The Kinder Transport

The Kinder Transport

By Jill Deutsch

During World War II, Jewish children were in danger. There was a rescue mission called the Kinder Transport to relocate the Jewish children to other countries. In late 1938, the Nazis ransomed Jewish children for large sums of money. The British Committee for the Jews of Germany and Movement for the Care of Children persuaded the British government to allow Jewish children seventeen years old or younger into England. Private citizens and organizations paid for each child out of their own pockets. No parents or guardians were allowed to leave Germany with their child.

The first transport of Jewish children arrived in England on December 2^nd, 1938. These children had just four days to pack before they left behind their home, family and friends. At the train stations, the children had numbers around their necks and on their suitcases. Most of the children left for England by train and boat, but some flew by airplane. The Nazis stopped the trains after the children left the train station to check the suitcases for valuables. To cross the English Channel, the children had to go on boats.

When the children arrived in England, new guardians arrived to pick up the children. There were kids who didn’t already have a guardian, and those children were sent to temporary housing on old campgrounds. There, the children were kept busy and ate English food they had never heard of. On Sundays, people would come to see if they wanted to adopt a child. The older the child was, the harder it was to be adopted. Most children who were adopted were treated very well, but some were treated as servants. Some children tried exceptionally hard to get their parents out of Germany also, but very few succeeded.

The last train full of German Jews arrived in England in September 1939. The last Kinder Transport took place on May 14^th, 1940, arriving in England from the Netherlands. An estimated nine to ten thousand Jewish children, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, were saved by the Kinder Transport.

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