn, Norbert (1999); Published by London: Slow Dancer Press

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

A Faraway Island

by Thor, Annika (2009); Published by Delacorte Books for Young Readers

In the summer of 1939 two Jewish sisters from Vienna, 12 year-old Stephie Steiner and 8 year-old Nellie, are sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis. They expect to stay there six months, until their parents can flee to Amsterdam; then all four will go to America. But as the world war intensifies, the girls remain, each with her own host family, on a rugged island off the western coast of Sweden. Children will readily empathize with Stephie’s courage. Both sisters are well-drawn, likable characters. This is the first of four books Thor has written about the two girls.

A Garland For Ashes

by Zack Miley, Hanna (2013); Published by Outskirts Press

When little Hannelore (Hanna) Zack left Cologne, Germany, on a train bound for London age 7 on July 24, 1939, she had no way of knowing that she was part of the Kindertransport. Written over a four-year period beginning when Hanna was seventy-five years old, A Garland for Ashes is both a gripping detective story recounting the heartbreaking process of discovering her family’s fate and a poignant account of her journey from vengeful hatred to forgiveness and release from bitterness.

A Great Adventure: The Story of the Refugee Children’s Movement

by Presland, John (1944); Published by Bloomsbury House

Out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

A Lesser Child

by Gershon, Karen (1993); Published by London: Peter Owen Publishers

An account, from the point of view of an adolescent girl, of life in Germany in the years leading up to her departure on the Kindertransport. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

A Scholar’s Tale: Intellectual Journey of a Displaced Child of Europe

by Hartman, Geoffrey (2007); Published by Fordham University Press

Geoffrey Hartman’s eloquent memoir takes us through the author’s five decades as a widely influential literary scholar. Geoffrey Hartman arrived in New York in 1945, at the age of 16, a young refugee from Hitler’s Germany. His mother had come here before the war, but he was sent on a Kindertransport to England, where he developed a feeling for both the English countryside and English literature. These discoveries came together in his lifelong love of Wordsworth’s poetry, the subject of his seminal book in 1964.

A Stranger in the Family

by Barnard, Robert (2010); Published by Scribner

A suspense novel with a Scottish KT2 main character. His mother was a teacher; his father, a journalist, escaped from Nazi Germany at the age of three on a Kindertransport in 1939. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

A Transported Life: Memories of Kindertransport

by Eden, Thea, Irene Reti and Valerie Jean Chase (1995); Published by Santa Cruz, California: Herbooks

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

Adventures of a Chemist Collector

by Bader, Alfred (1995); Published by London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson

This is the autobiography of the distinguished chemist, art collector and philanthropist, Alfred Bader. Born in Vienna, Bader fled to England at the age of 14, on a Kindertransport ten months before the outbreak of World War II. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.Although a Jewish refugee from the Nazis, he was interned in 1940 and sent to a Canadian prisoner-of-war camp. In this book, he tells the story of his success through hard work and studies in the United States.

Against All Odds

by Hamlet, Eva (1994); Published by Citra, Florida: Crones' Cradle Conserve

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

All in a Lifetime

by Westheimer, Ruth (1988); Published by New York: Warner Books

Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s account of her journey from Frankfurt am Main through a refugee girls hostel in Switzerland, to Israel, to her broadcasting success in the United States of America.

Almost an Englishman

by Hannam, Charles (1978); Published by London: Andre Deutsch

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

American Jewish History

by Zucker, Bat-Ami (2001); Published by Frances Perkins and the German-Jewish Refugees, 1933-1940 (Vol. 89, No. 1)

And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Remain

by Åsbrink, Elisabeth (2020); Published by Penguin Random House

Otto Ullmann, a Jewish boy, was sent from Austria to Sweden right before the outbreak of World War II. 13 year old Otto was granted permission to enter the country in accordance with the Swedish archbishop’s secret plan to save Jews on condition that they convert to Christianity. With thorough research, including files initiated by the predecessor to today’s Swedish Security Service (SÄPO) and 500+ letters, Elisabeth Åsbrink illustrates how Swedish society was infused with anti-Semitism, and how families are shattered by war and asylum politics.

And the Policeman Smiled

by Turner, Barry (1991); Published by London: Bloomsbury

A history of the Kindertransport movement. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

Anglo-Jewry and the Refugee Children 1938-1945

by Hill, Paula (2002); Published by Ph.D. thesis, University of London

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

Austerlitz

by Sebald, W.G. (2001); Published by New York: Random House

Baumgartner’s Bombay

by Desai, Anita (1987); Published by London: William Heinemann