Kindertransport: Remembering & Rethinking

To mark the release of the Warner Brothers motion picture 'One Life' (starring Anthony Hopkins, Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Flynn), Alex Maws sits down with the film's director, James Hawes, to discuss the story of Sir Nicholas Winton and how he went about bringing it to the big screen.About the film:ONE LIFE tells the true story of Sir Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Winton, a young London broker who, in the months leading up to World War II, rescued 669 children from the Nazis. Nicky visited Prague in December 1938 and found families who had fled the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Austria, living in desperate conditions with little or no shelter and food, and under threat of Nazi invasion. He immediately realised it was a race against time. How many children could he and the team rescue before the borders closed? Fifty years later, it’s 1988 and Nicky lives haunted by the fate of the children he wasn’t able to bring to safety in England; always blaming himself for not doing more. It’s not until a live BBC television show, ‘That’s Life’, surprises him by introducing him to some surviving children – now adults – that he finally begins to come to terms with the guilt and grief he had carried for five decades.  

The series finale, but where does the story of the Kindertransport actually end? How has the memory of the Kindertransport affected those who experienced it, and how has it impacted us on a societal level? Historian Amy Williams weighs in and Barbara Winton, daughter of rescuer Sir Nicholas Winton discusses the link to contemporary refugee issues. As always, we are left with more questions than answers.

Letters between the Kindertransport refugees and their parents first served as a lifeline to home, but when war breaks out all that is allowed are brief messages transmitted through the International Red Cross. Many parents try to reassure their children that everything is fine, but then for many children the letters eventually stop or they come to deliver unbearable news. 

Anti-German panic sets in and following Winston Churchill's edict to "collar the lot", all adult Germans and Austrians in the UK -- including Jewish refugees from the Kindertransport who were over 16 -- become "enemy aliens". Restrictions are imposed on their everyday lives, and many are sent to internment camps. Despite this hostility, many go on to join the British armed forces to fight against the Nazis from whom they had once escaped.

Forging a sense of identity is complicated enough for most children. Now try to imagine what it must have been like for those children who came on the Kindertransport. For many it was a case of being too Jewish for Germany; too German for Britain. In what ways were they made to feel at home in Britain, and in what ways were they made to feel foreign? How did they maintain their sense of Jewishness in far-flung corners of Britain? And To what extent did they retain a sense of 'continental' identity later in life?

With the onset of war in September 1939, the transport of child refugees to Britain stops, stranding untold numbers of children in Europe and cutting off those children who had already arrived in Britain from their families. Ursula Gilbert recalls her experience bouncing around between homes, hostels and job training opportunities. Other refugees describe being sent to work on farms and as domestic servants.

In the coldest winter Britain had experienced in more than a century, refugees were housed in unheated huts, while they tried to make the best of their situation by learning English and going on cultural outings. Meanwhile a radio appeal for prospective foster parents created a weekly experience that the children referred to as the 'cattle market' in which visiting couples would walk through the dining hall looking for their ideal foster child.

Thousands of British families respond to the call to help unaccompanied Jewish child refugees, and at long last Kindertransports start arriving. What were the reactions to the children upon arriving in a strange new country? Years later, what were the memories – positive and negative – that stuck with them about those first impressions?

The events of the November Pogrom prompt Westminster to loosen immigration restrictions, allowing unaccompanied child refugees to come to Britain. What did these children understand at the time about how they ended up on a Kindertransport? Eight refugees recall their experiences and historian Louise London explains British the shift in British policy.

Fred Barschak can vividly remember the menu at his father's kosher restaurant. Otto Deutsch recalls his family's humble living conditions. And Ursula Gilbert remembers attending Berlin's grandest synagogue. These are some of the happy childhood memories that stand in stark contrast to subsequent tales of antisemitic taunts and a night of unprecedented violence.