Child welfare organizations in Great Britain arranged for the childrens care, education, and eventual emigration from Britain. The following are included in some or all of the letters: Fast, Vera K. Childrens Exodus: A History of the Kindertransport. The various groups which did most to organise the rescue missions were: As part of the rescue, each child had to have a guarantor in Britain to cover the 50 cost of the return trip (equivalent to 2,000 today). The Kindertransport Association declared 2 December 2013, the 75th anniversary of the day the first Kindertransport arrived in England, as World Kindertransport Day. The tragic events of November 1938 are seen by many as marking the beginning of the Holocaust. Initially, the Jewish refugee agencies considered 5,000 as a realistic target goal. UK, Selected Records Relating to Kindertransport, 1938-1939 (USHMM) [database on-line]. Includes, Act, 1944. [9] This organisation was considering only the rescue of children, who would need to leave their parents behind in Germany. This database was extracted from International Tracing Service (ITS) files, and consists of a mixture of German departure and English arrival lists for German children. [51], Wilfrid Israel (18991943) was a key figure in the rescue of Jews from Germany and occupied Europe. Q Please use the search function for your research (right above the table). [6][34], Many representatives went with the parties from Germany to the Netherlands, or met the parties at Liverpool Street station in London and ensured that there was someone there to receive and care for each child. The image is a digitised copy of the original record from The National Archives. [14], On 25 November, British citizens heard an appeal for foster homes on the BBC Home Service radio station from former Home Secretary Viscount Samuel. This is not a complete list of all the children rescued from Nazi occupied Europe, but the records give a unique insight into the experience of the Kinder from their arrival, between 1938 and 1939, to the end of WWII. [citation needed] Reports of this trauma is often presented in very personal terms, with trauma varying based on the child's experiences, including their age at separation from their parents, their experience during the wartime, and their experience after the war. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. name lists of the children, though many appear in publications of the Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. 20th century - Is there an online list of Kindertransport records was scheduled to travel on a particular transport but, for no stated TTY: 202.488.0406. The first group of Kinder arrived 2 December 1938. The transcript is an individualised report of the information found within the original record. This list contains the names of the children who were able to flee abroad, mainly to England, on a Kindertransport in 1938 and 1939. Others discovered that their parents had not survived the war. The Scottish Jewish Archives Has information on KIndertransport Survivors and Jewish Refugees who spent time in Scotland. In November 2018, for the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport programme, the German government announced that they would make a payment of 2,500 (about US$2,800 at the time) to each of the "Kinder" who was still alive. In February and August 1939, trains from Poland were arranged. The Kitchener Camp online exhibition - Has a list of names of the Jewish men and boys who passed through Kitchener Camp. Kindertransport Association. (ID: 42751) Kindertransports (Rescue operations) --Registers. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. The Kindertransport from Vienna: the children who came and those left Parents or guardians could not accompany the children. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Fill out an online request form, and researchers will search through a large collection of records. Founded by Sir Nicholas Wintons daughter, Barbara Winton. The train eventually arrived at the Hook of Holland, where the children boarded a ferry to Harwich, England around midnight. Very young children, roughly six or younger, would generally not accept such an explanation and would demand to stay with their parents. [42] In different locations, the memorials show two groups of children and young people standing with their backs to each other waiting for a train. Unit 2C, Life in Germany 1919-1945, OCR GCE History A The British Cabinet debated the issue the next day and subsequently prepared a bill to present to Parliament. The ultimate goal was to reunite the children with their families after the war, but after the devastation in Europe and the Holocaust this was only rarely possible. Tauris, 2011. By viewing the image you may find additional information than what is provided in the transcript, such as: When you select the image option, the link will take you to the first page of the document, in which your ancestors name appears. [31] From the port, a train took some of the children to Liverpool Street station in London, where they were met by their volunteer foster parents. Mapping the documents was made possible by Neatline (an Omeka plugin). About World Jewish Relief's (formerly the Central British Fund) role in Kindertransport, A collection of personal reminiscences and tributes from people who were rescued on the Kindertransport, collected by the Quakers in 2008. Refugee children applying for the Girl Guides warrants. Kindertransports (Rescue, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life: Before and During the Holocaust [1-3]. It is estimated that 10,000 children were evacuated from Europe through the Kindertransport, the British rescue action carried out nine months before the outbreak of war. Melissa Hacker has been very influential in organizing the kinder who now live in America. Kindertransport Association based in London. Unit 2: Anti-semitism, Hitler and the German People, 1919-1945 HIS2N, AQA GCSE History A Emanuel, Murial and Vera Gissing. With the outbreak of war, borders were closed and all transports ceased. There may be some information available at The National Archives described here which leads you to a searchable catalogue at http://www.movinghere.org.uk/default.htm. This ship was the last to leave the country freely. The last group of children, which left Prague on 3 September 1939, was turned back because the Nazis had invaded Poland the beginning of the Second World War. 2021 The Wiener Holocaust Library. The type of records vary within this collection and so will the information found on each transcript. Depicted in different colors, the group of the rescued is outnumbered, as the majority of Jewish children (more than 1 million) perished in the Nazi death camps. The first Kindertransport train originated in the German town of Bad Bentheim on the border of Holland. Unit F964 Option B (Hansard, 21 November 1938)", "Kindertransport, Jewish children leave Prague Collections Search United States Holocaust Memorial Museum", "Kindertransport | About Us | World Jewish Relief Charity", "The Winton Children: The roles of Trevor Chadwick and Bill Barazetti". This bill was to admit 20,000 unaccompanied Jewish child refugees under the age of 14 into the United States from Nazi Germany. A beacon of hope. Harris, Mark Jonathan, and Deborah Oppenheimer. Survivors Registry Collection [photocopy]: Document File AC0013, Former Q&A Name Lists Database File Number-- AC0013, The Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center. Ministry of Health document for a Kindertransport, 28 December 1938 (MH 55/704) England - Transport via Southampton. How do I create a list of my most distant ancestors online or with a Mac? Many of the children are fatherless and motherless, and retain vivid memories of the orphanage where they were sheltered in Berlin being fired above their heads. And, as importantly, their confusion and trauma when their real parents reappeared in their lives; or more likely and tragically, when they learned that their real parents were dead. Many of the children who had arrived in earlier years were now young men, and so they were also interned. UK passenger lists do not generally record travel within Europe: see TNA. Washington, DC 20024-2126 We apologize for any inconvenience. Why do men's bikes have high bars where you can hit your testicles while women's bikes have the bar much lower? Do you think the order in which the letters is presented affects your reading of them. Almost 10,000 children were transported to the UK through this program. At the time, individuals providing testimonies may have feared for the safety of themselves and their families if they provided this personal information and therefore purposefully not included identifiable information or gave false information to protect their anonymity. Would you ever say "eat pig" instead of "eat pork"? We place some essential cookies on your device to make this website work. There were a number of reasons the scheme stopped: The Refugee Childrens Movement was running out of funds, unemployment was rising in Britain and there were growing concerns about bringing enemy aliens into the country during a time of war. This information will help us make improvements to the website. This rescue movement became known as the Kindertransport. Abel Smith, Edward (2017), "Active Goodness The True Story of How Trevor Chadwick, Doreen Warriner & Nicholas Winton Saved Thousands From The Nazis", Kwill Publishing, This page was last edited on 28 April 2023, at 19:16. Our travelling exhibition A Thousand Kisses: Stories of the Kindertransport is free to hire. I came alone - the stories of the Kindertransports (1990, The Book Guild Ltd) edited by Bertha Leverton and Shmuel Lowensohn, is a collective non-fiction description by 180 of the children of their journey fleeing to England from December 1938 to September 1939 unaccompanied by their parents, to find refuge from Nazi persecution. Visa and passport restrictions were lifted and children of seventeen and younger were able to enter Britain with a white card. We hope that students will be able to develop their powers of evaluation and analysis and support their course work by using these documents. In order to assure the children follow Jewish dietary laws (Kashrut), he instructed them to say to the foster parents that they are fish-eating vegetarians. During the morning of 21 November 1938, before a major House of Commons debate on refugees, the Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare met a large delegation representing Jewish groups, as well as Quaker and other non-Jewish groups, working on behalf of refugees. Many children went through trauma during their extensive Kindertransport experience. rev2023.4.21.43403. [21] In Sweden, the Jewish Community of Stockholm negotiated with the government for an exception to the country's restrictive policy on Jewish refugees for a number of children. Some of the first unaccompanied child refugees to arrive in England as part of the Kindertransport. Educational site focusing on the children arriving in Britain. Where can I find death records for Germany post 1919? From December 1938 until May 1940, the Kindertransport efforts brought about 10,000 children to safety in Great Britain. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. [20], There were also Kindertransports to other countries, such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. Passenger list from Antwerp, Belgium to the UK in 1908? [10], Within a very short time, the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany, later known as the Refugee Children's Movement (RCM), sent representatives to Germany and Austria to establish the systems for choosing, organising, and transporting the children. In the UK, how decisions were made about where children should live / go to work / be trained? The notation deleted by some names indicates that this individual [1][2] The British government placed no numerical limit on the programme; it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, by which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country. Approximately 1,000 of these prior-kinder were interned in these internment camps, many on the Isle of Man. Her parents were murdered in the Holocaust.,", "Herbert Wise, 'I, Claudius' Director, Dies at 90", "Kindertransport and KTA History: Kaddish in London", "News Weather followed by The Hostel BBC One London 5 July 1990 BBC Genome", "League of Professional Theatre Women biography", "My Knees Were Jumping: Remembering the Kindertransports", "Deborah Oppenheimer: Biography | The Kindertransport", "Train in honour of Jewish children rescuer Winton leaves Prague", "History matters but which one? Jews, Quakers, and Christians of many denominations worked together to bring refugee children to Britain. 4. Tikz: Numbering vertices of regular a-sided Polygon, There exists an element in a group whose order is at most the number of conjugacy classes. The refugees are to be provided for at a holiday camp at Dovercourt Bay near Harwich until accommodation can be arranged for them in private houses. The Central British Fund for German Jewry (now World Jewish Relief) was established in 1933 to support in whatever way possible the needs of Jews in Germany and Austria. The Kindertransport - Jewish Virtual Library They hold a set of the KTA Oral History Project interviews and have many Kindertransport documents. As a result of a lack of documentation, we do not know who provided many of the testimonies, including the identities of the children in the document above. This led to evacuations of British children on passenger liners under the Children's Overseas Reception Board and the United States Committee for the Care of European Children to be protected by convoys. The first batch of German-Jewish children, the 'Kindertransport', complete with identity tags, arriving in England. It was typically the case that children were told to write whilst on the journey and that postcards were collected from them at a certain point and sent. Kindertransport | European history [1938-1940] | Britannica As a result of the issues outlined, there is very little in terms of identifiable information in the document above. which are held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum At the time, Alfred Wiener, the German-Jewish founder of The Wiener Library, was heading the Central Jewish Information Office (JCIO) in Amsterdam, which had been a place of refuge for him and his colleagues since 1933. and Danzig were brought for temporary residence to England. Search the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum site: 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW The 'British Schindler' who saved 669 children from the Nazis It includes an appearance by Nicholas Winton. In the United States, the WagnerRogers Bill was introduced in Congress, which would have increased the quota of immigrants by bringing a total of 20,000 Jewish children, but due to opposition from Senator Robert Rice Reynolds, it never left the committee stage. World War, 1939-1945 --Jews --Rescue --Germany --Registers. Kindertransport - The National Archives There can be something very meaningful about finding documents with details, for example that your grandmother Esther left Berlin on a Kindertransport to London on January 15, 1939, or that on July 17, 1942 your mothers cousin Pauli was deported from Vienna to Auschwitz. Box 187 Scarsdale, NY 10593). Other ports in England receiving the children included Dover.[23][24]. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Around 400 were transported overseas to Canada and Australia (see HMT Dunera). Download images and transcripts for use in the classroom (ZIP, 2 MB). The Kinder continued to be monitored during the war years, with information on their financial maintenance and religious upbringing being recorded centrally. TTY: 202.488.0406, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, Nicholas Winton and the Rescue of Children from Czechoslovakia, 19381939. [55], Nearly all the interned 'friendly enemy aliens' were refugees who had fled Hitler and Nazism, and nearly all were Jewish. Some children from Czechoslovakia (which was dismantled by Germany between September 1938 and March 1939) were flown by plane directly to Britain. [12] Hoare made it clear that the monetary and housing and other aid required had been promised by the Jewish community and other communities. Similar reports are coming in from all over the provinces and further synagogues have been burnt in Munich and Bamberg (FO 371/21696). This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. Encyclopedia.ushmm.org. The scanned material is a thorough representation of the central government files, which were transferred to The National Archives relating to Kindertransport. Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, is commemorating 80 years since the Kindertransport with a new display of rare artifacts which belonged to children who escaped Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust.From December 1938 until the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, the Kindertransport - German for "child transportation" - saved more than 10,000 Jewish youth . They did not insist that the homes for Jewish children should be Jewish homes. A possible enquiry question would be: What was Britains response to the child refugee problem in Nazi occupied countries? Again, these sources could be used to support school programmes which use survivor testimony. Although no records exist of the methodology for gathering this specific set of testimonies, Wiener Library staff speculate that they were sourced using the JCIOs several usual modes of information gathering: face to face interviews, telephone conversations, letters and written reports, selecting and cropping newspaper articles, and obtaining informal intelligence via conversations and correspondence with other organisations and contacts. What's the cheapest way to buy out a sibling's share of our parents house if I have no cash and want to pay less than the appraised value? The fields for this database are as follows: The information contained in this database was compiled from The Kindertransport. Children in the care of the Czechoslovak Refugee Trust Fund. Spector, Shmuel, and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds. Alternatively, teachers may wish to use the collection to develop their own resources or encourage students to curate their own exhibition. How can I determine whether there are BSI (Board of Special Inquiry) minutes or records for an alien on a list of detained aliens? These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. I can understand why perhaps there names were changed ,or with held etc. 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW Whilst this was somewhat of an exaggeration it was traumatic for the parents to send their children away into the "unknown" and for an uncertain time; and traumatic for at least the younger children to be separated from their parents the actual parting was managed well. Yesterday, online records related to the Kindertransport children became available through FindMyPast: This is a fascinating collection of digitised government documents relating to the Kindertransport operation, dating from 1939 to 1945, held by The National Archives. Rather than being a personal narrative, it consists of a series of transcribed letters written by children while in transit on the first Kindertransport on 1 December 1938. Children without sponsors were housed in a summer camp in Dovercourt Bay and in other facilities until individual families agreed to care for them or until hostels could be organized to care for larger groups of children. Registered charity number 313015. "80th Anniversary of Kindertransport Marked with Compensation Payment to Survivors", "British Quakers and the rescue of Jewish refugees", "Jews saved by U.K. stockbroker to reenact 1939 journey to safety", "Kindertransport statue to mark WWII refugees' arrival in Harwich", "Nicholas Winton, the Schindler of Britain", "Troublesome Sainthood: Nicholas Winton and the Contested History of Child Rescue in Prague, 1938-1940", The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 19411945, "Lily Renee, Escape Artist: From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer", "Tovah Feldshuh is very becoming in 'Becoming Dr. Ruth', "Sex therapist, researcher Dr. Ruth given honorary doctorate by BGU; Born in Germany into a religious Jewish household in 1928, Dr. Ruth Westheimer was sent to Switzerland on the Kindertransport at age 10. Notable among the refugee aid committees were the British Committee for the Jews of Germany and the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany. On the 9th and 10th November 1938, there was a widespread series of violent attacks against Jewish individuals and property throughout Germany and annexed Austria. Kindertransport The Arrival, Liverpool Street station, London, Zge ins Leben Zge in den Tod: 19381939 - Trains to Life Trains to Death, Friedrichstrae station, Berlin, Die Abreise - The departure in front of Gdask Gwny station, Kindertransport Monument Hoek van Holland Channel Crossing to Life, Hook of Holland, Kindertransport Der letzte Abschied - The final parting, Hamburg Dammtor station, Harwich memorial Safe Haven by Ian Wolter, A number of members of Habonim, a Jewish youth movement inclined to socialism and Zionism, were instrumental in running the country hostels of South West England. They were held in internment camps on the Isle of Man, Canada, and Australia. Questions about specific training programmes and colleges in England for the children, Records for every child that arrived in the UK on a Kindertransport are still maintained by. . Neither the German nor the English governments have ever released name lists of the children, though many appear in publications of the Kindertransport Association based in London. v3.0. On December 2, 1938, the first Kindertransport arrived200 children from a . If not for the Kindertransport, 10,000 more children's names would be on that list. The records do not stop at the point of arrival in the UK. Thanks for cotngibunitr. Throw Your Feet Over Your Shoulders: Beyond the Kindertransport. Guardianship of refugee children. LIST OF CHILDREN BROUGHT OVER UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE CZECH CHILDREN'S SECTION ON TRANSPORTS FROM PRAGUE. Letters regarding the entry of refugee children into the UK. Please follow the links for full collection descriptions in the EHRI Portal and Wiener Library Collections Catalogue, as well as the original text andtranslation of the document: Wiener Library catalogue description: Eyewitness reports regarding the November Pogrom, Full text and translation can be found on the Wiener Librarys digital resource: Pogrom November 1938: Testimonies from Kristallnacht. This achievement was remarkable not only for the sheer number of lives saved but because it was organized by ordinary people from all different backgrounds, all with the common goal of protecting a stranger against a great evil. Harris, Mark Jonathan, and Deborah Oppenheimer. He also saved large numbers of Jews with South American protection papers. See fullscreen visualisation of Letters from Children on the First Kindertransport. Who sponsored children travelling on the Kindertransport, and how did this process work? They were subsequently transcribed by an anonymous source and sent to the JCIO by somebody who identified himself as Herr Flrsheim (or MrFlrsheim) from Amsterdam. The Kindertransport was the movement of German, Polish, Czechoslovakian and Austrian Jewish children to the United Kingdom before the outbreak of World War II. The programme was supported, publicised, and encouraged by the British government, which waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil.