The (German for "children's transport") was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place in 1938–39 during the nine months prior to the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, occupied Czechoslovakia and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. 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. 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 children had been brought to the country.
Smaller numbers of children were taken in via the programme by the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Sweden, and Switzerland.Marcia W. Posner (2014). Zachor: Not Only to Remember; The Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County... Its First Twenty Years The term "" may also be applied to the rescue of mainly Jewish children from Nazi German territory to the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. An example is the 1,000 Château de la Hille children who went to Belgium. However, most often the term is restricted to the organised programme of the United Kingdom.
References in literature and testimonials to " to Palestine" use the term "" only in the general sense of "a transport of children," as they refer to the emigration of teenagers with Hachsharah certificates to Palestine. Pre-war that included young children without such certificates were prohibited from legal entry into British-controlled Mandatory Palestine after the Jewish Agency for Palestine's 1938 application was turned down by the British Colonial Office,Cesarani, David in (various authors: Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London, 2001, pp. 10-11. "On 15 November 1938... [Dr. Chaim] Weizmann specifically mentioned teenagers who were in concentration camps or threatened with incarceration, and asked that they be allowed into Palestine. The [British] cabinet discussed the question the next day... the British Colonial office turned down a request from the Jewish Agency to allow the admission of 10,000 children into British-controlled Palestine, this number seems to have been adopted informally as an appropriate goal for Britain to herself to meet." citing Palestinian Arab opposition.
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.
In the United States, the Wagner–Rogers Bill which would have increased the quota of immigrants, bringing a total of 20,000 refugee children to the U.S., was proposed but did not pass.
Policy On 15 November 1938, five days after the devastation of Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass") in Nazi Germany and annexed Austria, a delegation of British, Jewish, and Quaker leaders appealled, in person, to Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Among other measures, they requested that the British government permit the temporary admission of unaccompanied Jewish children, without their parents.
The British Cabinet debated the issue the next day and subsequently prepared a bill to present to Parliament. The bill stated that the government would waive certain immigration requirements so as to allow the entry into Great Britain of unaccompanied children ranging from infants up to the age of 17, under a number of conditions.
No limit upon the permitted number of refugees was ever publicly announced. Initially, the Jewish refugee agencies considered 5,000 as a realistic target goal. However, after the British Colonial Office turned down the Jewish agencies' separate request to allow the admission of 10,000 children to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine, "this number seems to have been adopted informally as an appropriate goal for Britain herself to meet."ibid. Cesarani, David, 2001
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 and Quaker groups, as well as other groups, working on behalf of refugees. In what was described by Rose Holmes as a "watershed moment" the government accepted "the political recommendation of a coalition of voluntary agencies" but without accepting that the government had any administrative or financial responsibility. The groups, though considering all refugees, were allied under a non-denominational organisation called the "Movement for the Care of Children from Germany". This organisation was considering only the rescue of children, who would need to leave their parents behind in Germany.
In that debate of 21 November 1938, Hoare paid particular attention to the plight of children. He reported that enquiries in Germany had determined that nearly every parent asked had said that they would be willing to send their child off unaccompanied to the United Kingdom, leaving their parents behind.
Although Hoare declared that he and the Home Office "shall put no obstacle in the way of children coming here," the agencies involved had to find homes for the children and also fund the operation to ensure that none of the refugees would become a financial burden on the public. Every child had to have a guarantee of £50 sterling to finance his or her eventual re-emigration, as it was expected the children would stay in the country only temporarily. Hoare made it clear that the monetary and housing and other aid required had been promised by the Jewish community and other communities.
Organisation and management
Within a 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. The Central British Fund for German Jewry provided funding for the rescue operation.
On 25 November, British citizens heard an appeal for foster homes on the BBC Home Service radio station from former Home Secretary Viscount Samuel. Soon there were 500 offers, and RCM volunteers started visiting possible foster homes and reporting on conditions. They did not insist that the homes for Jewish children should be Jewish homes. Nor did they probe too carefully into the motives and character of the families: it was sufficient for the houses to look clean and the families to seem respectable.
In Germany, a network of organisers was established, and these volunteers worked around the clock to make priority lists of those most in peril: 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. They could only take a small sealed suitcase with no valuables and only ten marks or less in money. Some children had nothing but a manila tag with a number on the front and their name on the back, others were issued with a numbered identity card with a photo:
The first party of 196 children arrived at Harwich on the TSS Prague on 2 December, three weeks after , disembarking at Parkeston Quay. A plaque unveiled in 2011 at Harwich harbour marks this event.
In the following nine months almost 10,000 unaccompanied children, mainly Jewish, travelled to England.World Jewish Relief
There were also Kindertransports to other countries, such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. Dutch humanitarian Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer arranged for 1,500 children to be admitted to the Netherlands; the children were supported by the Dutch Committee for Jewish Refugees, which was paid by the Dutch Jewish Community. 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. Eventually around 500 Jewish children from Germany aged between 1 and 15 were granted temporary residence permits on the condition that their parents would not try to enter the country. The children were selected by Jewish organisations in Germany and placed in foster homes and orphanages in Sweden.
Initially the children came mainly from Germany and Austria (part of the Greater Reich after Anschluss). From 15 March 1939, with the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, transports from Prague were hastily organised. Transports out of Nazi-occupied Europe continued until the War began in September 1939.
A smaller number of children flew to Croydon Airport, mainly from Prague. Other ports in England receiving the children included Dover.
Last transport
On 10 May 1940, Nazi Germany began the first phase of the Battle of France. Germany invaded the Netherlands quickly.
The last transport from the continent with 74 children left on the passenger-freighter on 14 May 1940, from IJmuiden, Netherlands. Their departure was organised by Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer, the Dutch organiser of the first transport from Vienna in December 1938. She had collected 66 of the children from the orphanage on the in Amsterdam, part of which had been serving as a home for refugees. She could have joined the children, but chose to remain behind. This was a rescue action, as occupation of the Netherlands was imminent, with the surrender announced on the radio on 14 May at 8:30 p.m.. This ship was the last to leave the country freely.
As the Netherlands was under attack by German forces from 10 May and bombing had been going on, there was no opportunity to confer with the parents of the children. At the time of this evacuation, these parents knew nothing of the evacuation of their children: according to unnamed sources, some of the parents were initially very upset about this action and told Wijsmuller-Meijer that she should not have done this. After 14 May, there was no more opportunity to leave the Netherlands as the country's borders were closed by the occupiers.
Transportation and programme completion
The Nazis had decreed that the evacuations must not block ports in Germany, so most transport parties went by train to the Netherlands; then to a British port, generally Harwich, by ferry from the Hook of Holland near Rotterdam. 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. Children without prearranged foster families were sheltered at temporary holding centres at summer holiday camps such as Dovercourt and Pakefield, with the Broadreeds holiday camp, at Selsey, West Sussex, being used as a transit camp for girls. While most transports went via train, some also went by boat, and others aeroplane.
The first Kindertransport was organised and masterminded by Florence Nankivell. She spent a week in Berlin, hassled by the Nazi police, organising the children. The train left Berlin on 1 December 1938, and arrived in Harwich on 2 December with 196 children. Most were from a Berlin Jewish orphanage burned by the Nazis during the night of 9 November, and the others were from Hamburg.