‘The Kindertransport’
With the 90th anniversary of the Kindertransport beginning to come into view we were privileged to have a conversation with Dr Amy Williams, one of the leading scholars in the field, and newly appointed Kindertransport Scholar in Residence at the Association of Jewish Refugees. The discussion provided a fascinating insight into how scholarship can help teachers complicate and problematise the Kindertransport to more accurately reflect the true nature of the event.
The term ‘kindertransport’ meant different things to different people at different times
One fundamental, fascinating insight that Dr Williams provided shed light on the term ‘kindertransport’. National memory remembers the term, despite it not being used at the time, as the moment from 1938-40 when Britain alone rescued 10,000 Jewish children from the clutches of Nazism. The Kindertransport, along with the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in 1945, is a foundational memory of how Britain responded to the Holocaust. However, as Dr Williams, told us the term Kindertransport was actually first used in 1934 to refer to a small group of children who left Germany and passed through Britain en route to New York. Then between 1935-37 a group of children from Bialystok travelled in two groups to New Zealand, largely on the initiative of Annie and Max Deckston.
In same period as that which witnessed what we have remembered as the Kindertransport, children were also leaving Nazi-controlled territory and going to France, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and elsewhere. Britain was not alone in helping Jewish children. Later, between 1941-43 many children who had fled to Belgium, France and so on had to flee a second time as the Nazis seized control of much of western Europe.
Chillingly, Dr Williams explained, the term ‘kindertransport’ was also used by perpetrators. After 1942 Eichmann and others described the deportation of Jewish children from countries like Holland and France to camps in the east as ‘kindertransport’.
So, as Dr Williams related to us, the term kindertransport was constantly evolving, holding different meanings in different contexts…and not just the one that has entered common parlance in Britain in recent decades. Memories of the Kindertransport are local, national, international and transnational…and that is something that I will seek to incorporate in my teaching of it in the next academic year.
Experiences of the kindertransport were varied
Without a doubt experience of the Kindertransport (within the context of the kinder who came to Britain) were overwhelmingly positive. The ‘jam sandwiches and smiling policemen’ memory is one commonly held and tallies with much of the evidence. The vast majority of kinder had positive experiences of foster families who took them in and cared for them, helping to create future lives that were happy and meaningful and in some cases extraordinary. Nevertheless, as Dr Williams explained, it is important not to ignore the fact that this perception wasn’t universally the case. For much of the last few decades the trauma, sense of loss and dislocation, the fracturing of identity and, in some cases, the abuse suffered by the children who came to Britain was downplayed. The self-congratulatory narrative that was the norm had little room for these inconvenient truths.
Looking ahead to the 90th anniversary of the Kindertransport
Lastly, Dr Williams looked ahead to the 90th anniversary of the Kindertransport as remembered in Britain. As the recently appointed Association of Jewish Refugees Scholar in Residence, she will be spearheading academic efforts to raise awareness of the anniversary. Her recent discovery and examination of ‘lost’ lists of kinder journeys through Holland provide opportunities to understand more about the experiences of the children who came to Britain. In addition, Dr Williams is anxious that the commemorations include input from schools around the country who might have researched the lives of children who came to their local area.
