by Craig-Norton, Jennifer (2019); Published by Indiana University Press
Jennifer Craig-Norton sets out to challenge celebratory narratives of the Kindertransport that have dominated popular memory and literature. According to these accounts, the Kindertransport was a straightforward act of rescue and salvation, with little room for a deeper, more complex analysis. Craig-Norton emphasizes the use of archival sources, many of them newly discovered testimonial accounts and letters. This evidence allows compelling insights into interactions between children and parents and caregivers and shows readers a more nuanced and complete picture of the Kindertransport.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-kindertransport-contesting-memory-british-academy-postdoctoral-fellow-jennifer-craig-norton/3dadf50862e07ccd?ean=9780253042217&next=t&aid=56539&listref=kindertransport-history&next=tby Fry, Helen (2007); Published by Sutton Publishing
This book tells the compelling story of the 10,000 German and Austrian nationals who, fleeing Nazi persecution, arrived in Britain between 1933 and 1939, and at the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939 became ‘enemy aliens’. Many volunteered to serve in the British forces, swore allegiance to George VI and became known as ‘the King’s most loyal enemy aliens’. Interviews with several KTA members are featured, as well as an impressive selection of archive photographs, many of which are reproduced for the first time. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Waite Clayton, Meg (2019); Published by Harper Books
From New York Times bestselling novelist Meg Waite Clayton comes a powerful pre-WWII era novel based on the true story of the Kindertransport rescue of ten thousand children from Nazi-occupied Europe – and one brave woman, Truus Wijsmuller, who helped them escape.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-last-train-to-london-a-novel-meg-waite-clayton/2ecc27f706892701?aid=56539&ean=9780062946942&listref=kindertransport-fiction&next=tby Shmuel, Naomi Anne (2024); Published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing
In a variety of genres and narrative styles, author and poet Karen Gershon chronicled her European childhood, rescue on the Kindertransport, and life in the aftermath of the Holocaust, with unmatched candor and stunning insight. Based on Gershon’s private archives and letters to her sister, this biography presents a fascinating portrait of a child survivor whose talent for writing crowned her the voice of a whole generation. The major events of Gershon’s life are presented with great perspicacity alongside her development as a writer forced to change languages.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-legacy-of-karen-gershon-child-survivor-to-author-and-poet-naomi-anne-shmuel/5aa31747b5b9036f?aid=56539&ean=9781036406134&listref=kindertransport-memoir&next=tby Schindler, Meriel (2024); Published by W. W. Norton & Company
Meriel Schindler spent her adult life trying to keep her father, Kurt, at bay. But when he died in 2017, he left behind piles of Nazi-era documents related to her family’s fate in Innsbruck, Austria, and a treasure trove of family albums reaching back to before World War I. Meriel was forced to confront not only their fractured relationship, but also the truth behind their family history.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-lost-caf-schindler-one-family-two-wars-and-the-search-for-truth-meriel-schindler/0728eca3be537c1e?aid=56539&ean=9781324074571&listref=if-you-are-interested-in-the-kindertransports-you-might-be-interested-in&next=tby Phillips, Caryl (1997); Published by New York: Alfred A. Knopf
May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Zurndorfer, Hannele (1983); Published by London: Quartet Books
Hannele Zurndorfer left Dusseldorf in May 1939 on a children’s transport with her younger sister. She ends her story with the last letter she received from her father. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Graham, Eliza (2015); Published by Lake Union Publishing - Amazon
by Kramer, Lotte (2000); Published by Ware, England: The Rockingham Press
May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Chadwick, W.R. (2010); Published by Matador
May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Lieberman, J. Nina (2004); Published by New York: Vantage Press
May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Deborah Cadbury (2022); Published by PublicAffairs
In 1933, the same year Hitler came to power, schoolteacher Anna Essinger saved her small, progressive school from Nazi Germany. Anna had read Mein Kampf and knew the terrible danger that Hitler’s hate-fueled ideologies posed to her pupils, so she hatched a courageous and daring plan: to smuggle her school to the safety of England.
As the school she established in Kent, England, flourished despite the many challenges it faced, the news from her home country continued to darken. Anna watched as Europe slid toward war, with devastating consequences for the Jewish children left behind. In time, Anna would take in orphans who had given up all hope: the survivors of unimaginable horrors. Anna’s school offered these scarred children the love and security they needed to rebuild their lives.
Featuring moving firsthand testimony from surviving pupils, and drawing from letters, diaries, and present-day interviews, The School that Escaped the Nazis is a dramatic human tale that offers a unique perspective on Nazi persecution and the Holocaust. It is also the story of one woman’s refusal to allow her belief in a better world to be overtaken by hatred and violence.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-school-that-escaped-the-nazis-the-true-story-of-the-schoolteacher-who-defied-hitler-deborah-cadbury/17442655?ean=9781541751187&next=t&next=tby Grainger, Jean (2019); Published by Independently Published
Could you put your children on a train to save their lives? Ariella Bannon is alone except for her two Jewish children. With every passing day, life is becoming more and more dangerous for Liesl and Erich in Berlin. The Nazis are allowing some children out on the Kindertransport, but can she bear to let them go? Amazon bestsellers, The Star and the Shamrock, and its sequel The Emerald Horizon are stories of the darkest days in human history, but amid the terror is the indominable human spirit, and the incredible kindness of strangers.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-star-and-the-shamrock-jean-grainger/2211b3708b5208b5?aid=56539&ean=9781914958540&listref=kindertransport-fiction&next=tby Milton, Edith (2005); Published by Chicago: University of Chicago Press
In 1939, on the eve of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, seven-year-old Edith Milton (then Edith Cohn) and her sister Ruth left Germany by way of the Kindertransport, the program which gave some 10,000 Jewish children refuge in England. The two were given shelter by a jovial, upper-class British foster family with whom they lived for the next seven years. Edith chronicles these transformative experiences of exile and good fortune in The Tiger in the Attic, a touching memoir of growing up as an outsider in a strange land.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-tiger-in-the-attic-memories-of-the-kindertransport-and-growing-up-english-edith-milton/6e659ca42ff184b3?aid=56539&ean=9780226529479&listref=kindertransport-memoir&next=tby Whiteman, Dorit Bader (1993); Published by New York: Insight Books
Dorit Bader Whiteman has woven together the stories of 190 escapees, including several who left via the Kindertransports.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-uprooted-a-hitler-legacy-voices-of-those-who-escaped-before-the-final-solution-dorit-bader-whiteman/a76f09b76b4773ac?aid=56539&ean=9780738205793&listref=kindertransport-history&next=tby Bentwich, Norman (1956); Published by London: Cresset Press
Norman Bentwich writes of his involvement with the Kindertransport movement.
by Selo, Laura (1992); Published by London: Excalibur Press
The autobiographical story of three sisters who traveled from Prague to London.
by Stolzberg Korobkin, Frieda (2008); Published by Devora Publishing
In Throw Your Feet Over Your Shoulders: Beyond the Kindertransport, Frieda Stolzberg Korobkin presents a compelling, powerful and vividly described odyssey of her life as a six-year- old child sent by her parents (along with her siblings) from their home in Vienna, Austria to the relative safety of England. It is December 1938, and Friedl’s parents make the heart-wrenching decision to send her and her sisters and brother on a kindertransport to England — organized by Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/throw-your-feet-over-your-shoulders-beyond-the-kindertransport-frieda-korobkin/e6271006b4e3ff43?aid=56539&ean=9781434930712&listref=kindertransport-memoir&next=tby Schlesinger, Joe (1990); Published by Toronto: Random House Canada
May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.
by Heifetz, Julie (1989); Published by Detroit: Wayne State University Press
Julie Heifetz’s collection of interviews with child Holocaust survivors. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.