A Kindertransport to Ethiopia? A Kindertransport from Croatia?

There are so many myths which still surround the Kindertransport. This might be because of a sense of “ownership”, of misunderstandings, and a lack of awareness of the extent of archival material now available to us. Britain’s “ownership” over the Kindertransport (i.e. the assumption that Britain was the ONLY country to help) downplayed and even denied how other nations were part of this international rescue scheme. This led to many misunderstandings about the Kindertransport which had serious repercussions with regards to how we define the Kindertransport itself. The Kindertransport began before Britain’s involvement and it continued after it. That the archival material on the Kindertransport is scattered throughout the world also makes it challenging to collate and analyse this history in detail.

Recently, I found several documents which suggest we need to rethink the image we have of the Kindertransport. The first was a document which stated that the British version of the Kindertransport was originally aimed at taking in Jewish children who were already in the Netherlands and Belgium. But after these countries were able to aid the children, Britain then decided to take children direct from Germany. Of course, these children still had to pass through the Netherlands on their way to Britain. This document invites us to question our image of the Kindertransport because we could have first rescued children who had already escaped. We would have been their second rescuer with the Netherlands being the first to take in these children. This had dire consequences for some of the children who remained in the Netherlands because when the Nazis invaded, they were at risk yet again. Many of these children were later deported to concentration camps on Kindertransports to death. We often only regard the Kindertransport as a rescue but the term was used during the Holocaust by the Nazis to refer to children who they wanted to murder.

I also found information about a lesser-known Kindertransport from Austria to Ethiopia. We often think of the Kindertransport as a European rescue but the Kinder journeyed beyond this continent to North America, South America, and Australasia. There were even plans to send Kinder to Africa, and in 1936/7 there was also a movement of Jewish Yemenite children to British Mandate Palestine. A January 1939 report states that some 600 Jewish children were en route for Ethiopia from Vienna. The story was even covered by a British newspaper. The children travelled via Britain, the Netherlands, and Sudan. It was reported that of the 600 children, 30 were under 10 years of age, and the remaining were aged from 10 to 18. The article goes on to state that 100 of the children were to remain in the Netherlands for the winter. The others were to be housed in British camps and homes provided for by the Quakers and other charitable organisations. The article concludes by suggesting that the majority of the children were to travel in the spring for Sudan. Here they would be trained and acclimatised before making their final journey to Ethiopia where they were to take up their permanent residence. The negotiations of this settlement were being held in Italy. It was a Dutch spokesperson who actually spoke to the British press about the children.

This is not the end of the story though because the British wrote another or follow-up report in March 1939. In it there is information about the Dutch Gildemeester Organisation who made the arrangements for the rescue and Frau Marianne Bech who negotiated the settlement of the children in Ethiopia. The British write that they are in the dark about this scheme. The report is trying to establish what the scheme actually was and who was involved. The British government even suggest that someone should contact the British Movement for the Care of Children from Germany as it was thought that they would know if the story was indeed true. Much of the report relies upon the information from the newspaper article so there is a need to establish what is actually happening. It seems that the British are not aware of these children.

At the moment it is difficult to establish if and when this group of children actually made their journey. The newspaper report is from 11^th December 1938. Yet the reports come later in January and March 1939. I was able to find a letter dated to March 1939 with the letterhead of the Foreign Office and an address of the Sudan government’s office in London at the bottom of the letter which stated that they had no information about this scheme. Apparently, the Co-ordinating Committee for Refugees was not aware of anything. There is another reference to how someone should contact a Major Langdon of the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany as he would know if the organisation in Vienna was sending refugee children to Sudan before settling them in Ethiopia.

It seems that there were indeed talks about settling Jewish people from Vienna to Ethiopia because in a June 1939 report and letter I found the Jewish organisation in Vienna had received an offer from the Italian Government. The Italians suggest an area in Abyssinia near Harrar where some 12,500 Jewish refugees could be settled. But it’s unclear if the children are part of this scheme. A Mr. Breuer, a Jewish refugee himself, who is involved in the scheme suggests the area of Laka Tsana. The report states that if this could be organised then the British government might be able to give some financial support. They wanted to settle the refugees by the headwaters of the Nile which may have provided some security for the water supply of Egypt. So, these refugees were like a pawn in the game of Empire building. Yet in the next breath a British representative is hesitant about financial aid.

What is striking is that in November 1939 there is a report about how in October 1939 the head of the Gildemeester Organisation went to Rome to assist in the emigration of non-Aryans who had German, Austrian, Czech-Slovak, and Polish heritage. There were continuing negotiations with the Italian Government about settling 30,000 Jews in Ethiopia. It seems that as the negotiations continued the number of many Jewish people who they wanted to rescue also increased. The Jewish Italian community also became involved and a representative visited the British Embassy. They asked the Embassy not to discourage the Italian Government from agreeing to the scheme. A letter about these talks was also sent to a British representative in Cairo. This is still an unfolding story as I continue to search in the archives but what these few documents tell us is that the Kindertransport is complex and is connected to other schemes of rescue.

This is certainly the case if we consider that there were also Kindertransports from Croatia via Turkey to British Mandate Palestine in 1942/43. I found the Kindertransport lists of these children. These lists are from the Jewish Community in Zagreb. They include the children’s names, which area they were from, their birth dates, and their nationality. There are also lists of the adult escorts; sometimes there were 9 adults journeying with the children. There are several letters accompanying these lists and in one of them is a reference to how some of the children might travel from and through Hungary to join a transport. It is unclear at the moment if the children did make this journey but it shows how there were many people travelling to different countries to try and get their children out. We need to rethink the traditional understanding that the children only left from Greater Germany between 1938 and 1939. Some of the transports were small, consisting of 50 children, but others were larger. The Police District of Zagreb received documents from the Jewish community to state which child was going to journey on the transport. They needed ministerial approval for the issuance of the travel documents. From the files it looks like the children had to have individual passports but there is a suggestion that there should be a collective travel document for the children. The Jewish Community submitted this idea and the paperwork for the approval of the authorities. By March 1942, 11 children had emigrated to Turkey while 38 approvals still remained unanswered. Around 70 children had applied to be part of this Croatian Kindertransport but many more would sign up.

There are documents which also suggests that the Croatian Jewish Community were trying to get their children to Switzerland. These children were orphaned or their parent/s were interned in concentration camps. It was argued that 10-year-olds and above should be selected because of the difficulties with travel and accommodating smaller children. It was clear that children over 16 would not be accepted. There is no explanation given as to why older children were not considered for travel. A June 1942 letter states that the Croatian community have sent a list of 76 children to be approved by the Swiss. They originally thought that 50 children would travel but request that the additional children be approved because circumstances were changing and the community wanted to ensure that as many children as possible could escape.

A letter from October 1942 suggests that the community changed the age limit to begin at 7. The community write that the accompanying adults should be allowed to journey with their spouses. They are indeed added to the lists. It is incredibly moving to see the delight and excitement that the Jewish Croatian Community expresses in the files when they know that the children have safely reached Turkey. Their joy leaps from the pages.

As the examples above show one thing is clear from the archival work I have been doing. We need to broaden our understanding of the Kindertransport, how the term was used, and who is a Kindertransport survivor. This is the aim of Prof. Bill Niven and myself in our new book “Kindertransport: A Transnational Journey” forthcoming with Yale University Press.