Kindertransport

    The Kindertransport (Children’s Transport) happened between the months of Kristallnant (Night of Broken Glass) and the start of World War II, when Jews were allowed to leave.  Lola Hehn-Warburg set out the scheme of the rescue in 1933 while still in Germany, and many others rose to the movement, making the rescue a success.  The event happened everywhere in Europe.  Nearly 10,000 Jewish children were sent out from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to the Great Britain.  This was to rescue endangered children from the Nazis.  The event of the Kristallnant fueled up the rescue plan into higher gear.  On night of November 9, 1938, the Nazis attacked Jewish communities, thousands of Jewish houses, businesses, synagogues (Jewish temples), and other stores owned by Jews were completely destroyed.  Response to the outrage of Kristallnant against the Jews, British government agreed to let 10,000 Jewish children, from three months old to the age of seventeenth, to enter the United Kingdom on temporary travel documents, with the belief that these children will someday return to their parents.  The British Foreign Minister Samuel Hoare pleaded the British citizens to have sympathy and consideration on the Jews.  The British Committee of the Jews of Germany and the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany, along with the Jews, Christians and Quakers worked together on the project.  Lord Baldwine, Prime Minister of Britain, helped raise money for the rescue plan.  Private citizens and organizations had to pay for each child’s care, education, and for the journey as well to guarantee.  The first Kindertransport began on December 1, 1938, carried 200 Jewish children to Harwich, Great Briatin.  Most of the transports left by trains from Berlin and other mojor cities.  Children from small villages or towns traveled to meet the transportation.  When the trains crossed the Dutch and the Belgian borders, the children continued to travel by ships to England.  These Jewish children left their homes with no parents.  There were few babies carried by children during the journey.  Some adults (Jews, Christians, and others) volunteered to help supervise the Jewish children during transportation.  Arriving in the United Kingdom, each with bags of clothing, Jewish children were sent to their foster families, hostels, group homes, or to a farm place.  The rescue plan went on for about nine months when war broke out.  The last Kindertransport left Germany to Britain on September 1, 1939, when World War II was introduced.