A New Historical Finding: Kindertransport Lists
It has been repeatedly claimed by scholars that the lists of mainly Jewish children who escaped from Nazism to Britain and many other countries between 1938-1940 no longer exist or that only remnants of the lists survived. However, I have accessed Kindertransport lists to Britain and the Netherlands from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland in Yad Vashem’s extensive archive. Thanks to the support I’ve received from the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, and The Baron Friedrich Carl von Oppenheim Chair for the Study of Racism, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust (founded by the von Oppenheim Family of Cologne), I have also been able to spend time working at the new National Library of Israel which hold the lists from Austria to Australia, Belgium, Britain, Sweden, and many other nations. While I was in America last year during my fellowship at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, The New School (thanks also to Ilse Melamid, former Kindertransportee and the Kindertransport Association) I was able to access lists from Gdansk, Poland to Britain at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. I was also able to find out more about the children who fled into Switzerland at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. For the first time we are able to see these lists in relation to one another which provides important new historical and present day insights into the Kindertransport.
To date, the lists have not been thoroughly explored in academic writings. While Claudia Curio’s work provides a detailed history of the Kindertransports to Britain, the lists themselves have not been independently analyzed. Although she mentions the existence of the Gdansk lists, there is no reference to the existence of the fifth list which details the children who were unable to board Kindertransports to freedom. A more recent study by Miriam Keesing, Peter Tammes, and Andrew Simpkin focuses on the Jewish refugee children who fled to the Netherlands but with a specific interest in those who were tragically later deported. It is known that there are some materials at the National Archives, UK; there is an overview of when the Viennese transports departed available online via the Archiv Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien’s site, while the names of the Winton Children are listed on the Winton Trust’s website. However, it is not generally known at all which Kinder travelled on which Kindertransport. Many Kindertransport families themselves, along with the organizations which are so integrally connected to this history such as World Jewish Relief who hold the individual files of Kinder (not all have survived though) and the Association of Jewish Refugees which commemorates and preserves this memory, did not know about the existence of these many different lists.
The lists name almost all the children who fled to Britain and the Netherlands on the Kindertransport on more than 90 trains. I am still piecing together the lists to Belgium, France, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, and America but there are many names to be found in these files too. The records also include details of the children’s home addresses, dates of birth, parents’ names, chaperones’ names, Kindertransport numbers, departure dates, and in some cases the addresses of the Kinder’s new residences in Britain. There are hundreds and hundreds of application files too. It is striking to see the vast distribution of where the Kinder travelled from and where they were traveling to. You really become aware of just how international the Kindertransport was and how much cross-border collaboration was needed to actually get the children out. The lists were sent from the Kinder’s homelands, to the transit countries and to the new host nations because everyone involved in the process had to be informed.
The many different refugee organizations had different terms for the same rescue. Terms such as Kindertransport, Kindertransporte, Frankreichtransport, England-Transport, Kinderauswanderung, Kinderverschickung, Children’s Transport, and Kinder-Ausland-Aktion appear on the lists and accompanying paperwork. The linguistic complexity of the Kindertransport is apparent when looking at the lists and letters from the organizations as they are in German, French, English, and Italian. There has been some confusion and discussion as to whether or not the Winton Transports were part of the Kindertransport. I can confirm that the Winton Children are included in the lists from Greater Germany to Britain. They are definitely part of the Kindertransport and their Kindertransport numbers further emphasise this fact. Moreover, the adjoining paperwork clearly states that Britain had to issue the passport cards to the Winton Children and then their names were added to the Kindertransport list. But there is a note to say that it should be made clear that these are children from part of a particular scheme, from a specific place.
The lists provide us with a special opportunity to fully acknowledge and thank all accompanying adults. We can dispel the myth that the chaperones had to return to Greater Germany otherwise the Kindertransports would have come to a halt. According to the lists, many of them remained in Britain or they stopped in the Netherlands for a short period of time. We often have the addresses of the chaperones so we can retrace where they lived and this could, potentially in the future, lead to new memorials being dedicated to them. For the first time too, we are able to see which children were guaranteed for and those who were not. We are also able to see how many children were orphaned as well as how many were stateless. This is particularly important because it helps us understand how many Kinder were displaced before they travelled on the Kindertransport.
The main finding, namely the lists from Greater Germany to Britain, are surprisingly not from a British or German archive but a Dutch one – Yad Vashem has copies in its archive. The lists were used by the border officials in the Netherlands to allow Jewish children to pass through the Netherlands on trains to Britain. The lists were needed to distinguish between those who were to remain in the Netherlands and those who were travelling through to Britain because the children on Kindertransports to Holland were quarantined for two weeks before they were sent to their new foster homes. The Gdansk lists seem to have been written down retrospectively by a community member who had the foresight and understanding that it would be important to keep a record of the way one community rallied together to awaken the British government and British refugee agencies to the plight of children in Gdansk. The Austrian lists were also compiled by the Austrian Jewish community but the Kindertransport files sit alongside the many other documents of Austrian Jewry. The Austrian files are unique in that they also hold files about Jewish refugee children who reached Britain before Kristallnacht. They also indicate that Kindertransports were leaving Austria for America in 1940. Thus, we need to rethink the timeframe of the Kindertransport because the lists clearly show that while the transports to Britain stopped transports to other nations continued well into the war. The lists are also located within the same files which document the children who left on other schemes such as the Youth Aliyah. The Kindertransport did not take place within a vacuum but alongside other efforts to rescue children.
The lists at Yad Vashem begin with the final transports and work backwards. But before the lists appear there is a handwritten note stating that, as of 25th August 1939, the Kindertransports will come to an end. Yet the German customs office and the Dutch border authorities seemed to be willing to continue transporting Jewish children across the borders. It was in fact the British who put an end to the Kindertransport, not the outbreak of the Second World War. From the lists, we learn that children were brought from as far away as Italy – not just from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, as scholars have assumed. We can also track which transport crossed which border point in the Netherlands at which time, and we have separate lists for the Kinder who remained in Holland. Some Kinder such as Edgar Lax travelled on a Kindertransport to Holland and was later placed on a second Kindertransport to Britain – we have both of his journeys listed. Edgar’s case is interesting because he has two different Kindertransport numbers.
Some lists actually have separate sections of children who left from Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and so on. Each list is accompanied by a letter which states the day of departure, who and how many escorts and children will arrive, what time they will cross the border from Germany to the Netherlands, where on the border they will cross, and whether or not more than one train will be passing through on a particular day. We learn that the chaperones had a really important role to play in that they did not just look after the children but were also the ones who had to inform the chief of the border station at each stop. The names of some children are crossed out of some lists but reappear on later lists which suggests that their departure was delayed. It is only through consulting other documents or using testimony that we become aware of what happened in each individual case as some children may have been ill so were placed on later transports whereas other children were removed from the lists – maybe because their parents could not in the end part with them or they found an alternative route out. While the lists offer us important new information, they still need to be used in relation to other documents to fully understand how the Kindertransport worked.
The lists not only have a historical value: they also have an emotional one. They are significant now because, 86 years later, I have been able to (re)unite surviving Kindertransport children with others who themselves or whose relatives travelled on the same transport. Some Kinder felt alone for so many years because they never found out who accompanied them on their journeys. After all this time we can tell those Kinder still alive today. It is desperately sad not to be able to tell those who have passed away, but their families now know and I hope this can bring some healing. Generations later, families were often unable to find out the date of departure or arrival of their ancestors on the Kindertransport – now they can. For families, this is the proof they have been looking for for so many years. In some cases, we can finally confirm that the survivor is a Kindertransportee as it was not always known how children escaped. In other cases, some second generation did not even know their parents’ Kindertransport number. Looking to the future, these lists may help families apply for the citizenships which were taken from them. The lists may also be useful for the Claims Conference with their incredible work to ensure that the families are supported with their applications.
These lists, particularly the lists to Britain, ensured the Kinder’s survival and subsequently the next generations. Few lists contain details about the parents but in some cases their names are listed. These documents reconstitute families, evoking a time before departure, before the uprooting, before the Holocaust. We see names, but there are so many stories which are associated with them. The lists tell us nothing about how the many children got onto the transports or what happened to them after their journeys, but what they do show is that without the names being typed onto the paper, most likely these children would not have survived. As I mentioned early, there is a list from Gdansk which lists 75 children who were suggested for a Kindertransport but this transport never left. I have traced each of the children and many of them were murdered during the Holocaust.
The lists have also impacted my life. I first found Hanna Zack Miley’s name on her Kindertransport list. I have worked with Hanna for years interviewing her about her fascinating life and to be able to share this news with her meant the world. I was so excited to let her know that I could see the name of the little six-year-old girl, who had just had her appendix out, on a list from July 1939. Hanna’s parents tragically did not survive the Holocaust, they were murdered in Chelmno. The list represents their bravery and sacrifice to let their only daughter go to a country which some twenty years before they were at war with – Britain was the enemy. Her parents entrusted all the refugee organizations, all the chaperones, and all the people in Britain to look after their daughter.
The lists are not just names on a sheet as they tell thousands of stories. I know many Kindertransport families and I’ve received so many moving messages along the lines of “I did not think we would ever see the lists”. But there are so many Kinder who I do not know. In the Austrian archives you often come across application forms and letters next to the lists. They sometimes have small passport photos of the children stapled to the paperwork. I cannot put into words how I feel when I come across these documents. Every time I see the little photos I am stopped in my tracks. I cannot help but wonder if the children made it out alive. In one recent particular case I had found the three Kindertransport lists which connected to one family and then I received a message from them to ask if I could find another Kind who they knew. I actually managed to find their list. When I return to Britain from Israel I will finally get to meet them.
I and my co-author Bill Niven will now begin to fully analyze the lists in our new book on the transnational history of the Kindertransport for Yale University Press. Until the book is published if anyone would like to check whether they or their ancestors are named are lists please email amy.williams2011@my.ntu.ac.uk.
