The Kindertransport

This statue wasn’t erected in memory of one person but of thousands, they are the children who were saved from Nazi persecution at the start of World War Two and perhaps if you should ever be passing by Liverpool Street Station you might spare a thought to remember the millions of other children who tragically never had the chance to be part of the Kindertransport.

In 1933 Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party came to power in Germany and for the Jewish population and others it was it was the beginning of a nightmare, within months of his appointment as Chancellor work began on the concentration camp Dachau where arrested Communists, Socialists, and labour leaders were held. It was here that the guards practiced their ‘skills’ of dehumanizing prisoners. 
 
It was the same years that specific laws were brought in for the Jewish population, they were barred from holding positions in the civil service, in legal and medical professions, and in teaching and university positions. The Nazis encouraged boycotts of Jewish-owned shops and businesses and began the ook burnings of writings by Jews and by others not approved by the Reich.

In 1935 something called the Nuremberg Laws were brought into force. These laws stripped Jews of their civil rights as German citizens and separated them from Germans legally, socially, and politically. This law also forbade marriages or sexual relations between Jews and Germans. Hitler warned darkly that if this law did not resolve the problem, he would turn to the Nazi Party for a final solution.

During this time thousands left Germany but gradually this slowed to a trickle as visa’s became impossible to obtain and those that were luckier enough to get a visa were not allowed to take out any possessions or money, also they found many countries had closed their borders to them. Then when the Nazi’s marched into Austria and were welcomed by the Austrian people more Jews became under control of the Nazi’s, then on October 15th, 1938 Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia came under the Nazi jackboot, two months later came the event known as Kristallnacht (The Night of the Broken Glass) when nearly 1,000 synagogues were set on fire,76 were destroyed.

More than 7,000 Jewish businesses and homes were looted, about one hundred Jews were killed and as many as 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps to be tormented, many for months. Within days, the Nazis forced the Jews to transfer their businesses to Aryan hands and expelled all Jewish pupils from public schools. With brazen arrogance, the Nazis further persecuted the Jews by forcing them to pay for the damages of Kristallnacht.

Although Jewish and Quaker groups had been trying for months to get Britain to allow free access of Jews to Britain it was this event that spurred them on to greater efforts. They appealed to Neville Chamberlain to permit the temporary admission of Jewish children and teenagers who would later re-emigrate. The Jewish community here promised to pay guarantees for the refugee children. 

With a speed not usually associated with government it was agreed that unaccompanied children ranging from infants up to teenagers under the age of 17 would be able to come, no limit to the number of refugees was ever publicly announced. A comparable U.S. effort to absorb up to 10,000 refugee children by relaxing restrictive immigration statutes failed to even make it out of Congressional committees debating the issue, One congressional committee studied a proposal to bring in refugee children and piously declined, saying it was "contrary to the rules of God" to take children away from their parents

In Germany, a network of organizers was established, and these volunteers worked around the clock to make priority lists of those most imperiled: teenagers who were in concentration camps or in danger of arrest, Polish children or teenagers threatened with deportation, children in Jewish orphanages, children whose parents were too impoverished to keep them, or children with a parent in a concentration camp. Once the children were identified or grouped by list, their guardians or parents were issued a travel date and departure details. 

Each child was allowed to bring a small suitcase and ten Reichsmarks.Upon arrival at port in Great Britain, Kinder without prearranged foster families were sheltered at temporary holding centers located at summer holiday camps such as Dover Court and Pakefield. Finding foster families was not always easy, and being chosen for a home was not necessarily the end of the discomfort or distress.

Although many children were well-treated and grew up to develop close ties to their British hosts, some were mistreated or abused. Some families took in teenage girls as a way of acquiring a maid. There was little sensitivity toward the cultural and religious needs of the children and, for some, their heritage was all but erased.

In all nearly 10.000 children were saved, the German government allowed this to happen with one proviso, that the convoys of children didn’t block the ports so they traveled by train to the Hook of Holland. From there, the children traveled by ferry to the British ports of Harwich or Southampton and travelled to London by train, arriving at Liverpool Street Station.

The last group of children from Germany departed on September 1, 1939, the day the German army invaded Poland and provoked Great Britain, France, and other countries to declare war. The last known transport of children from the Netherlands left on May 14, 1940, the day the Dutch army surrendered to Germany. Most of the children that were part of the Kindertransport never saw their parents again.

In 1940 the British government brought in laws which meant that all ‘enemy aliens’ should be interred, and unbelievably someone decided that the ‘kinder’ fell into this group so about a thousand 16 to 17 year olds were held in interment camps while nearly five hundred more were sent to Australia and Canada, and over a thousand Kinder teenagers served in the British armed forces, including combat units. Several dozen joined elite formations such as the Special Forces, where their language skills could be put to good use.

There have been two Kindertransport memorials outside Liverpool Street Station in Hope Square. 

The first was of a young girl beside a giant Perspex suitcase representing everything each child was allowed to bring with them, unfortunately some of the exhibits began to deteriorate so the were removed to the Imperial War Museum. 

A new memorial was commissioned and it was unveiled in 2006 the sculptor was Frank Meisler designed a group of children who like himself arrived at Liverpool Street Station as part of the Kindertransport.

The adage quoted in the notice at the base of sculpture is: "Whosoever rescues a single soul is credited as though they had saved the whole world." (Talmud, Baba Batra