The Kinder Trasnport

The Kindertransport

Being a young child and having everything you wanted one day and then complete devastation the next is more than a nightmare. Under Adolf Hitler's control and lead Germany has been struck with a terrible reputation for one of the world's worst genocide incidents. At the start of 1941 Hitler's Nazi troops began to invade surrounding countries to gather the Jewish race to dispose of them. Known as the Holocaust, Hitler was able to have control of any existing race in his county. Men, women, and children's lives were taken daily under the hands of the Nazi's and Hitler's rein. Over a million of those lives taken were children, some children worked to death, experimented with or just out right killed from the start. Although there was an amount of children whose lives were spared and had the chance to grow up with a normal life and to escape the Holocaust. A little close to 10,000 children under the age of 18 was permitted by the British Parliament to come to England under a temporary passport to live in fostering homes. Through the informal name of a rescue operation, The Kindertransport, mostly Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland were rescued and given the chance to live and to pass down the family name.

The Kindertransport was unique in that Jews, Quakers, and Christians of many denominations worked together to rescue primarily Jewish children of the Holocaust. These Jewish kids were transported by train from Berlin, Vienna, Prague and other major cities to cross the Dutch and Belgian borders to then go on by ships to England. Kids rescued by this operation set forth by British authorities were later known as Kindertransport Children. Children of the Kindertransport were dispersed to many parts of the British Isles; about half of them lived with foster families, group homes, and farms in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Most countries refused the refuges because Hitler didn't allow for anyone to take money with them as they exited Germany. Some children were lucky and had family in other countries or had prearranged sponsors to take them in, these children were sent to London. Others who were still lucky to have their lives but were unsponsored waited in Dovercourt, a summer holiday camp, and other transient camps until individual families came forward to take one or two children into their homes.

The Kindertransport itself was a way for parents to send their kids out of the countries threatened by the Nazi soldiers before things were too late. The first Kindertransport arrived at Harwich, England on December 2, 1938 bringing 196 children from a Berlin Jewish orphanage burned by the Nazis during the night of November 9th, which was known as "The Night of Broken Glass". During this day in 1938 the German people saw the organized destruction of Jewish businesses and homes in Munich, as well as the beating and murder of Jewish men, women, and children. The Night of Broken Glass was a night when violence broke out across the Reich; unplanned it was believed to be carried out by angered Germans because of the assassination against a German official, whose life was taken by a teenage Jewish boy. Jewish business were burned, hospitals, cemeteries, schools and orphanages were looted causing harm and danger to those in these areas.

By time Great Britain had gotten word of the devastation that was happening in many Jewish areas of Germany and other surrounding countries it was time to set forth their plan to rescue the children. For those children who lived in the major cities that the transports were going to meet in, the task for parents to get their children there was a lot easier than for others. Children who didn't live as close had to travel to the major cities, avoiding German officials and Nazis providing legit reasons for crossing from one town to the next. Not knowing if you were going to have the chance to board a train that could lead you to a safe