Kindertransport: Jewish Children Rescued From Nazi Europe After Kristallnacht 1938, Sent To Britain

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Sun Aug 1, 2021, 10:12 PM - Edit history (3)

- Behind Operation Kindertransport; Sir Nicholas Winton, CNN, May 31, 2013. 104 year-old Nicholas Winton takes CNN behind the rescue mission that saved 669 children from Nazi-occupied Europe. 'Sir Nicholas Winton Hero, Dies Aged 106' BBC News, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-33350880
______

- Kindertransport: A Journey to Life (2012), BBC News. 'Newsnight' meets some of the children who came to Britain on the Kindertransport scheme, over 75 years ago. The Kindertransport (Children’s Transport) was a unique humanitarian rescue programme which ran between Nov. 1938 and Sept. 1939.

Approximately 10,000 children, the majority of whom were Jewish, were sent from their homes and families in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Great Britain.

This film, produced by Maria Polachowska, contains one of the last interviews with *Sir Nicholas Winton, who for nine months in 1939 singlehandedly rescued 669 children from Czechoslovakia, bringing them to the UK and thereby sparing them from the horrors of the Holocaust.
- Sir Nicholas Winton, wiki, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Winton



- Children with the 1st kindertransport arrive in Essex, England, Dec. 2, 1938.

(Wiki) The Kindertransport (German for 'children's transport') was an organised rescue effort that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and 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. Importantly the British government waived all those visa immigration requirements which were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government put no number limit on the programme – it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, at which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the United Kingdom..
- Policy: On 15 November 1938, 5 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. Among other measures, they requested that the British government permit the temporary admission of unaccompanied Jewish children, without their parents. The British Cabinet debated the issue the next day and subsequently prepared a bill to present to Parliament...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindertransport
_______



- Ruined Jewish synagogue in Munich, Germany after Kristallnacht, Nov. 9-10, 1938.

(Wiki) Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary forces along with civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 Nov. 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht ('Crystal Night') comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings & synagogues were smashed. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-yr-old German-born, Polish Jew living in Paris. Jewish homes, hospitals & schools were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria & the Sudetenland. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, & 30,000 Jewish men were arrested & incarcerated in concentration camps...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht



- Arrival of Jewish refugee children transport, port of London, February, 1939.

[applegrove]

1. A beloved correspondent from cbc news was saved. So too the mother

of a friend of my sister. Winton got the recognition he deserved at the end if his life though I think he was someone comfortable in not sharing or getting accolades. He did what he did for the kids and knowing himself that he saved so many was reward enough.

[appalachiablue]

2. That's wonderful, I didn't know about Sir

Winton until several years ago, a great person and humanitarian.

[70sEraVet]

3. That one simple sentence that speaks so eloquently of the guilt of those countries

that were slow to act. "If other countries had participated, we could have saved many more".

[appalachiablue]

4. Says it all, what true humanitarian he was.

Noted in the material above, Winton was on his way to a skiing trip in 1938 when a friend persuaded him to intervene and help children enduring Nazi terror in Czechoslovakia. He was 29 years old.