Survivors recall Kindertransport
LONDON — The operation was called Kindertransport — Children's Transport — and it was a passage from hell to freedom.
Kristallnacht had just rocked Nazi Germany. The pogroms killed dozens of Jews, burned hundreds of synagogues and imprisoned tens of thousands in concentration camps. Many historians see them as the start of Hitler's Final Solution.
Amid the horror, Britain agreed to take in children threatened by the Nazi murder machine.
Seventy-five years ago this week, the first group of children arrived without their parents at the English port of Harwich, and took a train to London's Liverpool Street Station.
Some 10,000 children, most but not all Jewish, would escape the Nazis in the months to come — until the outbreak of war in September 1939, when the borders were closed.
From London the children went to homes and hostels across Britain. But their parents were placed in camps as “enemy aliens.”
Many of the children settled in Britain, having found their families wiped out by the Nazis.
Today is World Kindertransport Day, with events to mark the anniversary in many countries. These are the stories of three Kinder in their own words. The AP has removed some sentences for purposes of condensing their accounts.
Oscar Findling, 91My father was not a German citizen. On the night before Kristallnacht, he was arrested by the Gestapo.That was the last I saw of my father.As soon as we found out (about the Kindertransport), my mother went to where the committee was and put my name down. She wouldn't put my brother down because, she said, “I don't want to lose both my sons on one day.”I'll never forget the last words my mother said: “Will I ever see you again?”Prophetic words.I was two years in a hostel in Manchester. The committee got me a job in a fur shop. Once I was over 18 I was allowed to go to London. In 1944 I got papers from the Ministry of Labor that I had to go in the army.It took me 30 years to get my parents' story together. Basically they were put in the ghetto in 1941 and in September 1942 ... they were all put on the cattle trains. They were sent to a place called Belzec, which was one of the well-known gas chambers near Treblinka.And that was that.Already 16 when he arrived in June 1939, Findling, who grew up in the eastern German city of Leipzig, is the oldest surviving Kind. After a career in garment manufacturing, he now lives with his second wife in London.
Herbert Levy, 84My parents had tried to get out of Germany for many years but it was very difficult to get into anywhere until the British government allowed children to come on the Kindertransport. My parents applied, and by pure luck I was one of the chosen ones. I was not yet 10 years old.My parents took me to the station. I said goodbye to my grandparents. My grandfather was to die a few weeks later. My grandmother was one of the 6 million people who died in the extermination camps, with her two sisters, many cousins, many nephews and nieces.We finally arrived at the border. You can't imagine the relief of being in Holland, to have passed Nazi Germany. It was fantastic to feel free at last.Levy came from Berlin via the Netherlands in June 1939. Months later, his parents joined him. They were interned in a British camp for “enemy aliens.” Levy recalls being greeted with chants of 'Bloody Germans!' (“This was quite amazing for me,” he said, “because I had been shouted at as 'bloody Jew' until recently.”) Levy went on to become an actor. His wife, Lillian, survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Eve Willman, 80I was 5 when I came. My father was a doctor. My mother converted to Judaism when she married my father.I came with another girl who was older than me. The only thing I remember about the journey is stopping at one point and people coming in and giving us a sweet drink. I don't remember saying goodbye to my parents.I went to the first foster home — a Unitarian minister and his wife. They didn't have any children. I remember that she was very strict and precise.After a year they couldn't keep me anymore and so I went to the next foster home ... to an extremely nice family. But one of my uncles who had been a rabbi was most concerned that I didn't have any Jewish instruction. And so I went to another family. It was not such a nice family.My uncle and aunt were then established in West Hartlepool. I went there for a holiday. It was such a wonderful turning point in my life somehow. My aunt said, “when you come back, you will be with us forever.” I was 11. I became one of their children. My cousins became my brother and sister.My father survived the war. My mother was able to work and she worked in a factory, and the factory was bombed. She was killed just before the end of the war so I never saw her again.It was really a wonderful thing that the government did to let 10,000 children in who probably would have lost their lives.But it's happening again. It isn't happening to Jews, but look at the children in Syria.Willman, an only child, arrived from Vienna in April 1939. She later obtained a Ph.D. in biochemistry and worked as a researcher and biology teacher. She lives in London and has never married.
