more complete history
The first Kindertransport arrived at Harwich, England on December 2, 1938, bringing 196 children from a Berlin Jewish orphanage torched by the Nazis during the night of November 9. Most of the transports left by train from Vienna, Berlin, Prague and other major cities (children from small towns traveled to meet the transports), crossed the Dutch and Belgian borders, and went on by ship to England. Hundreds of children remained in Belgium and Holland. The transports ended with the outbreak of war in September 1939. A very last transport left on the freighter Bodegraven from Ymuiden on May 14, 1940 – the day Holland fell – raked by gunfire from German warplanes. The 80 children on deck had been brought by earlier transports to imagined safety in Holland. Altogether, though precise figures are unknown, the Kindertransports saved around 10,000 children, most of them Jews, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. None were accompanied by parents; a few were babies carried by children.

In an effort to deal with the “refugee problem” – or more accurately, the issue of the Jews trapped in Hitler’s Reich, obviously suffering terribly, but unable to find countries willing to take them in and give them refuge - a conference proposed by President Roosevelt was held in the French resort town of Evian, attended by representatives from 31 countries. Beginning on July 6, 1938, the Evian Conference lasted for eight days. In the end, despite grand proclamations, the Conference proved to be ineffectual, as most countries continued to refuse to accept new immigrants. After discussing a variety of potential settlement locations, the participants could only agree to meet again later.

During the pogrom of November 9 and 10, German and Austrian Nazis killed nearly 100 Jews and thousands more were subjected to violence and sadistic torture. 267 synagogues and community buildings were destroyed, tens of thousands of Jewish shops and homes were broken into and over 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent into concentration camps.

The already existing refuge aid committees in Britain switched into high gear, changing focus from emigration to rescue. The British government had just refused to allow 10,000 Jewish children to enter Palestine, but the atrocities in Germany and Austria, the untiring persistence of the refuge advocates, and philosemitic sympathy in some high places – in the words of British Foreign Minister Samuel Hoare “Here is a chance of taking the young generation of a great people, here is a chance of mitigating to some extend the terrible suffering of their parents and their friends” – swayed the government to permit an unspecified number of children under the age of 17 to enter the United Kingdom.

Rising to the Moment
Kindertransport was the informal name of the rescue operation, a movement in which many organizations and individuals participated. Kindertransport was unique in that Jews, Quakers, and Christians of many denominations worked together to rescue primarily Jewish children. Many great people rose to the moment: Lola Hahn-Warburg, who set the framework of rescue in 1933 while still in Germany; Lord Baldwin, author of the famous appeal to British conscience; Rebecca Sieff, Sir Wyndham Deeds, Viscount Samuel; Rabbi Solomon Schoenfeld, who saved close to 1,000 Orthodox children; Nicholas Winton, who saved nearly 700 Czech children; Professor Bentwich, organizer of the Dutch escape route; and the Quaker leaders Bertha Bracey and Jean Hoare (cousin of Sir Samuel Hoare), who herself led out a planeload of children from Prague; and many others. Truus Wijsmuller-Meyer was a Dutch Christian who faced down Eichmann in Vienna and brought out 600 children on one train, organized a transport from Riga to Sweden, and helped smuggle a group of children onto the illegal ship Dora bound from Marseilles to Palestine. She was the one who sped the last transport through burning Amsterdam to the Bodegraven in 1940.

Life in Britain
Children who had prearranged sponsors waiting for them were sent to London. The many unsponsored children waited in Dovercourt, a summer camp, and other transient camps until individual families came forward to take one or two children into their homes and hostels were readied to take larger group of children. Many organizations and individuals assisted in settling the Kinder in the United Kingdom, including the Refugee Children’s Movement, the B’nai B’rith, the Chief Rabbi’s Religious Emergency Council, various youth movements, the Y.M.C.A., the Society of Friends, and many other Jewish and non-Jewish organizations. Private gifts of money, bedding, and clothing were received as well as offers of foster homes and houses for possible group homes.

Children of the Kindertransport were dispersed to many parts of the British Isles. About half lived with foster families, the others in hostels, group homes, and farms in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Those over 14, unless they were fortunate enough to be sponsored by individuals and set to boarding schools or taken into foster care, were frequently absorbed into the country’s labor force after a few weeks of training, mainly in agriculture or domestic service. Many families, Jewish and non-Jewish, opened their homes to take in these children.

Detour to Normandy
During the fifth column scare in 1940, more than 1,000 Kindertransportees over 16, boys and girls, were interred on the Isle of Man and other sites. Sent on the same ships as Nazi POWs, some boys were transported to Canada, some to Australia aboard the “hell-ship” Dunera. After German U-boats sank the Andorra Star with 1,200 internees with loss of 600 lives, public pressure built against further indiscriminate internment. A large number of the deported came back, and along with many young men and women who had stayed in Britain, Kindertransportees joined the army which now accepted “enemy aliens”.

Kaddish in London
In 1988 Bertha Leverton, in London, began to plan a local 50^th anniversary reunion of the Kindertransports. The news spread and the local reunion became an international reunion. In June 1989 over 1,200 people, Kinder (as they now called themselves) with spouses and children, arrived from all parts of the United Kingdom, Israel, the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries including Nepal. They came to see and find old friends, to rejoice in their survival, to thank the people of Britain, to say Kaddish for thousands of parents who with the strength of love had sent their children away to live, with the inner knowledge that they themselves might not. The majority of Kinder had never seen their parents again.

In a letter read at this first major reunion of Kinder in England, Baroness Thatcher, then the Prime Minister of England, wrote “I am pleased and proud that the Government of the time offered you refuge and help, following the dreadful persecution you suffered in Germany and Central Europe. You came to us as homeless children and grew up to enrich the life of this country with your courage and fortitude.”

From London to New York
The North American Kinder returned enthused from the London reunion and wanted to maintain their new and renewed associations. Eddy Behrendt in New York conceived of and, with the help of a few others, formed and launched the Kindertransport Association in 1989. Approximately 2,500 Kinder had emigrated to the United States and Canada, and the response was immediate. Hundreds of Kinder and their spouses and children joined the new organization.

The KTA is a not-for profit organization, headed by a membership-elected national Board with active chapters in Pennsylvania, Florida, California, Toronto, Washington DC, and New York. Informal Kinder networks exist in many other parts of the United States, Canada and in Israel. The KTA publishes a quarterly journal, Kinderlink, and the Speaker’s Bureau provides materials and speakers for public forums. The KTA sponsors regional informal and social gatherings and holds national conventions, usually every second year, which feature prominent speakers and workshops on a variety of themes – historical, psychological, generational – suggested by the membership. The KTA also raises funds to help children in danger and need, as we once were.

The KTA provides an opportunity for its members to finally express and share feelings often long suppressed; to form new friendships; to enhance understanding between Kinder and their families; and to give meaning to a common historical experience – shaped by the comradeship of our own dramatic escape and by the inescapable sense of loss and trauma we share with all Jews of the Holocaust generation.

copyright KTA 2005