Books

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

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

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

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 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

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

Sent across the ocean by their parents and taken in by foster parents and distant relatives, approximately 1,000 children, ranging in age from fourteen months to sixteen years, landed in the United States and out of Hitler’s reach between 1934 and 1945. Seventy years after the first ship brought a handful of these children to American shores, the general public and many of the children themselves remain unaware of these rescues, and the fact that they were accomplished despite powerful forces in and outside the government that did not want them to occur. This is the first published account, told in the words of the children and their rescuers, to detail this unknown part of America’s response to the Holocaust. It will challenge the belief that Americans did nothing to directly and actively save Holocaust victims.

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

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.

Escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport

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

Tells the stories in their own words of several of the thousands of Jewish children rescued from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940 and brought to new homes in the United Kingdom. Memoir pieces, poems, photographs, and other primary sources bring their stories to life.

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.

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.

Farewell to Prague

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

Farewell to Prague is a memoir set against the turbulent events of the Nazi era in Germany and World War II England. It is the story of a girl who, at the age of six, witnesses a murder being committed by German Storm Troopers. From that moment, the happy life she has known disintegrates. Her family escapes to Prague, where they create a new life. Six years later, the Germans march into Prague. Now she has to escape to England alone and on foot. She walks across the snow-covered Beskydy Mountains. By train, fishing boat, and ship, she finally manages to get to England. She comes of age there during the bombing of London. When the war ends, she immediately returns to the Continent to discover the fate of her family. Farewell to Prague is a gripping true story that will fascinate and inspire readers of all ages

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?

Five Amber Beads

by Aronowitz, Richard (2025); Published by Amsterdam Publishers

Five Amber Beads is the story of two men whose lives are woven together as they seek to discover the truth about their pasts. Charley Bernstein works in the London art world and is tracing a family history erased by the Holocaust. In his possession is a diary written by a relative in a labour camp during the Third Reich, and Charley must follow the threads leading from its haunting pages to his own present. In New York an old man is found lying semiconscious on the pavement. There are no witnesses to what has happened to him and he has no form of identification. When he wakes up in a hospital bed he finds he doesn’t recognise the city or his own skin. In a state of total amnesia, he must embark on a struggle to regain his memory. When fate brings these two men together they find themselves linked by a unique friendship. Their journey takes them from America to the Middle East and England in an enthralling and moving novel that addresses the nature of identity and belonging.

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).

Flight from the Reich: Refugee Jews, 1933-1946

by Dwork, Deborah and Jan Van Pelt, Robert (2009); Published by W.W. Norton & Co.

The authors of Auschwitz offer a comprehensive survey of various countries’ responses to the refugee crisis and their often self-serving motives. America, fearing immigrants would become public charges, required financial affidavits from Americans, which were very difficult to get. Britain granted transit visas to the Kindertransport children and visas to famous Jews such as Sigmund Freud. The Dominican Republic allowed refugees to work on agricultural colonies. Internment camps in the Soviet Union offered a chance for survival while camps in France were conduits to the concentration camps.

Flight of the Maidens

by Gardam, Jane (2001); Published by New York: Carroll & Graf

The end of the war has changed the world again, and, emboldened by this new dawning, Hetty Fallows, Una Vane, and Lieselotte Klein seize the opportunities with enthusiasm. Hetty, desperate to escape the grasp of her critical mother, books a solo holiday to the Lake District under the pretext of completing her Oxford summer coursework. Una, the daughter of a disconcertingly cheery hairdresser, entertains a romantically inclined young man from the wrong side of the tracks and the left-side of politics. Meanwhile, Lieselotte, the mysterious Jewish refugee from Germany, leaves the Quaker family who had rescued her, to test herself in London. Although strikingly different from one another, these young women share the common goal of adventure and release from their middle-class surroundings through romance and education.

From Outside in: Refugees and British Society: An Anthology of Writings by Refugees on Britain and Britishness

by Arbabzadah, Nushin (2007); Published by Arcadia Books

This is a collection of memoir, fiction and poetry that explores being British from the perspective of the newly arrived. It presents accounts that range from German-Jews – including several members of the KTA – to Iraqi Kurds, as well as Vietnamese, Afghanis, Chileans and others. The narratives poignantly depict the twin mechanism of loss and hope faced by newcomers to these shores, as they simultaneously search for ways to hold onto memories of lives no longer lived and in turn inhabit new ways of being. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center

Full Circle: A young boy’s escape from Nazi Germany and his reunion with Family

by Wolff, Michael M. (2016); Published by CreateSpace

On the night of November 9, 1938, the Nazis came out in great force in Germany and Austria against the Jews living within their borders. Two hundred sixty-five synagogues and 700 Jewish-owned buildings (including community centers and orphanages) were burned. Over 7,500 Jewish businesses were vandalized, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested. This act of terror became known as Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass.” Although people around the world were very disturbed by these terrible acts of terrorism, only one country took any significant action to help the Jewish population within these two countries. A host of private citizens and organizations within Great Britain immediately began a movement to allow 10,000 Jewish kids to emigrate in order to get them out of harm’s way. This movement became known as the “Kindertransport.” Children from a multitude of European countries joined the Kindertransport and were able to reach safety within Great Britain. This is the story of one such child, who through the kindness of the British people, managed to escape death by joining the Kindertransport. By the time the Holocaust was over, the Nazis had murdered over 1,500,000 children.

Generation Exodus: The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany

by Laqueur, Walter (2001); Published by Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press

This text is a generational history of the young people whose lives were irrevocably shaped by the rise of the Nazis.  Half a million Jews lived in Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933.  Over the next decade, thousands would flee.  Among these refugees, teens and young adults formed a remarkable generation.  They were old enough to appreciate the loss of their homeland and the experience of flight, but often young and flexible enough to survive and even flourish in new environments.  This generation has produced such disparate figures as Henry Kissinger and “Dr Ruth” Westheimer.