Kindertransport : How Britain took in and saved Jewish children from the Holocaust

The day we left Hitler behind: Survivors of the Kindertransport tell their stories

How Britain took in Jewish child refugees while the rest of the world ignored their plight.  

The operation was called Kindertransport  – Children’s Transport – and it was a passage from hell to freedom. Kristallnacht had just rocked Nazi Germany. The pogroms killed dozens of Jews, burnt hundreds of synagogues, and imprisoned tens of thousands in concentration camps. 

Many historians see them as the start of Hitler’s Final Solution. Amid the horror, Britain agreed to take in children threatened by the Nazi murder machine.

Seventy-five years ago this week, the first group of children arrived without their parents at the English port of Harwich, and took a train to London’s Liverpool Street station.

Some 10,000 children, most but not all Jewish, would escape the Nazis in the months to come – until the outbreak of war in September 1939, when the borders were closed.

From London the children went to homes and hostels across Britain. 

Many of the children settled in Britain, having found their families wiped out by the Nazis.

These are the stories of five Kinder in their own words. 

OSCAR FINDLING, 91

Oscar Findling, 91: 'In 1942 my mother and father were sent to Belzec. And that was that' (AP)

My father was not a German citizen. On the night before Kristallnacht, he was arrested by the Gestapo.

That was the last I saw of my father.

As soon as we found out [about the Kindertransport], my mother went to where the committee was and put my name down. She wouldn’t put my brother down because, she said, “I don’t want to lose both my sons on one day.”

I’ll never forget the last words my mother said: “Will I ever see you again?” 

Prophetic words.

I was two years in a hostel in Manchester. The committee got me a job in a fur shop. Once I was over 18 I was allowed to go to London. In 1944 I got papers from the Ministry of Labour (saying) that I had to go in the Army.

It took me 30 years to get my parents’ story together. Basically they were put in the ghetto in 1941, and in September 1942… they were all put on the cattle trains. They were sent to a place called Belzec, which was one of the well-known gas chambers near Treblinka.

And that was that.

Already 16 when he arrived in June 1939, Findling, who grew up in the eastern German city of Leipzig, is the oldest surviving Kindertransport Kind. After a career in garment manufacturing, he now lives with his second wife in London. 

HERBERT LEVY, 84

Herbert Levy, 84: 'I said goodbye to my grandparents. My grandfather was to die a few weeks later' (AP)

My parents had tried to get out of Germany for many years but it was very difficult to get into anywhere until the British government allowed children to come on the Kindertransport. My parents applied, and by pure luck I was one of the chosen ones. I was not yet 10 years old.

My parents took me to the station. I said goodbye to my grandparents. My grandfather was to die a few weeks later. My grandmother was one of the six million people who died in the extermination camps, with her two sisters, many cousins, many nephews and nieces.

Documenting the past: Herbert Levy's ID card (AP)

We finally arrived at the border. You can’t imagine the relief of being in Holland, to have passed Nazi Germany.

It was fantastic to feel free at last.

Levy came from Berlin via the Netherlands in June 1939. Months later, his parents joined him. They were interned in a British camp for “enemy aliens”. Levy recalls being greeted with chants of “Bloody Germans!” (“This was quite amazing for me,” he says, “because I had been shouted at as a ‘bloody Jew’ until recently.”) Levy went on to become an actor. His wife, Lillian, survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

THE REV FRANCIS WAHLE, 84

The Rev Francis Wahle, 84: 'The journey was dreary until we got to the Dutch border, when we were given drinks and cake' (AP)

Hitler marched into Austria in March 1938. Until that time I was just an ordinary Catholic. I then discovered that I was Jewish as far as Hitler was concerned, because all my four grandparents were Jewish. My parents tried to get us out. As we had relations in Italy the first attempt was to get us out to Italy, but they never got all the right papers. So we started learning English.

I was nine at the time. It was dreary, that journey through Germany, until we came to the Dutch border, and then the ladies provided the kids with soft drinks and a bit of cake.

My sister and I were split up. I was very lucky. I was taken to a place in Sussex. A lady had let the committee have her very large place for  the refugees.

Having escaped death, really, and with my parents’ having escaped death, it’s made me immensely grateful to God, and I suppose the fact of becoming a priest is the result of that.

Wahle and his younger sister Anna left Vienna in January 1939. He was an accountant before studying for the priesthood. Although now retired from his parish, he still works as a priest. Wahle’s parents fled their home as the Gestapo came to arrest them; they went underground, living without papers for three years. Wahle’s father went on to become the most senior judge in Austria.

RUTH BARNETT, 78

 

Ruth Barnett, 78: 'The vicar was a lovely man but his wife obviously didn’t want refugees foisted on her' (AP)

I was only four when I came to England so I have snatches of memory. My dad was a judge in Berlin. He was summarily sacked when the Nazis came into power in 1933. He did get out and he went to Shanghai, which was awful because of the war between Japan and China.

Our mother came with us on the train because being a proper Aryan German she could get a visa. So I experienced it as a family outing. I remember saying, “Are we nearly there? Are we nearly there?”

My mother had to go back [to Germany]. She would have been an enemy once war broke out. She brought us to our first foster family, which was a vicar and his wife in Kent. The vicar  was a lovely man, but his wife obviously didn’t want refugees foisted on her. She was very cruel to us.

Ruth Barnett in Berlin, shortly before she was brought to England in 1939 (AP)

The second foster family… had five children and they treated us exactly the same as their children. But where we were living there  was in the path of the doodlebugs, and that absolutely fazed [my brother] Martin. So we had to be moved. Our third family was on a farm. I was in seventh heaven with the animals.

I had no nationality for the first 18 years of my life. The Nazis… took away citizenship from all the Jews and Gypsies. I had to travel on a document that was a sheet of paper with “person of no nationality” written across the top. It had such a deep effect on me.

Barnett’s father was Jewish but her mother  was not. She arrived in February 1939 with  her older brother, Martin. Having worked  as a psychotherapist, she speaks today in schools about the Holocaust and seeks to  highlight the fate not only of Jews but also  of the hundreds of thousands of Gypsies killed by Hitler.

EVE WILLMAN, 80

 

Eve Willman, 80: 'I became one of my aunt and uncle's children. My cousins became my brother and sister' (AP)

I was five when I came. My father was a doctor. My mother converted to Judaism when she married my father.

I came with another girl who was older than me. The only thing I remember about the journey is stopping at one point and people coming in and giving us a sweet drink. I don’t remember saying goodbye to my parents.

I went to the first foster home – a Unitarian minister and his wife. They didn’t have any children. I remember that she was very strict and precise.

After a year they couldn’t keep me any more and so I went to the next foster home… to an extremely nice family. 

But one of my uncles, who had been a rabbi, was most concerned  that I didn’t have any Jewish instruction. And so I went to another family. It was not such a nice family.

My uncle and aunt were then established in West Hartlepool. I went there for a holiday. It was such a wonderful turning point in my life somehow. My aunt said, “When you come back, you will be with us for ever.” I was 11. I became one of their children. My cousins became my brother and sister.

My father survived the war. My mother was able to work and she worked in a factory, and the factory was bombed. She was killed just before the end of the war so I never saw her again.

It was really a wonderful thing that the government did to let 10,000 children in who probably would have lost their lives.

But it’s happening again. It isn’t happening to Jews, but look at the children in Syria.

Willman, an only child, arrived from Vienna in April 1939. She later obtained a PhD in biochemistry and worked as a researcher and  biology teacher. She lives in London and has never married.

The Battle of Jerusalem - An event that changed history and an event that decided that Israel shall be Jewish and not Islamic

General Allenby

The Battle of Jerusalem (officially named the "Jerusalem Operations" by the British) developed from 17 November with fighting continuing until 30 December 1917, during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of World War I.

In taking Jerusalem General Allenby, the British General in charge of the operation, had unarguably saved the Jewish capital from eventual annihilation and hence it saved the Jewish nation from becoming Islamic under Turkish control. In reality, it is completely unquestionable, that if this event hadn't taken place Israel would almost certainly not be a Jewish nation today.

Before Jerusalem could be secured, two battles were recognised by the British as being fought in the Judean Hills to the north and east of the Hebron–Junction Station line.

 These were the Battle of Nebi Samwill from 17 to 24 November and the Defence of Jerusalem from 26 to 30 December 1917. They also recognised within these Jerusalem Operations, the successful second attempt on 21 and 22 December 1917 to advance across the Nahr el Auja, as the Battle of Jaffa, although Jaffa had been occupied as a consequence of the Battle of Mughar Ridge on 16 November.

This series of battles was successfully fought by the British Empire's XX Corps, XXI Corps, and the Desert Mounted Corps against strong opposition from the Yildirim Army Group's Seventh Army in the Judean Hills and the Eighth Army north of Jaffa on the Mediterranean coast.

The loss of Jaffa and Jerusalem, together with the loss of 50 miles (80 km) of territory during the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) advance from Gaza, after the capture of Beersheba, Gaza, Hareira and Sheria, Tel el Khuweilfe and the Battle of Mughar Ridge constituted a grave setback for the Ottoman Army and the Ottoman Empire.

As a result of these victories, British Empire forces captured Jerusalem and established a new strategically strong fortified line. This line ran from well to the north of Jaffa on the maritime plain, across the Judean Hills to Bireh north of Jerusalem, and continued eastwards of the Mount of Olives.

With the capture of the road from Beersheba to Jerusalem via Hebron and Bethlehem, together with substantial Ottoman territory south of Jerusalem, the city was secured. On 11 December, General Edmund Allenby respectfully entered the Old City on foot through the Jaffa Gate instead of horse or vehicles to show respect for the holy city.

Despite being the Jewish capital, Jerusalem is a very important site for both Christianity as well as Judaism and in turn the battle was a great moral victory for both religions.

 Reproduced below is General Sir Edmund Allenby's account of events which led to the fall of Jerusalem into Allied hands on 9 December 1917.

Allenby recounts how he formally entered the historic city two days following its fall and noted that "the population received me well".

His account is as follows

The date for the attack on Jerusalem was fixed as December 8th.

British troops from a Welsh Regiment, with a cavalry regiment attached, had advanced from their positions north of Beersheba up the Hebron-Jerusalem road on the 4th.  No opposition was met, and by the evening of the 6th the head of this column was ten miles north of Hebron.
 

The infantry were directed to reach the Bethlehem-Befit Jala area by the 7th, and the line Surbahir-Sherafat (about three miles south of Jerusalem) by dawn on the 8th, and no troops were to enter Jerusalem during this operation.

It was recognized that the troops on the extreme right might be delayed on the 7th and fail to reach the positions assigned to them by dawn on the 8th.  Arrangements were therefore made to protect the right flank west of Jerusalem, in case such delay occurred.

On the 7th the weather broke, and for three days rain was almost continuous.  The hills were covered with mist at frequent intervals, rendering observation from the air and visual signalling impossible.

A more serious effect of the rain was to jeopardize the supply arrangements by rendering the roads almost impassable - quite impassable, indeed, for mechanical transport and camels in many places.

The troops moved into positions of assembly by night, and, assaulting at dawn on the 8th, soon carried their first objectives.  They then pressed steadily forward. T he mere physical difficulty of climbing the steep and rocky hillsides and crossing the deep valleys would have sufficed to render progress slow, and the opposition encountered was considerable.

Artillery support was soon difficult, owing to the length of the advance and the difficulty of moving guns forward.  But by about noon London troops had already advanced over two miles, and were swinging northeast to gain the Nablus-Jerusalem road, while the yeomanry had captured the Beit Iksa spur, and were preparing for a further advance.

As the right column had been delayed and was still some distance south of Jerusalem, it was necessary for the London troops to throw back their right and form a defensive flank facing east toward Jerusalem, from the western outskirts of which considerable rifle and artillery fire was being experienced.

This delayed the advance, and early in the afternoon it was decided to consolidate the line gained and resume the advance next day, when the right column would be in a position to exert its pressure.

By nightfall our line ran from Neby Samwil to the east of Beit Iksa, through Lifta to point about one and a half miles west of Jerusalem, whence it was thrown back facing east.  All the enemy's prepared defences west and northwest of Jerusalem had been captured, and our troops were within a short distance of the Nablus-Jerusalem road.

The London troops and yeomanry had displayed great endurance in difficult conditions.  The London troops especially, after a night march in heavy rain to reach their positions of deployment, had made an advance of three to four miles in difficult hills in the face of stubborn opposition.

During the day about 300 prisoners were taken and many Turks killed.  British casualties were thankfully  light.

Next morning the advance was resumed.  The Turks had withdrawn during the night, and the London troops and yeomanry, driving back rear guards, occupied a line across the Nablus-Jerusalem road four miles north of Jerusalem, while Welsh troops occupied a position east of Jerusalem across the Jericho road.

These operations isolated Jerusalem, and at about noon the enemy sent out a parlementaire and surrendered the city.

In the operations from October 31st to December 9th over 12,000 prisoners were taken.  The total captures of material have not yet been fully counted, owing to the large area covered by these operations; but are known to include about 100 guns of various calibres, many machine guns, more than 20,000,000 rounds of rifle ammunition, and 250,000 rounds of gun ammunition.

More than twenty airplanes were destroyed by our airmen or burned by the enemy to avoid capture.

I entered the city officially at noon, December 11th, with a few of my staff, the commanders of the French and Italian detachments, the heads of the political missions, and the Military Attaches of France, Italy, and America.

The procession was all afoot, and at Jaffa gate I was received by the guards representing Britain, notably England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, then also Australia, New Zealand, India, France, and Italy.  The population received me well.

Guards have been placed over the holy places.  My Military Governor is in contact with the acting custodians and the Latin and Greek representatives.  The Governor has detailed an officer to supervise the holy places.

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Pat Condell and some of his brilliant videos on Israel and the bogus palestinians

Pat Condell is a former British comedian, political commentator who is very outspoken on his pro Israel views as well as his views about preserving democracy and our free way of life, as well as his views on Western appeasement of Islam. He has a serious message to tell, but with that usual British wit and listening to him is refreshing as well as it brings a smile to ones face.

Here are a few of his videos on Israel and the bogus Palestinians
                                             
                                                       The Great Palestinian Lie

Israel & The United Nations

Patronising the Palestinians

Let's blame the Jews

The ugliest newspaper in Britain

Useful idiots for Palestine

Extremism Escalating in the West Bank

The thousands of demonstrators didn't forget to condemn the Palestinian Authority for "selling out to Jews" instead of seeking Israel's destruction. Unlike the U.S., Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sees and hears the voices of the extremists at Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque, in the West Bank, and in the Gaza Strip. This is precisely why Abbas will never agree to sign a peace deal with Israel: it would turn him into the biggest traitor in the Palestinian and Islamic world.

What happened at the al-Aqsa Mosque during last week's Friday prayers should be sounding alarm bells in the U.S., Britain and France.

After the prayers, during a demonstration in support of Egypt's deposed President Mohamed Morsi, thousands of Muslims began shouting slogans against the U.S., Britain, France and Israel

"Allahu Akbar, destroy the U.S., Britain and France!" the demonstrators chanted in scenes that appeared as if they were taking place in a remote Taliban-controlled village in Afghanistan.

But the protest did not take place in Afghanistan or Pakistan. It took place at the Aqsa Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan, during which Israel allows hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank to enter Jerusalem for Friday prayers.

Palestinians demonstrate on Jerusalem's Temple Mount against the removal from power of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, July 19, 2013.

Why did the Muslim worshippers chant slogans against the US, Britain and France? Because they believe that these countries are the enemies of Islam and were involved in the "conspiracy" to remove the Muslim Brotherhood from power in Egypt.

But of course such demonstrations cannot occur without also shouting threats and slogans against Jews.

Why Jews? Because the declared goal of these extremists is to destroy Israel and establish an Islamic Caliphate.

It is frightening to see thousands of Muslims chanting, "Khaybar, Khaybar Jews -- the army of Mohamed will return!"

They were referring of course to the Battle of Khaybar, fought in the year 629, between Muslims and Jews living in the oasis of Khaybar in the Arabian Peninsula.

The Jews there were attacked after being accused by the Muslims of inciting hostilities among Arab tribes. The Jews finally surrendered and were permitted to live in Khaybar on condition that they gave one-half of their produce to Muslims.

The demonstrators at the Aqsa Mosque are hoping that the Muslims will again attack the Jews, this time in Israel, and force them to succumb, and either to leave or agree to live as a humiliated minority under the rule of an Islamic Caliph.

What is worrying is that some of these demonstrators were Israeli citizens affiliated with the Islamic Movement in Israel, headed by Sheikh Raed Salah. This movement, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, has thousands of supporters among the Arab community inside Israel.

Two days later, on Sunday, the Islamic Movement organized another demonstration in support of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, this time in northern Israel.

The anti-Jewish demonstration in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque is a sign of the growing power of Muslim extremists in the city and the West Bank.

This is a real and imminent threat not only to Israel and its Western allies, but also to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his loyalists in the West Bank.

This threat also explains why the Palestinian Authority rushed to condemn the extremists for using the Aqsa Mosque as a platform for "advancing outside agendas" -- namely that of the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamic groups.

The thousands of demonstrators did not forget to condemn the Palestinian Authority for "selling out to Jews" and accepting a two-state solution instead of seeking Israel's destruction.

The anti-Jewish and anti-American tirade came as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry resumed his efforts to force Abbas and the Palestinian Authority leadership to return to the negotiating table with Israel.

Even if Abbas agreed to return to the negotiating table, he would always be afraid of the extremists, who are expected to step up their attacks on him as the talks with Israel proceed.

Unlike Kerry, Abbas sees and hears the voices of the extremists at the Aqsa Mosque and other Islamic holy sites in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And this is precisely why Abbas will never agree to sign a peace deal with Israel: it would turn him into the biggest traitor in the the Palestinian and Islamic world.

 source -  Khaled Abu Toameh