Oct. 30, 2025

The Kindertransport - When Britain Came to the Rescue

The Kindertransport - When Britain Came to the Rescue
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We discuss the Kindertransport program through which around 10,000 children were saved from Nazi occupied Europe from November 1938 until German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940.  

Image

A picture of one of the tags that children wore around their neck when arriving in Britain, as a way for them to meet with their foster families. This numbered identification tag was worn by Henry Schmelzer when he was a member of a Kindertransport sent from Austria to England in December 1938.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Provenance: Henry Schmelzer
Source Record ID: Collections: 1989.215.2

Errata

Kristallnacht started on November 9th 1938. The Beer Hall Putsch started on November 8th 1923.

Bibliography

“A Bipartisan Move”, Washington Post, 14 Feb. 1939; see also “Clerics Ask US Help for German Child Refugees”, Newport News [Virginia] Daily Press, 10 Jan. 1939. 

Rymph, C. (2020). American child welfare and the Wagner-Rogers Bill of 1939. Jewish Historical Studies, 51(1). https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.jhs.2020v51.019

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.  Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.  Vintage Press, 1997.

Escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport (Encounter: Narrative Nonfiction Stories).  Emma Carlson Berne. Capstone Press. February 2017.

In America 1933-45: Response to the Holocaust, Rescuing the Future

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport. Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer.  Bloomsbruy Publishing PLC. November 2017 

“Introduction to the Holocaust.”  Holocaust Encyclopedia

Jeffery Gurock (Editor). America, American Jews, and the Holocaust: American Jewish History.  Taylor and Francis, 1998.

Judy Bolton- Fasman. “And Then: The U.S.’s Culpability in the Holocaust” 

The Night of Broken Glass: Eyewitness Accounts of Kristallnacht.  Edited by Uta Gerhardt and Thomas Karlauf.  Translated by Robber Simmons and Nick Sommers. Polity Press, 2009.


Interviews from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C. 

RG Number: RG50.614.0038.  Oral History Interview with Norbert Wollheim.  The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust memorial Museum.

RG Number: RG-90.008.0012, Oral History Interview with Ernest Goodman,  The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Museum, Washington D.C. 

RG Number: RG-90.008.0027. Oral History Interview with Ralph Samuel. The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C.

RG Number: RG-90.008.0035.  Oral History Interview with Gita Rossi Zalmons, The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C.

WEBVTT

00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:06.559
There was a long moment of silence in which a decision had to be made about the life of a human being.

00:00:06.559 --> 00:00:13.599
He said to me, Sir, could you guarantee that this was a mistake by the German police?

00:00:13.599 --> 00:00:16.239
I said, Definitely.

00:00:16.239 --> 00:00:23.039
Now, he knew that I was lying, and I knew that he knew that I was lying.

00:00:23.039 --> 00:00:35.759
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.

00:00:42.640 --> 00:00:45.039
Welcome to Messy History.

00:00:45.039 --> 00:00:50.479
Today, the Kinder Transport when Britain came to the rescue.

00:00:50.479 --> 00:00:55.920
So Robin, what is the kind?

00:00:55.920 --> 00:01:00.719
Other than it it sounds like kindergarten.

00:01:00.719 --> 00:01:02.399
What's going on there?

00:01:03.679 --> 00:01:09.359
Well, so the kind was set up by um Britain.

00:01:09.359 --> 00:01:19.599
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.

00:01:19.599 --> 00:01:25.280
Kristallnacht, um, it's translated as the night of the broken glass.

00:01:25.280 --> 00:01:29.439
It happened on November 8th, 1938.

00:01:29.439 --> 00:01:47.760
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.

00:01:48.319 --> 00:01:49.200
Wait, wait, wait.

00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:49.680
All right.

00:01:49.680 --> 00:02:01.280
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.

00:02:01.280 --> 00:02:03.040
Okay, I get that.

00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:05.359
So what made this night different?

00:02:05.359 --> 00:02:08.080
Like, why is it called the night of broken glass?

00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:18.800
Well, so that night, Ernst von Rath, um, a dip a German diplomat, uh, was in France and was shot by a Polish Jew.

00:02:18.800 --> 00:02:27.919
And that gave the Nazis the reason to up their um campaign against the Jews.

00:02:27.919 --> 00:02:44.400
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.

00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:53.840
Um they um there the Nuremberg laws in 1935 put even more restrictions on them.

00:02:53.840 --> 00:02:57.919
Um, and many thought that things wouldn't get worse.

00:02:58.400 --> 00:03:07.360
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.

00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:31.919
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.

00:03:32.319 --> 00:03:32.879
Gotcha.

00:03:32.879 --> 00:03:35.759
So you could just get in trouble for all kinds of things.

00:03:36.080 --> 00:03:36.560
Pretty much.

00:03:36.800 --> 00:03:37.439
If you were Jewish.

00:03:37.680 --> 00:03:37.919
Yes.

00:03:38.159 --> 00:03:38.719
I gotcha.

00:03:38.719 --> 00:03:39.759
I gotcha.

00:03:39.759 --> 00:03:43.759
Okay, so so tell me about Kristallnacht.

00:03:44.800 --> 00:03:45.120
Okay.

00:03:45.120 --> 00:03:58.479
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.

00:03:58.479 --> 00:04:14.800
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.

00:04:14.800 --> 00:04:41.360
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.

00:04:41.360 --> 00:05:01.680
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.

00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:02.480
All right.

00:05:02.720 --> 00:05:25.040
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.

00:05:25.040 --> 00:05:43.279
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.

00:05:43.279 --> 00:05:51.839
Everywhere lights had been put out, and nothing suggested that in the following hours such terrible events would take place.

00:05:51.839 --> 00:05:56.079
Even the uninformed party members were not in on the plan.

00:05:56.079 --> 00:06:02.160
The order to destroy Jewish property came shortly before they moved from bars to the Jewish houses.

00:06:02.160 --> 00:06:08.160
I have this information from a brother of an SS man who took an active part in the pogroms.

00:06:08.160 --> 00:06:16.000
The pogroms were uh pogroms, were campaigns against Jewish people that have been in place for history.

00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:18.160
There were horrific ones in Russia.

00:06:18.160 --> 00:06:22.800
Um, and and so this was happening in Germany at the time.

00:06:23.040 --> 00:06:23.279
Right.

00:06:23.680 --> 00:06:24.879
At 3 a.m.

00:06:24.879 --> 00:06:32.639
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.

00:06:32.639 --> 00:06:39.680
Nonetheless, I could make out a transport vehicle of which emerged about 20 uh uniformed men.

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I recognized only one of them, a man who served as the leader.

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The rest came from other places.

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In the meantime, about ten uniformed men had invaded my house.

00:06:52.560 --> 00:06:56.399
I heard my wife cry, What do you want with my children?

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You'll touch the children over my dead body.

00:06:59.040 --> 00:07:06.079
Then I heard the crashing of overturned furniture, the breaking of glass, and the trampling of heavy boots.

00:07:06.079 --> 00:07:12.720
Weeks later I was still waking from a restless sleep, hearing the crashing, hammering, and striking.

00:07:12.720 --> 00:07:14.720
We will never forget that night.

00:07:14.720 --> 00:07:21.839
After about half an hour, which seemed to me an eternity, the brutish drunks left our apartment, shouting and bellowing.

00:07:21.839 --> 00:07:33.279
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.

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I thought my eardrums had burst, but I stood there like a wall.

00:07:37.519 --> 00:07:41.519
A few hours later I showed a police officer the two bullet holes.

00:07:41.519 --> 00:07:53.199
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.

00:07:53.199 --> 00:07:58.319
As he went out he shouted at me, There you are, you Jewish pig, have fun.

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My poor wife and the children, trembling with fear, sat weeping on the floor.

00:08:03.600 --> 00:08:05.839
We no longer had chairs or beds.

00:08:05.839 --> 00:08:08.639
Luckily, the burning stove was undamaged.

00:08:08.639 --> 00:08:13.199
Otherwise our house would have gone up in flames, as did many others.

00:08:13.199 --> 00:08:25.920
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.

00:08:25.920 --> 00:08:34.480
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.

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It wouldn't have happened if we hadn't had to stay in our barracks.

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As he left, the officer said, I hope it's the last time this will happen to you.

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The next evening, people were afraid that the same thing might happen again.

00:08:48.080 --> 00:08:54.879
But on that night, the police continually patrolled the streets, especially in the area where there were Jewish homes.

00:08:54.879 --> 00:09:02.320
A police officer who was a friend of mine later told me, on the second night, every policeman carried two revolvers.

00:09:02.320 --> 00:09:05.039
It's too bad that the gang didn't come back.

00:09:05.039 --> 00:09:10.559
Two hours later, another police officer appeared and told me exactly this.

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I'm sorry I have to arrest you.

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I said to him, I've never broken the law.

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Tell me why you are arresting me.

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The officer.

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I've been ordered to arrest all Jewish men.

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Don't make it so hard for me.

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Just follow me.

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My wife accompanied me to the police station.

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In front of the door to my house, the officer said to us, Please go on ahead.

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I will follow you at a distance.

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We don't need to make a spectacle of this.

00:09:40.080 --> 00:09:45.679
At the police station, the officers were almost all nice to us.

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Only one officer told my wife, Go home.

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You may see your husband again after a few years of forced labor in the concentration camp, if he's still alive.

00:09:56.240 --> 00:10:04.159
Another officer who had been at school with me said to his comrade, Man, don't talk such nonsense.

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To my wife, he said, Just go home now.

00:10:07.039 --> 00:10:09.039
You'll soon have your husband back.

00:10:09.039 --> 00:10:13.360
A few hours later, my little boy came to see me again.

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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.

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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.

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If the boy saw that, he'd never forget it for the rest of his life.

00:10:37.759 --> 00:10:40.399
A last kiss, a last look.

00:10:40.399 --> 00:10:46.080
When and where will I see my wife, my children, and my seventy-five-year-old mother again?

00:10:46.080 --> 00:10:51.120
What do they want now from us poor, beleaguered, tormented people?

00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:52.559
End quote.

00:10:56.080 --> 00:11:06.080
So it it sounds like most of the police officers officers were pretty normal, nice people.

00:11:07.360 --> 00:11:08.799
Well, they were.

00:11:08.799 --> 00:11:28.399
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.

00:11:28.399 --> 00:11:33.440
So they ended up being the brown shirts, in case you ever wondered why.

00:11:33.440 --> 00:11:34.720
That's that's why.

00:11:34.720 --> 00:11:48.960
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.

00:11:49.840 --> 00:11:50.720
Gotcha.

00:11:50.720 --> 00:11:52.080
Okay.

00:11:52.080 --> 00:12:07.679
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?

00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:08.480
Somewhat.

00:12:08.480 --> 00:12:19.279
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.

00:12:19.279 --> 00:12:25.279
Um but it was kind of like they had their own separate force that would go in.

00:12:25.279 --> 00:12:39.519
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.

00:12:39.519 --> 00:12:57.519
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.

00:12:57.519 --> 00:13:02.080
You can march around and occasionally shoot people.

00:13:02.080 --> 00:13:11.679
And since there weren't many jobs in Weimar Germany, there was massive um inflation caused by different things.

00:13:11.679 --> 00:13:17.360
Um, both in 19 well in 29, it was caused by worldwide events like the US stock market.

00:13:17.679 --> 00:13:18.559
The Great Depression.

00:13:18.799 --> 00:13:23.360
Um, well, yes, but it was really bad in Germany in 1924 as well.

00:13:23.600 --> 00:13:23.919
Gotcha.

00:13:24.240 --> 00:13:27.200
Um, but so things were not good.

00:13:27.200 --> 00:13:35.440
And so it was jobs people could have, and so they were separate from everyone else, really, from the police officers.

00:13:35.679 --> 00:13:36.000
Gotcha.

00:13:36.159 --> 00:13:42.720
Um, it's kind of like when he came to power, he let judges stay in place for the most part.

00:13:42.720 --> 00:13:46.960
I mean, as long as you weren't Jewish or friends with Jews, it was fine.

00:13:46.960 --> 00:13:56.799
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.

00:13:57.360 --> 00:14:09.840
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.

00:14:10.320 --> 00:14:19.360
Yes, and infiltrated them some into society, like with schools, of course, the Jewish teachers were taken away.

00:14:19.360 --> 00:14:29.200
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.

00:14:29.200 --> 00:14:39.679
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.

00:14:40.399 --> 00:14:40.720
Okay.

00:14:40.720 --> 00:14:44.320
So things were getting worse in in Nazi Germany.

00:14:44.720 --> 00:14:50.000
Yes, but no one no one thought that anything like this would happen.

00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:53.120
They they didn't have people going to ghettos yet.

00:14:53.120 --> 00:15:06.159
Hitler still wanted like everyone, the Jewish people and those he didn't like, you know, homosexuals, um, gypsies, Eastern Europeans, out of Germany.

00:15:06.159 --> 00:15:12.960
Um and he was trying to get them out, but almost all other countries had closed their borders.

00:15:13.679 --> 00:15:19.200
So so Germany was trying to get rid of the Jews.

00:15:19.200 --> 00:15:26.159
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.

00:15:26.559 --> 00:15:37.840
The US closed their doors and the surrounding countries, except notably Sweden, um, and because there were immigration quotas around the world.

00:15:37.840 --> 00:15:39.440
You know, and they they varied.

00:15:39.440 --> 00:15:42.159
South America let more people in than most.

00:15:42.159 --> 00:15:45.840
Um, the United States did let in the maximum amount.

00:15:45.840 --> 00:15:56.000
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.

00:15:56.000 --> 00:16:03.120
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.

00:16:03.120 --> 00:16:05.279
We'll talk about that in another episode.

00:16:05.279 --> 00:16:11.279
But yeah, they had in Shanghai, China, about 20,000 were able to go there.

00:16:11.279 --> 00:16:14.000
It was one of the last places people were able to go.

00:16:14.480 --> 00:16:20.240
So so at this point, the Jew the Jews that could get out had gotten out.

00:16:20.240 --> 00:16:23.519
Um, and then Kristallmacht happened.

00:16:23.679 --> 00:16:29.919
Um and and I just want to like reiterate that it was really bad across Germany.

00:16:29.919 --> 00:16:33.840
The the Jewish businesses, a lot of them were just destroyed.

00:16:33.840 --> 00:16:37.360
Um some just leveled, couldn't be opened again.

00:16:37.360 --> 00:16:45.039
But there were examples of like everyday people really weren't anti-Semitic.

00:16:45.039 --> 00:16:59.600
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.

00:16:59.600 --> 00:17:16.480
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.

00:17:17.200 --> 00:17:22.720
So th the Germans hating Jews wasn't a universal thing.

00:17:22.720 --> 00:17:28.720
It was a a fraction of them, a subset of Germany was against the Jews.

00:17:28.720 --> 00:17:37.839
But that that the set that was against them, the Nazis, were enough to create what ultimately became the Holocaust.

00:17:38.559 --> 00:17:40.240
There was a set large enough.

00:17:40.240 --> 00:17:49.839
Well, I mean, Hitler, in a long, complicated, convoluted course of events, um, came to power with only a third of the vote.

00:17:49.839 --> 00:17:52.799
Um so it was never just overwhelming.

00:17:52.799 --> 00:17:58.880
It among historians, even when I was in grad school, it was very debatable.

00:17:58.880 --> 00:18:10.480
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.

00:18:10.480 --> 00:18:12.400
So it's debatable.

00:18:12.400 --> 00:18:13.920
I won't get into that now.

00:18:13.920 --> 00:18:16.480
You can I could I could argue either way.

00:18:16.799 --> 00:18:17.359
Right.

00:18:17.359 --> 00:18:27.759
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.

00:18:27.759 --> 00:18:30.640
Um and this was the beginning of the kind of transform.

00:18:31.039 --> 00:18:31.279
Yes.

00:18:31.279 --> 00:18:37.920
So these these men got together and went to Neville Chamberlain.

00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:54.480
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.

00:18:54.480 --> 00:19:02.400
They wanted to get as many kids out of Germany as they could because like the parents were no longer allowed to leave.

00:19:02.400 --> 00:19:12.559
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.

00:19:12.559 --> 00:19:19.279
Um and eventually they were able to save about 10,000, nine, about 9,000 or so were Jewish.

00:19:19.279 --> 00:19:26.160
Some went to Sweden and a few other countries, but the vast majority, almost all of them, went to Britain.

00:19:26.720 --> 00:19:30.000
So how did they figure out who could go?

00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:31.359
How did this work?

00:19:31.839 --> 00:19:32.160
Okay.

00:19:32.160 --> 00:19:45.759
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.

00:19:45.759 --> 00:19:53.920
Um they put ads over the radio, um, the BBC for families to come sponsor children.

00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:59.440
And the first night, um, the first set they ran, like 500 families signed up.

00:19:59.440 --> 00:20:13.759
Um and the requirements would be that you apply through the federal representation of Jews in Germany and in Vienna, the Jewish community organization.

00:20:13.759 --> 00:20:20.480
So when they were taking children, they could be from any place in the Nazi-occupied territories.

00:20:20.480 --> 00:20:29.200
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.

00:20:29.200 --> 00:20:33.519
And eventually they would add the Czech Republic to that area.

00:20:33.519 --> 00:20:36.400
And it was so it wasn't just Germany.

00:20:36.400 --> 00:20:51.359
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.

00:20:51.359 --> 00:21:00.000
So they took those 200 children, people whose parents were in concentration camps, teenagers and oh, that's right.

00:21:00.240 --> 00:21:07.200
So a lot of men and I guess women were all were being sent away to concentration camps, but not the kids yet.

00:21:07.200 --> 00:21:11.440
So you had a bunch of kids that really may not have had anybody.

00:21:11.920 --> 00:21:17.920
And that and there were kids in concentration camps that were already being sent there.

00:21:17.920 --> 00:21:24.000
Um one of the transports I read stopped in the town of Dachau.

00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:31.200
And the girl on the train said that, you know, no one was really sure at the time what was going on.

00:21:31.200 --> 00:21:36.640
And I think she was nine, and so she was, you know, a child anyway.

00:21:36.640 --> 00:21:46.400
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.

00:21:46.400 --> 00:21:56.480
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.

00:21:57.200 --> 00:22:01.279
So okay, so who was running this inside Germany?

00:22:01.440 --> 00:22:07.680
Like Well, there was a Jewish organization were helping out.

00:22:07.680 --> 00:22:14.799
They gathered the the it was kind of like a lottery, you could call it a lottery.

00:22:14.799 --> 00:22:30.160
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.

00:22:30.160 --> 00:22:34.960
Uh they took priority were children who were guaranteed a spot.

00:22:34.960 --> 00:22:38.880
So there were children who were guaranteed and children who were not guaranteed.

00:22:39.119 --> 00:22:39.359
Good.

00:22:39.599 --> 00:22:46.640
The guaranteed ones were people who had relatives there, people who had friends that would take them, and sponsors.

00:22:46.640 --> 00:22:50.319
And the sponsors sponsored for different reasons.

00:22:50.319 --> 00:22:52.559
I read some of their accounts.

00:22:52.559 --> 00:23:05.279
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?

00:23:05.440 --> 00:23:08.640
Okay, well, you know the send us a replacement theory for daughter, it'll be fine.

00:23:09.039 --> 00:23:19.119
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.

00:23:19.359 --> 00:23:30.400
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.

00:23:30.720 --> 00:23:40.319
Yes, and unguaranteed homes were for kids that were not already taken, but hoped that they would get adopted once they were in Britain.

00:23:40.720 --> 00:23:40.960
Okay.

00:23:41.839 --> 00:23:45.119
Um, so it was, you know, the home or no home.

00:23:45.119 --> 00:24:03.920
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.

00:24:03.920 --> 00:24:11.920
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.

00:24:11.920 --> 00:24:12.559
Yes.

00:24:13.039 --> 00:24:14.000
That makes sense.

00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:16.559
So what what did the logistics look like?

00:24:16.559 --> 00:24:22.880
How did you get from being a kid in say rural Germany to England?

00:24:22.880 --> 00:24:24.160
How did they get there?

00:24:24.720 --> 00:24:27.119
Well, there are various ways.

00:24:27.119 --> 00:24:42.079
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.

00:24:42.079 --> 00:24:46.880
But that was all he remembered from the plane ride was being sick from eating a bunch of chocolate.

00:24:46.880 --> 00:24:47.920
These are kids.

00:24:47.920 --> 00:24:54.000
I mean, they're kids that are telling their stories now as you know, elderly people.

00:24:54.000 --> 00:25:17.039
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.

00:25:17.599 --> 00:25:21.359
So their chaperones weren't their parents or family.

00:25:21.759 --> 00:25:22.960
Oh oh no, oh no.

00:25:22.960 --> 00:26:07.279
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.

00:26:07.279 --> 00:26:14.079
And so it's not it's not as clean because people don't speak clean, you know, right?

00:26:14.079 --> 00:26:16.559
Obviously, I'm not even right now, right?

00:26:16.799 --> 00:26:21.440
But uh but so I just wrote this is from his interview.

00:26:21.680 --> 00:26:27.039
Yeah, this is from his interview which yeah, which was seven hours long.

00:26:27.039 --> 00:26:30.000
He had an amazing life that I'll tell you about in a minute.

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:36.400
But he started out like out of law school and and so he was helping with the organization.

00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:42.079
And he said that the first group that went out, it went out in December.

00:26:42.079 --> 00:26:45.440
Remember, November was when Kristahl and Laupt happened.

00:26:45.440 --> 00:26:50.720
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.

00:26:50.880 --> 00:26:53.519
That's actually pretty fast rampant before the government, right?

00:26:53.759 --> 00:26:59.920
Yeah, and um and going to Britain, it stopped when war broke out in 1939.

00:26:59.920 --> 00:27:08.960
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.

00:27:09.279 --> 00:27:14.480
So everybody realized that things were getting bad fast and they were just trying to get out as many kids as they could.

00:27:14.799 --> 00:27:15.119
Yes.

00:27:15.119 --> 00:27:18.720
Okay, so I'm gonna read you um what he said.

00:27:18.720 --> 00:27:34.960
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.

00:27:34.960 --> 00:27:49.119
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.

00:27:49.119 --> 00:27:55.839
So he yeah, so he was there the first morning or the first transport after that.

00:27:55.839 --> 00:28:16.720
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.

00:28:16.720 --> 00:28:24.720
There was tension in the air, there was an atmosphere of expectation, there was concern by the parents.

00:28:24.720 --> 00:28:38.960
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.

00:28:38.960 --> 00:28:57.599
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.

00:28:57.599 --> 00:29:06.400
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.

00:29:06.400 --> 00:29:08.799
Please uh please cooperate.

00:29:08.799 --> 00:29:10.960
Don't make our work more difficult.

00:29:10.960 --> 00:29:14.079
But this is the time you have to say goodbye.

00:29:14.079 --> 00:29:26.079
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.

00:29:26.079 --> 00:29:33.599
Nobody broke down, but also there was the expectation that sooner or later they would be reunited again.

00:29:33.599 --> 00:29:40.000
Very often I asked myself the question later, where did I take the courage to do all that?

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:41.359
Where was it from?

00:29:41.359 --> 00:29:49.839
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.

00:29:49.839 --> 00:29:59.440
And I also must say that at this time I and nobody else could have thought for a moment that for many, almost 90%.

00:29:59.440 --> 00:30:01.920
That's 90 NO.

00:30:01.920 --> 00:30:04.240
This was the last goodbye.

00:30:04.240 --> 00:30:22.640
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.

00:30:22.640 --> 00:30:27.680
I said nobody could foresee it in the worst of your vision.

00:30:27.680 --> 00:30:38.319
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.

00:30:38.319 --> 00:30:46.000
I said it at this moment, one of the most important moments in their lives, which still they still remember vividly.

00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:47.680
I was involved in that.

00:30:47.680 --> 00:31:02.799
And end quote.

00:31:02.799 --> 00:31:07.599
And so that was what it was like on the train platforms.

00:31:07.599 --> 00:31:22.880
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.

00:31:22.880 --> 00:31:25.279
But most most went well.

00:31:25.279 --> 00:31:28.480
I'd really so Nor Mr.

00:31:28.480 --> 00:31:37.039
Walheim would then some of the time travel to various places where they would drop off the kids and then come back.

00:31:37.039 --> 00:31:39.119
He would serve as one of the escorts.

00:31:39.119 --> 00:31:44.720
Um and this is one that that really struck me.

00:31:44.720 --> 00:31:52.319
He said, quote, on a transport where I was leader, we had a different problem.

00:31:52.319 --> 00:32:02.480
There were under very, very strict regulations to see that it was only children up to the age of 17 that came into England.

00:32:02.480 --> 00:32:15.759
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.

00:32:15.759 --> 00:32:17.839
He showed me the card.

00:32:17.839 --> 00:32:20.160
The boy is 18 years old.

00:32:20.160 --> 00:32:22.960
I looked at the card and it was true.

00:32:22.960 --> 00:32:29.359
I said, For goodness sake, after all our work in Berlin, how did this happen?

00:32:29.359 --> 00:32:32.079
Well it was too late to find an answer.

00:32:32.079 --> 00:32:35.680
The question now was, what are we going to do?

00:32:35.680 --> 00:32:37.920
I called the escorts together.

00:32:37.920 --> 00:32:39.759
We went into a huddle.

00:32:39.759 --> 00:32:41.359
There were two opinions.

00:32:41.359 --> 00:32:45.759
One was that we should throw ourselves at the mercy of the immigration officers.

00:32:45.759 --> 00:32:51.599
The other, which I shared, was that we should say there was a mistake made by the German police.

00:32:51.599 --> 00:32:54.960
We asked the fellow to come down from his bunk.

00:32:54.960 --> 00:33:02.640
When I saw him, my heart sank, because his head was shaven, which meant he'd been released from a concentration camp.

00:33:02.640 --> 00:33:08.000
He came from Dachau, and to send him back to Germany would mean death for him.

00:33:08.000 --> 00:33:13.519
Obviously, he realized that something was wrong and he was shaking like a leaf.

00:33:13.519 --> 00:33:16.240
So I said, We cannot let it go.

00:33:16.240 --> 00:33:18.079
We have to get him through.

00:33:18.079 --> 00:33:24.799
The majority of them joined me and said, All right, we'll try to say it was a mistake of the German police.

00:33:24.799 --> 00:33:31.519
So we told the fellow that when he was asked, he should say he was born a year later.

00:33:31.519 --> 00:33:36.960
We landed in Harwich, all dead tired, and went through the usual process.

00:33:36.960 --> 00:33:38.960
All of a sudden I heard, Mr.

00:33:38.960 --> 00:33:41.920
Wolheim, kindly see the supervisor.

00:33:41.920 --> 00:33:44.319
I knew immediately what was going on.

00:33:44.319 --> 00:33:46.640
The supervisor said, Sure.

00:33:46.640 --> 00:33:49.200
Sir, there must have been a mistake.

00:33:49.200 --> 00:33:56.480
I can't admit this gentleman because he's over eighteen, and that's beyond the age specified under the rules and regulations.

00:33:56.480 --> 00:34:00.319
I pretended to be absolutely flabbergasted.

00:34:00.319 --> 00:34:02.480
I assured him, that can't be.

00:34:02.480 --> 00:34:04.079
There must be a mistake.

00:34:04.079 --> 00:34:06.319
Well who could have made the mistake?

00:34:06.319 --> 00:34:09.519
It was most probably the German police.

00:34:09.519 --> 00:34:14.079
But he said, The German police are well known for their accuracy.

00:34:14.079 --> 00:34:24.079
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.

00:34:24.079 --> 00:34:27.119
Let this young fellow tell you for himself.

00:34:27.119 --> 00:34:30.480
The boy came and stuttered when he was born.

00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:36.960
The admitting immigration officer looked at him, saw his shaven head, and that he was shaking.

00:34:36.960 --> 00:34:38.559
He looked at me.

00:34:38.559 --> 00:34:40.320
He looked at the boy.

00:34:40.320 --> 00:34:42.079
He looked at the paper.

00:34:42.079 --> 00:34:48.960
There was a long moment of silence in which a decision had to be made about the life of a human being.

00:34:48.960 --> 00:34:55.920
He said to me, Sir, could you guarantee that this was a mistake by the German police?

00:34:55.920 --> 00:34:58.639
I said definitely.

00:34:58.639 --> 00:35:05.360
Now he knew that I was lying, and I knew that he knew that I was lying.

00:35:05.360 --> 00:35:17.840
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.

00:35:17.840 --> 00:35:25.360
So he took a stand and stamped admit onto the papers, and he saved that boy's life.

00:35:25.360 --> 00:35:26.880
End quote.

00:35:26.880 --> 00:35:35.679
So this is just an example of people are people everywhere.

00:35:35.679 --> 00:36:02.159
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.

00:36:02.480 --> 00:36:03.679
You have to do what's right.

00:36:03.840 --> 00:36:04.400
Yes.

00:36:04.719 --> 00:36:08.000
Regardless of what what the quote am I saying.

00:36:08.320 --> 00:36:11.519
Right, because it could always be someone else's mistake.

00:36:11.519 --> 00:36:13.440
I mean, who really knows?

00:36:13.760 --> 00:36:16.159
I mean, you know, those uh sloppy Germans.

00:36:16.400 --> 00:36:16.719
Right.

00:36:16.960 --> 00:36:20.000
Known for their no renowned for their sloppiness.

00:36:20.480 --> 00:36:22.159
I know, that's why he asked.

00:36:22.159 --> 00:36:25.039
He was like, um, yeah, right.

00:36:25.039 --> 00:36:27.199
Like this actually happened in Berlin.

00:36:27.519 --> 00:36:28.639
That's wild.

00:36:28.639 --> 00:36:30.559
Wow.

00:36:31.440 --> 00:36:37.920
So when the kids got to England, they had various experiences, obviously.

00:36:37.920 --> 00:36:44.000
The younger ones were most often adopted, and older ones had trouble getting homes.

00:36:44.000 --> 00:36:50.639
Uh the ones that did not automatically get adopted would go to hostels.

00:36:50.639 --> 00:37:00.000
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.

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:05.360
You have, you know, various people complaining about what's going on.

00:37:05.360 --> 00:37:08.800
But, you know, they're kids and their lives were saved.

00:37:08.800 --> 00:37:12.719
So in the scheme of things, it it's really not that bad.

00:37:12.719 --> 00:37:14.960
It you know, they complain about the food.

00:37:14.960 --> 00:37:19.119
Well, if we're all being honest here, English food is pretty rough.

00:37:19.440 --> 00:37:20.159
I'm s I'm sorry.

00:37:20.159 --> 00:37:22.480
I I g I have to I have to be with them there.

00:37:22.480 --> 00:37:24.159
That the food the food would be a thing.

00:37:24.639 --> 00:37:25.119
I know.

00:37:25.119 --> 00:37:35.280
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.

00:37:35.679 --> 00:37:38.639
I think I think that's actually not far off in a lot of cases.

00:37:38.960 --> 00:37:39.199
Right.

00:37:39.199 --> 00:37:42.880
But I said, you know, they're not using it though.

00:37:42.880 --> 00:37:49.840
What um but anyways, so yeah, they were often at camps.

00:37:49.840 --> 00:37:53.440
Uh those that were adopted and weren't the uh the older ones.

00:37:53.760 --> 00:37:56.719
But these but these were like brit UK camps.

00:37:56.719 --> 00:37:58.719
They were they were they were f more fun camps.

00:37:58.960 --> 00:37:59.440
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:37:59.440 --> 00:37:59.760
Yeah.

00:37:59.760 --> 00:38:00.079
Okay.

00:38:00.079 --> 00:38:04.559
They were more like, well, they were called, I mean, they were summer, summer camps.

00:38:04.559 --> 00:38:04.960
Okay.

00:38:04.960 --> 00:38:06.480
Kids usually, you know.

00:38:06.800 --> 00:38:07.199
Right.

00:38:07.360 --> 00:38:09.119
Um and and it helped.

00:38:10.239 --> 00:38:11.360
They put them where they could.

00:38:11.679 --> 00:38:21.840
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.

00:38:21.840 --> 00:38:25.039
Um, and so it helped that they were already there.

00:38:25.039 --> 00:38:31.039
The older ones worked in ammunitions plants and factories.

00:38:31.039 --> 00:38:34.159
The boys often went farming.

00:38:34.159 --> 00:38:36.320
Of course, they were there for several years.

00:38:36.320 --> 00:38:41.599
So the ones that aged out, they're they would go into nursing or teaching.

00:38:41.599 --> 00:38:49.840
The a lot of the boys applied to serve in the army, the British Army, because by this time they felt they were British.

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:50.400
Right.

00:38:50.719 --> 00:39:01.840
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.

00:39:01.840 --> 00:39:02.159
Right.

00:39:02.159 --> 00:39:07.360
So they talk about how quickly they um learned the new language and picked up customs.

00:39:07.599 --> 00:39:08.320
They adapted.

00:39:08.559 --> 00:39:10.639
They adapted and they adapted quickly.

00:39:10.639 --> 00:39:15.599
Um, you read examples of the ones who did meet their families.

00:39:15.599 --> 00:39:29.119
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.

00:39:29.119 --> 00:39:35.679
She said that she didn't understand anything they said, and they couldn't understand anything she said.

00:39:35.679 --> 00:39:41.440
And she said, Well, the only thing I could think of to do was go make them a cup of tea.

00:39:41.440 --> 00:39:47.599
And even at the time I realized that that was probably the most British thing that I could ever do.

00:39:47.599 --> 00:40:05.280
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.

00:40:05.280 --> 00:40:06.000
Yeah.

00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:13.280
I mean Okay, but but German bread isn't exactly French, you know, croissants, but it's close enough.

00:40:13.280 --> 00:40:14.159
It's it's pretty good.

00:40:14.559 --> 00:40:17.679
So but that wasn't the that wasn't the normal experience.

00:40:17.679 --> 00:40:20.880
The the re reuniting afterwards was not No.

00:40:21.039 --> 00:40:29.519
Um, like I said, uh or like I read from Volheim, about 90% uh never saw their parents again.

00:40:29.519 --> 00:40:34.960
The vast majority they assume were killed in concentration camps.

00:40:34.960 --> 00:40:36.800
Some of them would get letters.

00:40:36.800 --> 00:40:43.199
Someone's mom was like in Bolivia, and I know he was just like, well, at least she's there.

00:40:43.199 --> 00:40:46.000
So then he found a way to get to Bolivia.

00:40:46.000 --> 00:40:49.039
And but they were able to find out.

00:40:49.039 --> 00:40:57.679
So so the Red Cross was able to get tiny messages sent with like, you know, 25 letters that you could use.

00:40:57.679 --> 00:41:03.199
And like, you know, letters, letters, not like, you know, an actual letter that you send.

00:41:03.199 --> 00:41:03.440
Right.

00:41:03.440 --> 00:41:03.920
Okay.

00:41:03.920 --> 00:41:06.559
And uh letters through a lot of the timing.

00:41:06.559 --> 00:41:09.519
So kids were able to communicate with their parents that way.

00:41:09.519 --> 00:41:19.360
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.

00:41:19.360 --> 00:41:27.039
Um, and that was the only uh thing that could be the parents just were no longer there.

00:41:27.039 --> 00:41:40.480
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?

00:41:40.480 --> 00:41:51.679
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.

00:41:52.400 --> 00:42:10.320
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?

00:42:10.639 --> 00:42:11.280
Yes.

00:42:12.159 --> 00:42:12.480
Okay.

00:42:13.679 --> 00:42:19.840
Um can I can I tell you the story of one of the kids in the kinder transport?

00:42:19.840 --> 00:42:24.320
Just just as as one of the many, many examples.

00:42:24.320 --> 00:42:31.119
There's there's hundreds on the the United States Holocaust Museum website, the Washington, D.C.

00:42:31.119 --> 00:42:33.679
You have to look under Chappelle Center.

00:42:33.679 --> 00:42:40.320
The collections are not in the main Holocaust Museum, they're in Bowie, Maryland, but they're there.

00:42:40.320 --> 00:42:42.800
You know, you have to search, but they're they're there.

00:42:42.800 --> 00:42:51.119
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.

00:42:51.119 --> 00:43:00.800
He said he arrived with a sign around his neck that said, Ralph Samuel, to be collected by Samuel Epstein, who was his sponsor.

00:43:00.800 --> 00:43:05.679
He said, I remember I was picked up at the airport by a certain Mr.

00:43:05.679 --> 00:43:08.639
Epstein, maybe his wife Becky as well.

00:43:08.639 --> 00:43:10.000
I don't remember that.

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:15.119
But they took me back to their house in Southfield, which is close to Wimbledon in London.

00:43:15.119 --> 00:43:16.719
And the reason why Mr.

00:43:16.719 --> 00:43:23.760
Epstein picked my name off the list was that his first name was Samuel, and his son's middle name was Ralph.

00:43:23.760 --> 00:43:27.599
And so the Epstein family were very, very nice to me.

00:43:27.599 --> 00:43:32.960
And I lived there and played, and I was just as another member of the family.

00:43:32.960 --> 00:43:42.480
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.

00:43:42.480 --> 00:43:50.960
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.

00:43:50.960 --> 00:44:01.440
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.

00:44:01.440 --> 00:44:04.000
Um he says he thinks they went to a private school.

00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:12.880
But when he arrived, he said, quote, when I arrived in the country, uh I spoke German.

00:44:12.880 --> 00:44:16.159
I did not understand a word of English, not a word.

00:44:16.159 --> 00:44:21.679
I must have learned it very, very quickly because things were getting very, very bad in Germany.

00:44:21.679 --> 00:44:23.519
And my mother wrote to Mr.

00:44:23.519 --> 00:44:27.199
Epstein and asked him if he would hire her as a maid.

00:44:27.199 --> 00:44:28.800
And so he did that.

00:44:28.800 --> 00:44:36.559
And I still have that letter, that original letter, in which Sammy Epstein offered my mother a job as a maid.

00:44:36.559 --> 00:44:42.480
I think for one pound a week, or it might have been even one pound a month, probably a pound a week.

00:44:42.480 --> 00:44:45.360
So she came over, and that was in March.

00:44:45.360 --> 00:44:48.639
And at that time I no longer spoke German.

00:44:48.639 --> 00:44:52.960
I'd become very, very British because I could never be English.

00:44:52.960 --> 00:44:56.159
In order to be English, you have to be born in England.

00:44:56.159 --> 00:44:58.400
So the best I could do was be British.

00:44:58.400 --> 00:45:00.480
And I was very, very British.

00:45:00.480 --> 00:45:01.440
End quote.

00:45:01.440 --> 00:45:18.239
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.

00:45:18.239 --> 00:45:34.800
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.

00:45:34.800 --> 00:45:38.480
And and after the war, she went to work in a baby clinic.

00:45:38.480 --> 00:45:54.239
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.

00:45:54.239 --> 00:46:00.559
And the way I see our story is that it's the proof that one person can make a difference.

00:46:00.559 --> 00:46:08.000
Because if it wasn't for Sammy Epstein to say, Yes, I'll look after this kid, I wouldn't be here today.

00:46:08.000 --> 00:46:10.079
My mother wouldn't be here today.

00:46:10.079 --> 00:46:12.880
My kids wouldn't be here today.

00:46:12.880 --> 00:46:18.320
And I think that the story we have to tell is one of the evils of intolerance.

00:46:18.320 --> 00:46:24.159
The reason for the Holocaust was not that the Jews had done anything wrong, that they were bad.

00:46:24.159 --> 00:46:26.480
This was strictly intolerance.

00:46:26.480 --> 00:46:34.480
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.

00:46:34.480 --> 00:46:45.840
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.

00:46:45.840 --> 00:46:55.599
Um, and so now he has retired, he lives in the United States and goes around telling people about his experiences.

00:46:55.599 --> 00:47:03.119
He interestingly moved to America with an aunt who had escaped to Shanghai with her family during the war.

00:47:03.119 --> 00:47:04.480
His aunt Hilda.

00:47:04.480 --> 00:47:10.320
So he talked about, you know, moving in with her and at least she had escaped somewhere interesting.

00:47:11.920 --> 00:47:12.559
Wow.

00:47:12.559 --> 00:47:14.000
That's rough.

00:47:14.320 --> 00:47:21.679
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.

00:47:22.079 --> 00:47:29.119
So everybody just kind of went wherever they could to to get away, it sounds like as much as they could.

00:47:29.119 --> 00:47:34.400
So what so he he wound up in the United States.

00:47:34.400 --> 00:47:38.079
What was the US's take on the kind of transport?

00:47:38.960 --> 00:47:44.800
Well, it was very complicated in the United States in the 20s and 30s.

00:47:44.800 --> 00:47:54.000
Um over the years, there'd been several pieces of legislation passed um to make things harder for immigrants to come in.

00:47:54.000 --> 00:48:04.559
This started in in, I think, 1898 with the Chinese Um Inclusion Act that was racist against the Chinese.

00:48:04.559 --> 00:48:14.480
And then in 1924, the Johnson Reed Act came out that was also discriminatory, and they were tightening immigration.

00:48:14.480 --> 00:48:23.840
And each country in relation to the US had a different percentage of people who were allowed to come from that country a year.

00:48:23.840 --> 00:48:35.360
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.

00:48:35.360 --> 00:48:40.960
And that year they got over 300,000 applications to come to America.

00:48:40.960 --> 00:48:43.519
And they were just like, nah, dies.

00:48:43.519 --> 00:48:49.280
That's like over 11 years of uh of immigrants that we can take.

00:48:49.280 --> 00:48:52.960
So that's when they um started sending people away.

00:48:52.960 --> 00:48:53.599
The U.S.

00:48:53.599 --> 00:48:57.599
did take like as many immigrants as they could.

00:48:57.599 --> 00:49:06.639
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.

00:49:06.639 --> 00:49:13.840
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.

00:49:14.239 --> 00:49:17.199
But we had quotas and we only took ah some number.

00:49:17.840 --> 00:49:18.480
Right.

00:49:18.480 --> 00:49:30.480
So Americans heard about the kinder transport, and there was an act um that was brought up by a Senator Robert F.

00:49:30.480 --> 00:49:41.920
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.

00:49:41.920 --> 00:49:44.400
Uh they brought it up in 1939.

00:49:44.400 --> 00:49:45.920
And so the U.S.

00:49:46.000 --> 00:49:47.119
wanted the the U.S.

00:49:47.119 --> 00:49:50.320
has people here, senators, that wanted to join in that effort.

00:49:50.719 --> 00:49:52.239
Yes, absolutely.

00:49:52.239 --> 00:50:11.280
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.

00:50:11.280 --> 00:50:13.280
You know, politics.

00:50:13.519 --> 00:50:13.760
Right.

00:50:13.920 --> 00:50:28.800
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.

00:50:29.039 --> 00:50:29.440
Right.

00:50:29.679 --> 00:50:38.079
Um, and so the Wagner Act was brought up, uh, led by Robert Wagner and Edith Rogers.

00:50:38.079 --> 00:50:41.280
And they were trying to get it passed in Congress.

00:50:41.280 --> 00:50:50.079
It never um got to the floor because there was opposition from mainly Senator Robert Rice Reynolds.

00:50:50.079 --> 00:50:58.239
The bill was phras it was brought up as welfare for the children.

00:50:58.239 --> 00:51:05.679
The children needed a better life, and and that's the phrasing they had around it like to bring the children from Germany.

00:51:05.679 --> 00:51:08.880
That was like basically they need welfare here.

00:51:08.880 --> 00:51:11.199
This is gonna improve conditions.

00:51:11.199 --> 00:51:12.880
And yeah.

00:51:13.440 --> 00:51:19.679
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.

00:51:19.679 --> 00:51:20.880
Can we help them?

00:51:20.880 --> 00:51:22.880
Nah, I don't really think so.

00:51:23.440 --> 00:51:27.840
You know, interestingly, I was reading, I'm not sure, y'all.

00:51:27.840 --> 00:51:41.039
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?

00:51:41.039 --> 00:51:45.119
I mean, this is of course not spoken, like this is not, yeah.

00:51:45.119 --> 00:51:48.079
But like, why should we feed the people over there?

00:51:48.400 --> 00:51:51.519
Why would we take care of those Jewish kids when we've got our own kids to feed?

00:51:52.000 --> 00:52:02.960
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.

00:52:02.960 --> 00:52:17.519
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.

00:52:17.519 --> 00:52:18.639
I'm not sure.

00:52:18.639 --> 00:52:21.920
I know it wasn't 6'7 because I would remember that.

00:52:22.159 --> 00:52:22.639
Right.

00:52:22.639 --> 00:52:25.039
No, no, no, no, not 67.

00:52:25.440 --> 00:52:27.840
As a high school teacher, I would remember that.

00:52:27.840 --> 00:52:32.239
Um, but uh that opposed the bill.

00:52:32.239 --> 00:52:37.119
So it wasn't like Americans really wanted this bill passed.

00:52:37.519 --> 00:52:39.679
That's um that's unfortunate.

00:52:40.159 --> 00:52:42.719
Well, it's it's convoluted.

00:52:42.719 --> 00:52:46.960
Like I said, you know, immigration, it's people are messy.

00:52:46.960 --> 00:52:48.079
History's messy.

00:52:48.320 --> 00:52:49.039
History's messy.

00:52:49.199 --> 00:52:51.199
That's that's just the way things are.

00:52:52.400 --> 00:52:53.039
All right.

00:52:53.039 --> 00:52:56.960
And uh seems like a good place to leave off for today.

00:52:57.199 --> 00:52:58.880
There is one more thing I'd like to say.

00:52:59.039 --> 00:52:59.360
Yeah.

00:52:59.519 --> 00:53:05.119
Um, it's about Norbert Volheim, the one that was helping people in the kinder trade reports.

00:53:05.119 --> 00:53:05.840
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:53:05.840 --> 00:53:06.559
Him, okay.

00:53:06.559 --> 00:53:14.800
So after the war, well, in the war, he his family in 1942, he was sent to Auschwitz.

00:53:14.800 --> 00:53:19.920
He and his wife and three-year-old son, and like his whole family was in Auschwitz.

00:53:19.920 --> 00:53:21.440
There were like 70 of them.

00:53:21.440 --> 00:53:24.480
And he was the only one to survive.

00:53:24.480 --> 00:53:29.039
And he worked for I.

00:53:29.039 --> 00:53:29.280
G.

00:53:29.280 --> 00:53:39.119
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.

00:53:39.119 --> 00:53:50.400
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.

00:53:50.400 --> 00:54:10.400
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.

00:54:10.800 --> 00:54:12.960
So you got everybody paid.

00:54:13.199 --> 00:54:13.440
Yes.

00:54:13.440 --> 00:54:13.840
Wow.

00:54:13.840 --> 00:54:14.960
But it was back pay.

00:54:14.960 --> 00:54:15.760
Back pay, right.

00:54:15.760 --> 00:54:17.280
But still, yeah.

00:54:17.679 --> 00:54:21.119
But it lost his entire family in that that ordeal.

00:54:21.119 --> 00:54:21.679
Yeah.

00:54:21.679 --> 00:54:22.480
Wow.

00:54:22.480 --> 00:54:25.760
That's that's messy.

00:54:26.239 --> 00:54:27.519
It's very messy.

00:54:29.039 --> 00:54:29.599
All right.

00:54:29.599 --> 00:54:43.360
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.

00:54:44.079 --> 00:54:59.840
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.

00:55:00.159 --> 00:55:02.559
All right, we will talk to y'all next time.