To mark the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport, the Jewish Museum in Camden is hosting two small but moving exhibitions.
The Kindertransport
‘Kinder’ is simply the German word for ‘children’, so the Kindertransport was the name given to the scheme whereby, in 1938-39, the British government allowed 10,000 Jewish and other ‘non-Aryan’ children from occupied Europe to come to Britain.
Earlier in the 1930s Britain had had a tough immigration policy, but that changed after the notorious Krystallnacht of November 1938, but the Kindertransport scheme was still very restrictive. Jewish lobbies brought pressure on the government to allow Jews up to the age of 17 to come to Britain without their parents, and on condition they would not cost the taxpayer.
Main room
Around the wall of the main exhibition room are photos of half a dozen grown-up Kindertransport children, now in their 80s or 90s. Photos of Ann, Bea, Bernd, Bob, Elsa and Ruth are accompanied by labels, replicas of the kind of labels which were attached to them when they arrived in Britain all those years ago.
Installation view of Remembering the Kindertransport at the Jewish Museum
The children escaped Nazi persecution, but they went through painful separations from their family, most of whom they never saw again. The parents had to find a British sponsor to cover the costs of hosting their child. In many cases this was done by British Jewish and non-Jewish charities under the lead of the Children’s Refugee Movement.
Not only teenagers, but toddlers and even babies were sent over. Often parents learned that their child had a place only days before the boat departed, leading to rushed and incomplete farewells. Most of the Kinder travelled by train through Holland, then by ferry to Harwich, before being taken on to London and greeted by the charity workers who then allotted them their placement.
Some children came to stay with relatives, but most lived with host families, or in children’s homes or hostels. The treatment of the Kinder varied from loving and nurturing through to surprisingly rough physical and economic exploitation. Some hosts and homes made no bones about the fact that the Kinder were going to have to work to earn their keep.
In 1940, when the Germans overran France and threatened to invade Britain, many of the Kinder found themselves evacuated yet again, this time to the countryside. And about 1,000 of the Kinder over the age of 18 were briefly interned as ‘enemy aliens’. Can you imagine the trauma!
On four big video screens are extensive interviews with Ann, Bea, Bernd, Bob, Elsa and Ruth , describing the pain of separation from family members, and the difficulty of fitting into an entirely new environment, with its new language and customs.
The films focus on the themes of ‘Life Before’, ‘Goodbyes’ and ‘New beginnings’. There are also a few display cases showing items like a hairbrush, a German-English dictionary, a Passover haggadah – the flotsam and jetsam of a terrible time.
Installation view of Remembering the Kindertransport at the Jewish Museum
On my visit the place was packed out with a school trip, working through one of those schoolkids’ worksheets which asks them to find facts and figures and ideas and issues among the various displays. That must surely be the focus of the exhibition – passing on history to the young generation. And above all the key message: Never again. Never again that kind of racism, intolerance and stupidity.
Still in Our Hands: Kinder Life Portraits
Up a few stairs, in the museum’s café, is a separate but related photographic exhibition. It consists of archival photographs and portraits by Dr Bea Lewkowicz of former Kindertransportees who were interviewed by the AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive.
The portraits in this little display show the connection between then and now, in each portrait the modern adult holding a back and white image of themselves as a child.
Some of the Kindertransport children, as adults
The 10,000 Kinder who came to Great Britain found themselves in the hands of a number of different agencies, governments, voluntary organisations, foster families and individual sponsors. In the words of one of interviewee, the Kinder were ‘thrown around by the tides of history’. Yet many not only survived, but thrived, going on to build extremely successful lives in their host country.
A small but thought-provoking exhibition in another time of mass flight and refugees.
A Kindertransport survivor remembers…
Related links
- Remembering the Kindertransport: 80 Years On continues at the Jewish Museum until 10 February 2019
- Refugee Voices: The Testimony Archive of the Association of Jewish Refugees
- Roman Vishniac Rediscovered at the Jewish Museum
Reviews of anti-Semitism and Holocaust literature
- Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel (1926)
- If This Is A Man by Primo Levi (1947)
- This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentleman by Tadeusz Borowski (1948)
- The Truce by Primo Levi (1963)
- The Periodic Table by Primo Levi (1975)
- If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi (1982)
- The Drowned and The Saved by Primo Levi (1986)
- Moments of Reprieve by Primo Levi (1986)
- Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder (2010)
- An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris (a novelisation of the Dreyfus Case) (2013)
Books & Boots 