Kindertransport (NHB Modern Plays)

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Also available: Diane Samuels' Kindertransport: The author's guide to the play, invaluable for anyone studying, teaching or performing the play.

The work of the BCRC in Czechoslovakia was little noted until 1988 when the refugee children held a reunion. By that time most of the people who had worked in the kindertransport in Czechoslovakia had died and Winton became the living symbol of British help to refugees fleeing the Nazis, especially Jewish refugees, before the Second World War. [51] Wilfrid Israel [ edit ]

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Many wrote letters to the Red Cross and other organisations to try to find out what had happened to their families. For some, these answers would take years to come. Some Kinder were later reunited with their parents. In September 2022 a bronze memorial entitled Safe Haven was unveiled on Harwich Quay by Dame Stephanie Shirley, a former Kindertransport child. [43] The work by artist Ian Wolter is a life-size, bronze sculpture of five Kindertransport refugees descending a ship’s gangplank. Each child is portrayed with a different emotion representing the storm of emotions they must have felt at the end of their journey by train and then ship. The figures are also engraved with quotes of four of the refugees describing their first experience of the UK. The memorial is within sight of the landing place at Parkeston Quay of thousands of Kindertransport children. Alan Gill, Interrupted Journeys: Young Refugees from Hitler’s Reich (Simon & Schuster: Sydney, 2004) Why do we tend to mainly focus on the transports to Britain rather than other transports to other countries? Sisterland (2004), a young adult novel by Linda Newbery, concerns a Kindertransport child, Sarah Reubens, who is now a grandmother; sixteen-year-old Hilly uncovers the secret her grandmother has kept hidden for years. This novel was shortlisted for the 2003 Carnegie Medal. [73]

An immediate strong indication of Eva’s identity, when she first arrives in England at the beginning of Act One, Scene Two, is her German language. The language is noticed when an English officer speaks to Eva. Despite the officer speaking to her in English, she replies in German, she does this because she barely understands English. “I’m sorry, love. I can’t understand a …show more content… News Weather followed by The Hostel – BBC One London – 5 July 1990 – BBC Genome". The Radio Times (3472): 54. 28 June 1990 . Retrieved 10 October 2018. Schoolteachers and schoolchildren preserve the memory, for instance through the creation of art works. The Kindertransport carried Jewish children between the ages of 5 and 17 to Britain, where they could remain in safety until they could return to their families. The children travelled by boat and train, and arrived at Liverpool Street Station in London. They came from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Nicholas Winton, the Schindler of Britain". www.auschwitz.dk. Louis Bülow. 2008. Archived from the original on 7 February 2014 . Retrieved 3 September 2009.

In the course of the war, which began in September 1939, the Kinder became double refugees when they were evacuated to the countryside to escape from the bombings. Bramsted, Eric. "A tribute to Bertha Bracey". Quakers in Britain. Archived from the original on 3 February 2014 . Retrieved 2 February 2014. a b "600 Child Refugees Taken From Vienna; 100 Jewish Youngsters Going to Netherlands, 500 to England". The New York Times. 6 December 1938. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 29 March 2019.

Today, many children of the Kindertransport living as adults in the UK have spoken and written about their experiences so that people can learn what it is like to be a child refugee. Brand, Gisele. Comes the Dark. Verand Press, (2003). ISBN 1-876454-09-1. Published in Australia. A fictional account of the author's family life up to the beginning of the war, her experiences on the kinder-transport and life beyond. These children are collectively called the Kinder or individually they are known as a “Kindertransportee”. The rescued children came from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. The Second World War and its horrific event of the Holocaust primarily operated on the Jewish identity. They were considered an impure race and thus were brutally tortured and killed by the Nazis. They discriminated against their own nation i.e. Germany and turned into refugees. While Evelyn rips off her past identity through documentation and baptism, she is unable to escape it in her memories as an intangible liability.a b "Kindertransport, Jewish children leave Prague – Collections Search – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". collections.ushmm.org . Retrieved 29 March 2019. Kindertransport and KTA History: Kaddish in London". The Kindertransport Association. Archived from the original on 9 May 2016 . Retrieved 2 February 2014. Frances Williams , The Forgotten Kindertransports: The Scottish Experience (Bloomsbury: London, 2014) The Kindertransport (German for "children's transport") was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place in 1938–1939 during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. The programme was supported, publicised, and encouraged by the British government, which waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. [1] [2] The British government placed no numerical limit on the programme; it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, by which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country.

IMAGERY – “The whitewash has been stripped away and underneath is pure filth” – Evelyn compares her identity Once the war had ended in 1945, the families of most of the Kindertransport refugees had been killed, and so the children had no one to return to. Some, whose families had escaped, were able to join them in other countries, but many remained in Britain. EVA SCHLESINGER – She is the younger self of Evelyn who is nine years old at the beginning of the play and is seventeen when the play ends. She is sent away by her parents to England from Germany during the Nazi rule. Her young mind finds it unreasonable to bear separation from her loved ones with the web of uncertainty waiting for her at the other end. Gradually, she loses hope of her parent’s return and settles into the English family and customs and even changes her name to Evelyn to sound like one of them.

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Bob and Ann Kirk: the couple were both Kindertransport children and married in 1950. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Guardian Bob Kirk, 93, and Ann Kirk, 90: ‘The parents who allowed their children to go showed tremendous courage’ The British national narrative of the Kindertransport suggests that Britain stood alone in rescuing the Kinder. It suggests that the nation was immediately welcoming to the new arrivals. However, although the efforts of the British government and the British people were remarkable, life was not easy for the Kinder in Britain, some of whom were even interned. Since it was first staged by the Soho Theatre Company in London in 1993, Diane Samuels’ Kindertransport has enjoyed huge success around the world, has been revived numerous times, and is widely studied in schools and colleges. On 15 November 1938, five days after the devastation of Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass", in Germany and Austria, a delegation of British, Jewish, and Quaker leaders appealed, in person, to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Neville Chamberlain. [7] Among other measures, they requested that the British government permit the temporary admission of unaccompanied Jewish children, without their parents. The End Of Everything Ever". New International Encounter. Archived from the original on 21 May 2014 . Retrieved 20 May 2014.