Category:Kindertransport (subject)

Kindertransport was the name given to the mission which took thousands of children to safety ahead of World War Two. It helped 10,000 unaccompanied children to escape from Germany, Austria, and Czechia to England.

Memoirs / Semi-biographical Novels

1964

Other People's Houses (1964) is a semi-biographical novel by Holocaust survivor Lore Segal (Lore Groszmann; Austria, 1928).

KEYWORDS: <Germany> <Kindertransport>

"Originally published in 1964 and hailed by critics including Cynthia Ozick and Elie Wiesel, Other People’s Houses is Lore Segal’s internationally acclaimed semi-autobiographical first novel ... Nine months after Hitler takes Austria, a ten-year-old girl leaves Vienna aboard a children’s transport that is to take her and several hundred children to safety in England. For the next seven years she lives in “other people’s houses,” the homes of the wealthy Orthodox Jewish Levines, the working-class Hoopers, and two elderly sisters in their formal Victorian household. An insightful and witty depiction of the ways of life of those who gave her refuge, Other People’s Houses is a wonderfully memorable novel of the immigrant experience."--Publisher description.

1996

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Ein Kind unserer Zeit (Frankfurt am Main: dipa-Verl., 1996) is a memoir written by Holocaust survivor Ruth L. David (b.1929).

English ed. Child of Our Time: A Young Girl's Flight from the Holocaust (London: Tauris, 2002).

KEYWORDS: <Germany> <Kindertransport>

"Child of Our Time is the inspiring story of a little girl caught in the vortex of one of history’s great horrors. Plucked from deep rural Germany, after witnessing the horror of Kristallnacht and her family’s eviction from its village, Ruth David was sent to England as part of the Kindertransport—one of the few routes to safety and survival for many children who were to lose their parents in the Holocaust ... As a child of the Holocaust, David was one of the lucky ones: she was one of about 10,000 Jewish children who were taken by train to Great Britain and saved from death at the hands of the Nazis. "As a child I found it difficult to be grateful for this," she notes in a foreword to her own children. "I wanted to be with my family, wherever they were...." She was fortunate in another sense-her four siblings also survived the war. But David never saw her parents again after her departure for England: they perished in Auschwitz. She movingly describes her arrival in London, aged 10, part of a group of "tired, frightened children"; her gradual assimilation into the life of the hostel where she stayed; the strangeness of daily things such as corn flakes, which she had never seen before; up through the beginning of her new life when, at age 17, she left the hostel after the war. David notes she had never spoken about these events to her children. Readers will be glad she decided to share her moving experiences now."--Publisher description.

Ruth L. David (Germany, 1929), Holocaust survivor -- Born in Germany, Ruth L. David lived in England from 1939-1992 as a teacher of modern languages. She now lives in Ames, Iowa.

2005

The Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up English (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005) is a memoir written by Holocaust survivor Edith Milton (Edith Cohn; b.1932).

KEYWORDS: <Germany> <Kindertransport>

"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 ... In this illuminating chronicle, Edith describes how she struggled to fit in and to conquer self-doubts about her German identity. Her realistic portrayal of the seemingly mundane yet historically momentous details of daily life during World War II slowly reveals istelf as a hopeful story about the kindness and generosity of strangers. She paints an account rich with colorful characters and intense relationships, uncanny close calls and unnerving bouts of luck that led to survival. Edith's journey between cultures continues with her final passage to America—yet another chapter in her life that required adjustment to a new world—allowing her, as she narrates it here, to visit her past as an exile all over again ... The Tiger in the Attic is a literary gem from a skilled fiction writer, the story of a thoughtful and observant child growing up against the backdrop of the most dangerous and decisive moment in modern European history. Offering a unique perspective on Holocaust studies, this book is both an exceptional and universal story of a young German-Jewish girl caught between worlds."--Publisher description.

Edith Milton (b.1932) was born in Karlsruhe, Germany. She is now a freelance writer who lives in California and New Hampshire. Her writing has appeared in, among other places, the New York Times Book Review, NewRepublic, and Boston Globe. She is the author of the novel Corridors.

Films/Documentary

All My Loved Ones (1999) -- feature film

My Knees Were Jumping: Remembering the Kindertransports (1996) -- documentary
The Children Who Cheated the Nazis: The Story of the Kindertransport (2000) -- documentary
Into the Arms of Strangers (2000) -- documentary
Nicholas Winton: The Power of Good (2002) -- documentary
Holocaust Day: A Haven in Wales (2005) -- documentary

Sel Hubert, Kindertransport (2011) -- video (12m)
Kindertransport (2013) -- video (5m)

Bibliography

1999

Anne L. Fox and Eva Abraham-Podietz, Ten Thousand Children: True Stories Told by Children Who Escaped the Holocaust on the Kindertransport (West Orange, NJ : Behrman House, 1999)

Nonfiction <elementary and junior high school>.

"Tells the true stories of children who escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport, a rescue mission led by concerned British to save Jewish children from the Holocaust."--Publisher description.

Anne L. Fox has written about her childhood in Nazi Germany and her subsequent departure to England with the Kindertransport when she was 12 years old.

Eva Abraham-Podietz is also a Holocaust survivor. She now lives in the U.S., and speaks primarily to school youngsters.

2000

Mark Jonathan Harris, and Deborah Oppenheimer. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (New York, NY, and London: Bloomsbury, 2000).

"Chronicles the events and people involved in the rescue of 10,000 children from Nazi territories, and what happened after the war. Official tie-in to the Warner Brothers documentary. First hand account of the extraordinary rescue mission of 10,000 children before the outbreak of World War II. For nine months before the outbreak of World War II, Britain conducted an extraordinary rescue mission. It opened its doors to over 10,000 endangered children, 90 percent of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. These children were taken into foster homes and hostels in Britain, expecting eventually to be reunited with their parents. Most of the children never saw their families again. Into the Arms of Strangers recounts the remarkable story of this rescue operation, known as the Kindertransport, and its dramatic impact on the lives of the children who were saved. The book is the companion to the feature-length documentary which was released in the theatres by Warner Bros. in Fall 2000. It contains stories in their own words from the child survivors, rescuers, parents, and foster parents. They recount, in harrowing detail, the effects of the Nazi's reign of terror, the horror of Kristallnacht, the agonizing decision by the parents to send their children away, the journey, the difficulties of adjustment in Britain, the outbreak of war, and the children's tragic discovery afterward that most of their parents had perished in concentration camps. The stories are heartbreaking, but also inspiring. These are the stories of those who survived with the help of others; they are stories about the strength and resolve of children; and most astonishing, these are stories not yet heard about the Holocaust."--Publisher description.