Robyn: 0:00

There was a long moment of silence in which a decision had to be made about the life of a human being. He said to me, Sir, could you guarantee that this was a mistake by the German police? I said, Definitely. Now, he knew that I was lying, and I knew that he knew that I was lying. But he was also overcome by seeing this boy, this unhappy, lost soul, and he knew that if he didn't admit him to the United Kingdom, something terrible might happen to him.

Thad: 0:42

Welcome to Messy History. Today, the Kinder Transport when Britain came to the rescue. So Robin, what is the kind? Other than it it sounds like kindergarten. What's going on there?

Robyn: 1:03

Well, so the kind was set up by um Britain. Actually, some Quakers, Christians, and Jews came together to talk to Neville Chamberlain and come up with a plan to help the Jews after Kristallnacht. Kristallnacht, um, it's translated as the night of the broken glass. It happened on November 8th, 1938. And um it was the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, which was when Hitler went and um interrupted a town hall meeting and what eventually ended him in jail where he wrote Mein Kampf.

Thad: 1:48

Wait, wait, wait. All right. So Hitler did a bad thing, went to jail, wrote Mein Kampf, and to celebrate it years later, they go out drinking and partying till late at night. Okay, I get that. So what made this night different? Like, why is it called the night of broken glass?

Robyn: 2:08

Well, so that night, Ernst von Rath, um, a dip a German diplomat, uh, was in France and was shot by a Polish Jew. And that gave the Nazis the reason to up their um campaign against the Jews. Before 1938, they'd already been banned from the press and professional jobs, and the kids weren't allowed to go to Christian schools or any kind of school other than just a Jewish school. Um they um there the Nuremberg laws in 1935 put even more restrictions on them. Um, and many thought that things wouldn't get worse.

Thad: 2:58

So Germany was just making life rough for the Jews, but basically it sounds like they were just kind of excluding them from normal social life.

Robyn: 3:08

At this point, there were already camps set up, but um what we call work camps, which is where they would send political rivals, people they disagreed with, and yes, Jews who violated these laws, which there were so many laws in the first few years that it was really easy to not realize that they were there and violate them.

Thad: 3:32

Gotcha. So you could just get in trouble for all kinds of things.

Robyn: 3:36

Pretty much.

Thad: 3:36

If you were Jewish.

Robyn: 3:37

Yes.

Thad: 3:38

I gotcha. I gotcha. Okay, so so tell me about Kristallnacht.

Robyn: 3:44

Okay. So that night, as a bunch of people were out partying, uh, Nazis celebrating Hitler's failure, a German diplomat was shot in France, Ernst Von Rath, by a Polish Jew. So the Nazis were given an opportunity to up the Entente against the Jewish population by saying they attacked a German, the Jewish community at large is to blame. So a bunch of guys who were drunk, and if you read the or had been partying for most of the night, um, if you read the transcripts and listen to interviews from people that were there and lived through it, they'll say it was only a small segment of the Nazis that most people, even in the party, did not know it was going to happen. Um and so what happened was uh, well, I just I want to read you what Hugo Moses, a man who was a Jew who lived in Germany at the time, had to say about Kristallnacht and what happened to his family.

Thad: 5:02

All right.

Robyn: 5:02

On the evening of 9th of November 1938, the SA brown shirts and the SS black shirts, those were Hitler's police force, not the German police force, but the National Socialists, met in bars to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the day of the failed pooch in Munich. Around 11 o'clock in the evening, I came home from a Jewish aid organization meeting, and I can testify that most of the German people, who a day later the government said were responsible for what happened that night, lay peacefully in bed that evening. Everywhere lights had been put out, and nothing suggested that in the following hours such terrible events would take place. Even the uninformed party members were not in on the plan. The order to destroy Jewish property came shortly before they moved from bars to the Jewish houses. I have this information from a brother of an SS man who took an active part in the pogroms. The pogroms were uh pogroms, were campaigns against Jewish people that have been in place for history. There were horrific ones in Russia. Um, and and so this was happening in Germany at the time.

Thad: 6:23

Right.

Robyn: 6:23

At 3 a.m. sharp, someone insistently rang the door at my apartment and I went to the window and saw that the street lights had been turned off. Nonetheless, I could make out a transport vehicle of which emerged about 20 uh uniformed men. I recognized only one of them, a man who served as the leader. The rest came from other places. In the meantime, about ten uniformed men had invaded my house. I heard my wife cry, What do you want with my children? You'll touch the children over my dead body. Then I heard the crashing of overturned furniture, the breaking of glass, and the trampling of heavy boots. Weeks later I was still waking from a restless sleep, hearing the crashing, hammering, and striking. We will never forget that night. After about half an hour, which seemed to me an eternity, the brutish drunks left our apartment, shouting and bellowing. The leader blew a whistle, and, as his subordinate stumbled past him, fired his revolv revolver close to my head, two shots into the ceiling. I thought my eardrums had burst, but I stood there like a wall. A few hours later I showed a police officer the two bullet holes. The last ASA man who left the building hit me on the head so hard with the walking stick he had used to destroy my pictures that a fortnight later the swelling was still perceptible. As he went out he shouted at me, There you are, you Jewish pig, have fun. My poor wife and the children, trembling with fear, sat weeping on the floor. We no longer had chairs or beds. Luckily, the burning stove was undamaged. Otherwise our house would have gone up in flames, as did many others. Towards dawn, a police officer appeared in order to determine whether there was any visible damage from the outside, such as a broken window glass or furniture thrown into the street. Shaking his head, he said to us, as I showed him the bullet holes from the preceding night, it's a disgrace to see all this. It wouldn't have happened if we hadn't had to stay in our barracks. As he left, the officer said, I hope it's the last time this will happen to you. The next evening, people were afraid that the same thing might happen again. But on that night, the police continually patrolled the streets, especially in the area where there were Jewish homes. A police officer who was a friend of mine later told me, on the second night, every policeman carried two revolvers. It's too bad that the gang didn't come back. Two hours later, another police officer appeared and told me exactly this. I'm sorry I have to arrest you. I said to him, I've never broken the law. Tell me why you are arresting me. The officer. I've been ordered to arrest all Jewish men. Don't make it so hard for me. Just follow me. My wife accompanied me to the police station. In front of the door to my house, the officer said to us, Please go on ahead. I will follow you at a distance. We don't need to make a spectacle of this. At the police station, the officers were almost all nice to us. Only one officer told my wife, Go home. You may see your husband again after a few years of forced labor in the concentration camp, if he's still alive. Another officer who had been at school with me said to his comrade, Man, don't talk such nonsense. To my wife, he said, Just go home now. You'll soon have your husband back. A few hours later, my little boy came to see me again. The experiences of that terrible night and my arrest were too much for the little soul, and he kept weeping and looking at me as if I were about to be shot. The police officer, I knew well, took the child by the hand and said to me, I'll take the child to my office until you are taken away. If the boy saw that, he'd never forget it for the rest of his life. A last kiss, a last look. When and where will I see my wife, my children, and my seventy-five-year-old mother again? What do they want now from us poor, beleaguered, tormented people? End quote.

Thad: 10:56

So it it sounds like most of the police officers officers were pretty normal, nice people.

Robyn: 11:07

Well, they were. Um the National Socialists came in and they had their own hierarchy, um, the black shirts and the brown shirts, which interestingly, um, they actually Hitler wanted them to be black shirts, like Mussolini's fast fascist Italy, but there wasn't enough black dye. So they ended up being the brown shirts, in case you ever wondered why. That's that's why. And uh and so he had the brown shirts, which were called the brown shirts, because there wasn't enough black dye in Germany to dye them same color as Mussolini's fascist uh people in Italy at the time.

Thad: 11:49

Gotcha. Okay. So so you had Hitler who was at the top of of the the Nazis, and then you had the Nazis, and then you had the the SA and the SS, and these were the like the secret police that worked for Hitler, or who were they?

Robyn: 12:08

Somewhat. Um the Gestapo uh is what people often used to refer to, the brutes that were referred to that um Hugo Moses refer referred to. Um but it was kind of like they had their own separate force that would go in. Um and they already the police officers were all the same that had been there before the Third Reich, and well, most of them, and so they knew everyone, they were friends with the community, and it was Hitler's force that came in. Now, Hitler's force was made up in part of people who just didn't have a job from Weimar Germany, and the Nazis said, Hey, we'll give you a gun and clothes and something to do with your time. You can march around and occasionally shoot people. And since there weren't many jobs in Weimar Germany, there was massive um inflation caused by different things. Um, both in 19 well in 29, it was caused by worldwide events like the US stock market.

Thad: 13:17

The Great Depression.

Robyn: 13:18

Um, well, yes, but it was really bad in Germany in 1924 as well.

Thad: 13:23

Gotcha.

Robyn: 13:24

Um, but so things were not good. And so it was jobs people could have, and so they were separate from everyone else, really, from the police officers.

Thad: 13:35

Gotcha.

Robyn: 13:36

Um, it's kind of like when he came to power, he let judges stay in place for the most part. I mean, as long as you weren't Jewish or friends with Jews, it was fine. Um, he just put in place a bunch of his people that he wanted to be judges and he wanted to have in the courts on top of that.

Thad: 13:57

So you had it sounds like normal German society, and then the Nazis just kind of overlaid their own people on top and gave them a little bit more power to do what they wanted to do.

Robyn: 14:10

Yes, and infiltrated them some into society, like with schools, of course, the Jewish teachers were taken away. I've read accounts where they came into the classroom and took teachers um while the kids were there and saw their teachers taken away. And then in a few instances I've read the teachers came back and they were shaving the men and had obviously been at work camps or concentration camps.

Thad: 14:40

Okay. So things were getting worse in in Nazi Germany.

Robyn: 14:44

Yes, but no one no one thought that anything like this would happen. They they didn't have people going to ghettos yet. Hitler still wanted like everyone, the Jewish people and those he didn't like, you know, homosexuals, um, gypsies, Eastern Europeans, out of Germany. Um and he was trying to get them out, but almost all other countries had closed their borders.

Thad: 15:13

So so Germany was trying to get rid of the Jews. Uh some of them had had left, a bunch of them couldn't leave because everyone just there was just too many of them to get out.

Robyn: 15:26

The US closed their doors and the surrounding countries, except notably Sweden, um, and because there were immigration quotas around the world. You know, and they they varied. South America let more people in than most. Um, the United States did let in the maximum amount. We will talk later about some examples of when they did not, but which I've read uh people's uh oral histories that were on the St. Louis and were there around the time, even talking to people from the harbor where they were and were turned away from the U.S. We'll talk about that in another episode. But yeah, they had in Shanghai, China, about 20,000 were able to go there. It was one of the last places people were able to go.

Thad: 16:14

So so at this point, the Jew the Jews that could get out had gotten out. Um, and then Kristallmacht happened.

Robyn: 16:23

Um and and I just want to like reiterate that it was really bad across Germany. The the Jewish businesses, a lot of them were just destroyed. Um some just leveled, couldn't be opened again. But there were examples of like everyday people really weren't anti-Semitic. If you look at the Germans as a whole, um there was one man who said that after Kristalnacht, they the Nazis attacked this Jewish store that um sold tobacco. And uh and that after Kristal knocked they had the um soldiers out front, but people who hadn't smoked in their entire life still didn't smoke and weren't going to smoke, would go in and buy stuff from the store just to show that they supported the Jews.

Thad: 17:17

So th the Germans hating Jews wasn't a universal thing. It was a a fraction of them, a subset of Germany was against the Jews. But that that the set that was against them, the Nazis, were enough to create what ultimately became the Holocaust.

Robyn: 17:38

There was a set large enough. Well, I mean, Hitler, in a long, complicated, convoluted course of events, um, came to power with only a third of the vote. Um so it was never just overwhelming. It among historians, even when I was in grad school, it was very debatable. Uh the book, Hitler's Willing Willing Executioners, came out basically condemning you know all the Germans as bystanders and being there um while it happened and not doing anything. So it's debatable. I won't get into that now. You can I could I could argue either way.

Thad: 18:16

Right. So, okay, so we had Kristallat, and then Britain decided the uh some guys in Britain decided that this was the time to do something or anything. Um and this was the beginning of the kind of transform.

Robyn: 18:31

Yes. So these these men got together and went to Neville Chamberlain. And Neville Chamberlain would be prime minister of um and great of Great Britain and actually had sway with Parliament and would help them be able to pass legislation to allow the initial number was anything. They wanted to get as many kids out of Germany as they could because like the parents were no longer allowed to leave. But they figured if they could get people to sponsor the children or a place for the kids to go, that they would be able to at least save those children. Um and eventually they were able to save about 10,000, nine, about 9,000 or so were Jewish. Some went to Sweden and a few other countries, but the vast majority, almost all of them, went to Britain.

Thad: 19:26

So how did they figure out who could go? How did this work?

Robyn: 19:31

Okay. Well, they met and in Parliament, like they said, well, we don't really want to pass major legislation that everyone knows about, but we're gonna go ahead and do this. Um they put ads over the radio, um, the BBC for families to come sponsor children. And the first night, um, the first set they ran, like 500 families signed up. Um and the requirements would be that you apply through the federal representation of Jews in Germany and in Vienna, the Jewish community organization. So when they were taking children, they could be from any place in the Nazi-occupied territories. So at that time, you know, you had Austria, the Austrian area where they could go because Germans were already expanding out into Eastern Europe. And eventually they would add the Czech Republic to that area. And it was so it wasn't just Germany. And so you would apply to the different organizations near you, and the priorities were kids who were orphaned, and like one of the first um places destroyed was an orphanage. So they took those 200 children, people whose parents were in concentration camps, teenagers and oh, that's right.

Thad: 21:00

So a lot of men and I guess women were all were being sent away to concentration camps, but not the kids yet. So you had a bunch of kids that really may not have had anybody.

Robyn: 21:11

And that and there were kids in concentration camps that were already being sent there. Um one of the transports I read stopped in the town of Dachau. And the girl on the train said that, you know, no one was really sure at the time what was going on. And I think she was nine, and so she was, you know, a child anyway. Um, but she said that everyone that got on in that town had shaved heads and were thin, and they made room for them on the train. That's that's all I know because that's all she said, and she was a child, but we know that they were stopping um in various places to pick up children.

Thad: 21:57

So okay, so who was running this inside Germany?

Robyn: 22:01

Like Well, there was a Jewish organization were helping out. They gathered the the it was kind of like a lottery, you could call it a lottery. Um some people do, but um but it was really you applied, you gave your reasons, you had to give a photo of the child, a certificate of health, and provide any other documentation they needed. Uh they took priority were children who were guaranteed a spot. So there were children who were guaranteed and children who were not guaranteed.

Thad: 22:39

Good.

Robyn: 22:39

The guaranteed ones were people who had relatives there, people who had friends that would take them, and sponsors. And the sponsors sponsored for different reasons. I read some of their accounts. They I mean some of them, uh well, one account had lost a daughter, and so they wanted to get another young one kind of as a repla I mean, because this thing My gosh, replacement daughter?

Thad: 23:05

Okay, well, you know the send us a replacement theory for daughter, it'll be fine.

Robyn: 23:09

But they but they would have a child to raise and they would speak English and be British and uh and so we're gonna talk about that.

Thad: 23:19

So So basically you had to have people in Britain that would ahead of time said, Yes, we'll open our homes and and take in uh a Jewish refugee, essentially.

Robyn: 23:30

Yes, and unguaranteed homes were for kids that were not already taken, but hoped that they would get adopted once they were in Britain.

Thad: 23:40

Okay.

Robyn: 23:41

Um, so it was, you know, the home or no home. And and I read one account of a um boy who would go with his friends, and he was 14 at the time of the Kendra Transports, and he had a younger brother, and he would go with his friends and apply like every day to uh any country they could to go to. Um I remember he talked about Honduras was one, you know, and that it was So these kids were like, yeah, we we just need to get out of here. Yes.

Thad: 24:13

That makes sense. So what what did the logistics look like? How did you get from being a kid in say rural Germany to England? How did they get there?

Robyn: 24:24

Well, there are various ways. One account I read said he rode in an airplane and interestingly, he said he'd been eating a lot of Christmas candy at the time and uh and was super sick because his family celebrated Christmas too, and so it was around that time. But that was all he remembered from the plane ride was being sick from eating a bunch of chocolate. These are kids. I mean, they're kids that are telling their stories now as you know, elderly people. But um, but most went in trains and then boats, and they would have people that would go with them as guides, chaperones basically, and chaperone them to Britain or, like I said, Sweden took some, and they would then drop the kids off there and come back.

Thad: 25:17

So their chaperones weren't their parents or family.

Robyn: 25:21

Oh oh no, oh no. And I can read an account by um a man, Norbert Wolheim, who was he was in law school and then he was Jewish, and in 1933 they no longer allowed Jews to practice law, so he dropped out and and began to help with his pro program where he was in his early 20s, and you know, this is this is what he said, and and then and there's a book called Kinder Transport, and it has the tra it has a version that he said, and he may have said that in a different place, but the version I'm gonna read came from directly from the oral history at the United States Holocaust Museum. And so it's not it's not as clean because people don't speak clean, you know, right? Obviously, I'm not even right now, right?

Thad: 26:16

But uh but so I just wrote this is from his interview.

Robyn: 26:21

Yeah, this is from his interview which yeah, which was seven hours long. He had an amazing life that I'll tell you about in a minute. But he started out like out of law school and and so he was helping with the organization. And he said that the first group that went out, it went out in December. Remember, November was when Kristahl and Laupt happened. It took, you know, a couple it took about a week to get to parliament, and then after that, you know, it takes a while to get it.

Thad: 26:50

That's actually pretty fast rampant before the government, right?

Robyn: 26:53

Yeah, and um and going to Britain, it stopped when war broke out in 1939. And then going to the Netherlands in in Sweden, it stopped in 1940 because that's when um Ger the Germans got to those areas.

Thad: 27:09

So everybody realized that things were getting bad fast and they were just trying to get out as many kids as they could.

Robyn: 27:14

Yes. Okay, so I'm gonna read you um what he said. Uh well, he said that in December the transport uh it did not go well at all, that parents tried to get on the train to give their kids the best window seats, and then had trouble getting off because they were leaving their kids. So they said, so the Nazis who supported the program because they wanted the Jews gone, said that parents were no longer allowed on the platform because it was too traumatic for everyone involved. So he yeah, so he was there the first morning or the first transport after that. And so he said, quote, so when in the morning, when when such a transport was due to leave, as I say, there was um it was a very, very I remember that very distinctly the atmosphere, you know, it was there. There was tension in the air, there was an atmosphere of expectation, there was concern by the parents. There were there were kisses, there were tears of laughter, tears of joy, and the concern and pain, it was a very, very special atmosphere, which was very difficult to describe. And then when the hour of departure came, I ascended a chair, some kind of lectern, and told the parents, ladies and gentlemen, the time has arrived for you to say goodbye, because we are under strict order not to let you accompany your children to the platform. The escorts will take over and baggage handlers had to do their work before to handle the baggage, but you cannot come, and please don't. Please uh please cooperate. Don't make our work more difficult. But this is the time you have to say goodbye. And there you were, you know, last kisses and last hugs and and and but in general I still admire these people, how courageous they were. Nobody broke down, but also there was the expectation that sooner or later they would be reunited again. Very often I asked myself the question later, where did I take the courage to do all that? Where was it from? I was young, I was only 25 in these days, and I thought that this job to be done was in order to help these children. And I also must say that at this time I and nobody else could have thought for a moment that for many, almost 90%. That's 90 NO. This was the last goodbye. Nobody could expect that that let us a year later and a half, after these transports had rolled to the west of freedom, the transports would leave for the east into the slaughterhouses of Hitler, to Auschwitz and Triblanka. I said nobody could foresee it in the worst of your vision. And then I say it's probably also, yes, gave me justification to say to these parents and many I talked to, that the children were safe. I said it at this moment, one of the most important moments in their lives, which still they still remember vividly. I was involved in that. And end quote. And so that was what it was like on the train platforms. I read an account of one dad who just couldn't handle the fact that his child was leaving in a plane at uh in a train and literally ran and yanked the child out of the window of the train in order to save them. But most most went well. I'd really so Nor Mr. Walheim would then some of the time travel to various places where they would drop off the kids and then come back. He would serve as one of the escorts. Um and this is one that that really struck me. He said, quote, on a transport where I was leader, we had a different problem. There were under very, very strict regulations to see that it was only children up to the age of 17 that came into England. We were going through the papers on the ferry, preparing them for immigration authorities, and one of the escorts, a friend of mine from the youth movement, said, Norbert, we have a problem here. He showed me the card. The boy is 18 years old. I looked at the card and it was true. I said, For goodness sake, after all our work in Berlin, how did this happen? Well it was too late to find an answer. The question now was, what are we going to do? I called the escorts together. We went into a huddle. There were two opinions. One was that we should throw ourselves at the mercy of the immigration officers. The other, which I shared, was that we should say there was a mistake made by the German police. We asked the fellow to come down from his bunk. When I saw him, my heart sank, because his head was shaven, which meant he'd been released from a concentration camp. He came from Dachau, and to send him back to Germany would mean death for him. Obviously, he realized that something was wrong and he was shaking like a leaf. So I said, We cannot let it go. We have to get him through. The majority of them joined me and said, All right, we'll try to say it was a mistake of the German police. So we told the fellow that when he was asked, he should say he was born a year later. We landed in Harwich, all dead tired, and went through the usual process. All of a sudden I heard, Mr. Wolheim, kindly see the supervisor. I knew immediately what was going on. The supervisor said, Sure. Sir, there must have been a mistake. I can't admit this gentleman because he's over eighteen, and that's beyond the age specified under the rules and regulations. I pretended to be absolutely flabbergasted. I assured him, that can't be. There must be a mistake. Well who could have made the mistake? It was most probably the German police. But he said, The German police are well known for their accuracy. I told him, sir, not anymore now, because the Nazis have put in many of their own people just to give them work, and it's no longer the same. Let this young fellow tell you for himself. The boy came and stuttered when he was born. The admitting immigration officer looked at him, saw his shaven head, and that he was shaking. He looked at me. He looked at the boy. He looked at the paper. There was a long moment of silence in which a decision had to be made about the life of a human being. He said to me, Sir, could you guarantee that this was a mistake by the German police? I said definitely. Now he knew that I was lying, and I knew that he knew that I was lying. But he was also overcome by seeing this boy, this unhappy, lost soul, and he knew that if he didn't admit him to the United Kingdom, something terrible might happen to him. So he took a stand and stamped admit onto the papers, and he saved that boy's life. End quote. So this is just an example of people are people everywhere. And like just because there's a war going on, just because there's you know immigration quotas, if if you're talking person to person and are able to understand that um, you know, the you have another person's life in your in your literal hand, you can send them to your their death or not, um, then people usually do what's best.

Thad: 36:02

You have to do what's right.

Robyn: 36:03

Yes.

Thad: 36:04

Regardless of what what the quote am I saying.

Robyn: 36:08

Right, because it could always be someone else's mistake. I mean, who really knows?

Thad: 36:13

I mean, you know, those uh sloppy Germans.

Robyn: 36:16

Right.

Thad: 36:16

Known for their no renowned for their sloppiness.

Robyn: 36:20

I know, that's why he asked. He was like, um, yeah, right. Like this actually happened in Berlin.

Thad: 36:27

That's wild. Wow.

Robyn: 36:31

So when the kids got to England, they had various experiences, obviously. The younger ones were most often adopted, and older ones had trouble getting homes. Uh the ones that did not automatically get adopted would go to hostels. The YMCA took in people, and usually they would be there for a few weeks and then move on, but uh sometimes it was longer. You have, you know, various people complaining about what's going on. But, you know, they're kids and their lives were saved. So in the scheme of things, it it's really not that bad. It you know, they complain about the food. Well, if we're all being honest here, English food is pretty rough.

Thad: 37:19

I'm s I'm sorry. I I g I have to I have to be with them there. That the food the food would be a thing.

Robyn: 37:24

I know. My my son is convinced that the reason that the British went out to go get colonies was to find spices so that their food was actually edible.

Thad: 37:35

I think I think that's actually not far off in a lot of cases.

Robyn: 37:38

Right. But I said, you know, they're not using it though. What um but anyways, so yeah, they were often at camps. Uh those that were adopted and weren't the uh the older ones.

Thad: 37:53

But these but these were like brit UK camps. They were they were they were f more fun camps.

Robyn: 37:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. They were more like, well, they were called, I mean, they were summer, summer camps. Okay. Kids usually, you know.

Thad: 38:06

Right.

Robyn: 38:07

Um and and it helped.

Thad: 38:10

They put them where they could.

Robyn: 38:11

They put them where they could, which incidentally helped when, you know, London started getting bombed and they sent over three and a half million kids out into the countryside. Um, and so it helped that they were already there. The older ones worked in ammunitions plants and factories. The boys often went farming. Of course, they were there for several years. So the ones that aged out, they're they would go into nursing or teaching. The a lot of the boys applied to serve in the army, the British Army, because by this time they felt they were British.

Thad: 38:50

Right.

Robyn: 38:50

Many talk about how quickly they changed from German to Brit to well, they call themselves British because they can't be English because they weren't born in England. Right. So they talk about how quickly they um learned the new language and picked up customs.

Thad: 39:07

They adapted.

Robyn: 39:08

They adapted and they adapted quickly. Um, you read examples of the ones who did meet their families. Inga Sagan was one who talked about how when her parents um came back, it had been years since she'd seen them, and that they were entirely different people uh because they were German. She said that she didn't understand anything they said, and they couldn't understand anything she said. And she said, Well, the only thing I could think of to do was go make them a cup of tea. And even at the time I realized that that was probably the most British thing that I could ever do. But it it was interesting, you know, you read the accounts of parents that come back, and you know, there's ones that are just so happy to see their kid alive, even if they don't understand each other or are having trouble and they're like bland food now, so you know. Yeah. I mean Okay, but but German bread isn't exactly French, you know, croissants, but it's close enough. It's it's pretty good.

Thad: 40:14

So but that wasn't the that wasn't the normal experience. The the re reuniting afterwards was not No.

Robyn: 40:21

Um, like I said, uh or like I read from Volheim, about 90% uh never saw their parents again. The vast majority they assume were killed in concentration camps. Some of them would get letters. Someone's mom was like in Bolivia, and I know he was just like, well, at least she's there. So then he found a way to get to Bolivia. And but they were able to find out. So so the Red Cross was able to get tiny messages sent with like, you know, 25 letters that you could use. And like, you know, letters, letters, not like, you know, an actual letter that you send. Right. Okay. And uh letters through a lot of the timing. So kids were able to communicate with their parents that way. And, you know, you read the accounts, which are just so tragic because they're like, Yeah, my parents were sending letters, and then all of a sudden they stopped. Um, and that was the only uh thing that could be the parents just were no longer there. Yeah, one of them went back to her hometown, and one of the neighbors said to her, that you know, this was afterwards, it was in the 50s, said, Well, do you want to know the truth or do you want me to make something up? And she said that you know she wanted to know the truth, and parents had been sent to Threisenstadt, which was one of the several concentration camps and had been killed there.

Thad: 41:52

So if the kind of transport hadn't happened, if these kids had still been living in 10,000 kids had been living in Germany, in the German-controlled territories, uh what just a few months later, would would they have just gone to the concentration camps with their parents?

Robyn: 42:10

Yes.

Thad: 42:12

Okay.

Robyn: 42:13

Um can I can I tell you the story of one of the kids in the kinder transport? Just just as as one of the many, many examples. There's there's hundreds on the the United States Holocaust Museum website, the Washington, D.C. You have to look under Chappelle Center. The collections are not in the main Holocaust Museum, they're in Bowie, Maryland, but they're there. You know, you have to search, but they're they're there. So Rolf Samuel was one that the one I was telling you about that flew in on the airplane and was sick the whole time. He said he arrived with a sign around his neck that said, Ralph Samuel, to be collected by Samuel Epstein, who was his sponsor. He said, I remember I was picked up at the airport by a certain Mr. Epstein, maybe his wife Becky as well. I don't remember that. But they took me back to their house in Southfield, which is close to Wimbledon in London. And the reason why Mr. Epstein picked my name off the list was that his first name was Samuel, and his son's middle name was Ralph. And so the Epstein family were very, very nice to me. And I lived there and played, and I was just as another member of the family. In September 1939, which is the day that war broke out in England, I was evacuated to Guildford, a little town out in the country. And I've since learned that three and a half million British children were sent from their homes to areas where they thought they'd be safe. And we were they were sent as units from the school, and the two kids that he was um staying with were not sent at the same time as him. Um he says he thinks they went to a private school. But when he arrived, he said, quote, when I arrived in the country, uh I spoke German. I did not understand a word of English, not a word. I must have learned it very, very quickly because things were getting very, very bad in Germany. And my mother wrote to Mr. Epstein and asked him if he would hire her as a maid. And so he did that. And I still have that letter, that original letter, in which Sammy Epstein offered my mother a job as a maid. I think for one pound a week, or it might have been even one pound a month, probably a pound a week. So she came over, and that was in March. And at that time I no longer spoke German. I'd become very, very British because I could never be English. In order to be English, you have to be born in England. So the best I could do was be British. And I was very, very British. End quote. He talks about how he had to eat in a different room from his mom, um, who was a servant, and he his dad died in Auschwitz, and he and his mom would receive the letters from his dad, and then eventually um they stopped. When he was evacuated, his mom actually came with him and served as a house mom in with I think there were seven kids, who who later would talk about how she got them through puberty and she was there for them the whole time. And and after the war, she went to work in a baby clinic. But he said, when he's looking back on it, this is Ralph Samuel, he said, quote, and I think the other thing that's very important, and this is what I've begun doing now that I'm retired, is that we have to tell our story. And the way I see our story is that it's the proof that one person can make a difference. Because if it wasn't for Sammy Epstein to say, Yes, I'll look after this kid, I wouldn't be here today. My mother wouldn't be here today. My kids wouldn't be here today. And I think that the story we have to tell is one of the evils of intolerance. The reason for the Holocaust was not that the Jews had done anything wrong, that they were bad. This was strictly intolerance. And it's the story we have to tell, and it's the story that kids today really relate to, and they are still intolerance. And I still feel that one of the things that we must do is to teach that one person can make a difference, and that tolerance is one of the real great virtues. Um, and so now he has retired, he lives in the United States and goes around telling people about his experiences. He interestingly moved to America with an aunt who had escaped to Shanghai with her family during the war. His aunt Hilda. So he talked about, you know, moving in with her and at least she had escaped somewhere interesting.

Thad: 47:11

Wow. That's rough.

Robyn: 47:14

But anyway, but yeah, he said that she uh she had been in Shanghai during the war and then moved to America with her family.

Thad: 47:22

So everybody just kind of went wherever they could to to get away, it sounds like as much as they could. So what so he he wound up in the United States. What was the US's take on the kind of transport?

Robyn: 47:38

Well, it was very complicated in the United States in the 20s and 30s. Um over the years, there'd been several pieces of legislation passed um to make things harder for immigrants to come in. This started in in, I think, 1898 with the Chinese Um Inclusion Act that was racist against the Chinese. And then in 1924, the Johnson Reed Act came out that was also discriminatory, and they were tightening immigration. And each country in relation to the US had a different percentage of people who were allowed to come from that country a year. And and in 1930, I forget which specific year, the Germans, they usually allowed, I think, like 26,000 or so around that number from Germany every year. And that year they got over 300,000 applications to come to America. And they were just like, nah, dies. That's like over 11 years of uh of immigrants that we can take. So that's when they um started sending people away. The U.S. did take like as many immigrants as they could. And I think over the course of the whole the whole Third Reich, if you look at 33 to 45, I think America took in over 200,000. So, you know, it wasn't like we were turning them away just because we were being rude or something, and we didn't care about their plight.

Thad: 49:14

But we had quotas and we only took ah some number.

Robyn: 49:17

Right. So Americans heard about the kinder transport, and there was an act um that was brought up by a Senator Robert F. Wagner and a representative, Edith Rogers, that would allow for 20,000 kids, like the kinder part of the kinder transport, yeah, to come into the United States. Uh they brought it up in 1939. And so the U.S.

Thad: 49:46

wanted the the U.S. has people here, senators, that wanted to join in that effort.

Robyn: 49:50

Yes, absolutely. And Eleanor Roosevelt, who at this point rarely ever said anything about anything, agreed with them, came out and, you know, said she did, which her husband, you know, we don't really know what uh Franklin Roosevelt thought. You know, politics.

Thad: 50:13

Right.

Robyn: 50:13

So he we think he supported in general the principle of the kinder transport, but how are you supposed to tell Congress, hey, or the world, we're gonna let these 20,000 in and the rest of y'all, sorry about your luck.

Thad: 50:29

Right.

Robyn: 50:29

Um, and so the Wagner Act was brought up, uh, led by Robert Wagner and Edith Rogers. And they were trying to get it passed in Congress. It never um got to the floor because there was opposition from mainly Senator Robert Rice Reynolds. The bill was phras it was brought up as welfare for the children. The children needed a better life, and and that's the phrasing they had around it like to bring the children from Germany. That was like basically they need welfare here. This is gonna improve conditions. And yeah.

Thad: 51:13

So I it just sounds like I I don't know, that seems like a tough one where you're like, hey, these kids are gonna die. Can we help them? Nah, I don't really think so.

Robyn: 51:23

You know, interestingly, I was reading, I'm not sure, y'all. I think it was the Baltimore Herald, maybe, but from the 1930s, and someone was like, Yeah, we can't even feed our own people, so why should we feed people? I mean, this is of course not spoken, like this is not, yeah. But like, why should we feed the people over there?

Thad: 51:48

Why would we take care of those Jewish kids when we've got our own kids to feed?

Robyn: 51:52

And um, yeah, and there was an another newspaper, I'm I'm not sure which one, that someone wrote in, well, Jesus Christ would have accepted these people, so we should too. There was a public poll taken, I'm not sure where, I read it on the Holocaust Museum website, that said that like 26% of Americans supported it and and then like 69 or something. I'm not sure. I know it wasn't 6'7 because I would remember that.

Thad: 52:22

Right. No, no, no, no, not 67.

Robyn: 52:25

As a high school teacher, I would remember that. Um, but uh that opposed the bill. So it wasn't like Americans really wanted this bill passed.

Thad: 52:37

That's um that's unfortunate.

Robyn: 52:40

Well, it's it's convoluted. Like I said, you know, immigration, it's people are messy. History's messy.

Thad: 52:48

History's messy.

Robyn: 52:49

That's that's just the way things are.

Thad: 52:52

All right. And uh seems like a good place to leave off for today.

Robyn: 52:57

There is one more thing I'd like to say.

Thad: 52:59

Yeah.

Robyn: 52:59

Um, it's about Norbert Volheim, the one that was helping people in the kinder trade reports. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Him, okay. So after the war, well, in the war, he his family in 1942, he was sent to Auschwitz. He and his wife and three-year-old son, and like his whole family was in Auschwitz. There were like 70 of them. And he was the only one to survive. And he worked for I. G. Farben in a factory while he was at Auschwitz and was able to escape one day on one of the death marches that they had in um 1945. He escaped from Auschwitz and brought a court case later, the first court case to like against Germany for the workers that was slave labor. He uh he wanted them refunded for all that work and was able to get um, I think it was it was thirty million, either Reichmarks or American dollars, I don't know, but to disperse against again around all the people who had worked um for IG Farben during the war.

Thad: 54:10

So you got everybody paid.

Robyn: 54:13

Yes. Wow. But it was back pay. Back pay, right. But still, yeah.

Thad: 54:17

But it lost his entire family in that that ordeal. Yeah. Wow. That's that's messy.

Robyn: 54:26

It's very messy.

Thad: 54:29

All right. Well, if you would like to know any more about this show, get the transcript or the uh copious amounts of bibliography notes, you can visit us at messyhistory.net.

Robyn: 54:44

Or you can um email me at um Robin at Historymom.com because I will be more than happy to talk as much about this as you would like me to, um, because I know that time is limited here.

Thad: 55:00

All right, we will talk to y'all next time.