Books

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The Children’s Train, Escape On The Kindertransport

by Zinser, Jana (2015); Published by BQB Publishing

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

The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews After the Holocaust

by Elizabeth Anthony (2021); Published by Wayne State University Press

The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust explores the motivations and expectations that inspired Viennese Jews to reestablish lives in their hometown after the devastation and trauma of the Holocaust. Elizabeth Anthony investigates their personal, political, and professional endeavors, revealing the contours of their experiences of returning to a post-Nazi society, with full awareness that most of their fellow Austrians had embraced the Nazi takeover and their country’s unification with Germany, clinging to a collective national identity myth as “first victim” of the Nazis. Anthony weaves together archival documentation with oral histories, interviews, memoirs, and personal correspondence to craft a multilayered, multivoiced narrative of return focused on the immediate postwar years.

The Compromise of Return is the first such social history to depict how survivors, individually and collectively, navigated postwar Vienna’s political and social setting. This book will be of special interest to scholars, students, and readers of Holocaust and European studies.

The Convention of Wives

by Debra Green (2022); Published by She Writes Press

A novel written by KT2 Debra Green.

When Dina and Julia meet at a surgical convention, they bond over frustrations with their husbands’ demanding schedules. But geography, time, and growing families make maintaining their friendship difficult and their relationship eventually falls apart. One of them is left to wonder why; the other has a secret. But neither of them knows that decisions made by family members decades earlier have set them on a collision course.

A sweeping saga that follows generations from a shtetl in Odessa to the comforts of Scarsdale, an uprising in Glasgow to servitude in the Caribbean, and a trek through the Alps to a displaced persons camp in Italy, The Convention of Wives is a story about the ever-evolving messiness of friendship and marriage, and the wonder of survival.

The Emerald Horizon (The Star and the Shamrock Book 2)

by Grainger, Jean (2019); Published by Independently Published

Liesl and Erich have found a home in Ireland away from the chaos of war-ravaged Europe. As the dark news of what has happened to their fellow Jews filters through, they are torn – love for their mother and their home on one hand, and the profound sense of peace and belonging they have in Ballycreggan on the other. Like all of the other children who escaped Nazi territory on the Kindertransport, they must wait to hear the fate of their loved ones.

The English German Girl

by Simons, Jake Wallis (2011); Published by Polygon: An Imprint of Birlinn Limited

‘Rosa must carry her suitcase herself. She heaves it up, walks through the doorway, looks back one final time: Papa and Mama are standing arm in arm, they are waving, but their masks have fallen away, they look hopeless, and that is the worst thing of all; Rosa turns her back and they are gone.” The Klein family is slowly but surely losing everything they hold dear or ever took for granted as Hitler’s anti-Jewish laws take hold in 1930s Berlin. In desperation, fifteen-year-old Rosa is put on a Kindertransport train out of Germany, to begin a new life in England.

The Forgotten Kindertransportees: The Scottish Experience

by Williams, Frances (2014); Published by Bloomsbury Academic

Introduction: The Forgotten Kindertransportees: A Scottish Experience 1. Protecting the Status Quo: The Reception of the Trans-migrants 2. The Making of an Invisible Trans-migrant: Kindertransportee Care 3. Scottish Care for the Jewish Minor: Kindertransportees’ Adaptation to a New Jewish Life 4. Creating New Olim in Scotland: The Limitations of a Zionist Endeavour 5. Narrating Life Stories: The Long-term Impact of a Residential Upbringing 6. Imagining Scotland: The Scottish Legacy after Migration Appendices Glossary Bibliography Index. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center

The Fortunate Ones

by Umansky, Ellen (2017); Published by William Morrow

One very special work of art – a Chaim Soutine painting – will connect the lives and fates of two different women, generations apart, in this enthralling and transporting debut novel that moves from World War II Vienna to contemporary Los Angeles. It is 1939 in Vienna, and as the specter of war darkens Europe, Rose Zimmer’s parents are desperate. Unable to get out of Austria, they manage to secure passage for their young daughter on a kindertransport, and send her to live with strangers in England.

The Girl with Two Suitcases

by Baram, Myra (1988); Published by Sussex, England: The Book Guild

Kindertransport Survivor Myra Baram tells the story of her life from Berlin to Nethanya, Israel. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuers and Their Stories of Courage

by Klempner, Mark (2006); Published by Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press

The Kindertransport Experience; A Socio-Psychological Study of Attachment, Trauma And Acculturation

by Guske, Iris, Dr (2007); Published by Centre for German Jewish Studies, University of Sussex

Unpublished doctoral thesis featuring several members of the KTA.

The Kindertransport, Contesting Memory

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.

The King’s Most Loyal Enemy Aliens: Germans Who Fought for Britain in the Second World War

by 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.

The Last Train to London

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.

The Latecomers

by Brookner, Anita (1989); Published by New York: Pantheon Books

The Nature of Blood

by Phillips, Caryl (1997); Published by New York: Alfred A. Knopf

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

The Ninth of November

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.

The One I Was

by Graham, Eliza (2015); Published by Lake Union Publishing - Amazon

The Phantom Lane

by Kramer, Lotte (2000); Published by Ware, England: The Rockingham Press

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

The Rescue of the Prague Refugees: 1938/39

by Chadwick, W.R. (2010); Published by Matador

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

The Salzburg Connection: An Adolescence Remembered

by Lieberman, J. Nina (2004); Published by New York: Vantage Press

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