AI and the Kindertransport: The stories behind the photos
Imagine a row of German officials or Gestapo guards standing in front of a steam train to the left, little Jewish children with suitcases and teddies in hand in the middle, and then a railing holding back parents with outstretched hands to the right. The steam covers the children at the back of the image. The children we see just stand there looking at the viewer. One parent holds a tissue to their eyes. The caption asks if you would send your child away into the unknown.
You might think that you were looking at a photograph of the Kindertransport, but you would be wrong. It seems ironic that there are more and more forged photographs of the Kindertransport appearing when we have only just begun to name the children in the authentic historical photographs held in the archives.
Holocaust museums, institutes, and archives as well as scholars have commented upon the surge in AI (artificial intelligence) content, but this criticism has been focused upon false, inaccurate, and invented images of the concentration camps and scenes of liberation. Several Facebook groups though have posted distorted, fabricated, and alleged photographs of the Kindertransport. The fictionalization of the Kindertransport is not a new trend: it has been represented through more traditional genres such as novels, film, and art. Yet the photographs posted in these online forums/ groups are not artistic impressions, rather they are misleading images of a rescue scheme which we are still trying to fully portray in all its complexity.
AI photographs of the Holocaust create an illusion as they mask reality. They might be made up of fragments of historical facts, but they minimize and trivialize. For example, while there is a clear fascination with recreating imagery of the Kindertransport, the photographs which have been created dilute the historical facts. For example, there is a fake image of Sir Nicholas Winton as an older man looking at the children as they arrive or depart – the caption to the image does not state if he is at the beginning or the end of the journey. Winton was a young man when he was involved in the rescue of children from Czechoslovakia. In the photograph he is not pictured as an elderly man reflecting back on the Kindertransport in later years. Thus, this image ultimately gives the wrong impression. On the surface this may not seem significant as it does not change the fact that Winton was a rescuer. But it is misleading, because if the photograph presents departure, it was Trevor Chadwick who accompanied the children on their journeys, not Winton, and it alters where the story fits within Winton’s own lifecycle.
Many of the fake Kindertransport photographs focus on the farewell scene. They depict a father bent down embracing his child as the steam rises and passersby watch on, a little girl holding a violin while she waits to board a train, a mother crouched down clinging to her children while the father stands over them, and children at the window of a green train with a sign which reads “Kindertransport” on it – this is the only image which is colorized. These images are sensationalized and emotive. In a sense they recreate scenes which we can only picture through the Kinder’s own testimonies because there are so few photographs of departure. The only one that I have seen is grainy and seems to have been taken quickly as the child walks up the gangplank of a boat.
The Nazis did not want highly emotional scenes at the train stations and often did not allow the parents onto the platform to say their goodbyes to their beloved children. Their intimate goodbyes instead had to be said in the waiting rooms. Moreover, the departure photographs or, more precisely, the last photographs of the children in their homelands were taken before they reached the train stations. The children had their passport photographs taken for their travel documents, they also in some cases took photos of their parents on their final outings in their homelands, and the children took with them family albums to look back upon in better times.
Two photographs and their captions stand out. One is a little girl looking down at the tracks as she holds her hand to the train window; in the background we see a woman. The other shows a woman standing with her arms at her side next to a train. The first caption reads “she pressed her hand against the window until her mother was gone”. The second reads “the train didn’t stop […] She watched him leave, knowing she never would…” – the sentence ends there. It is rather incongruous that these photographs call for empathy and compassion at a time when Jewish people are facing discrimination and violence around the world. Since 7th October 2023 Jewish memorials and cemeteries, places of worship and businesses, and above all Jews themselves have been attacked. The Kindertransport is being dramatized for viewer consumption, but this does not necessarily result in actual understanding or care for Jewish people.
The fake photographs also extend to arrival scenes where we see children hanging out of a train window with their suitcases. The Kindertransport is simplified into sombre scenes of departure and arrival. Yet if you look deep into the images, all the faces appear somewhat expressionless. The mouths are straight, or, at times, slightly pulled down at the sides. There is no physicality, no real emotion. It all seems forced and staged. The viewer is being asked to engage in the emotional side of this story without the emotion even being presented.
While I was recently filming at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London (WHL) for my work at the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) I had the opportunity to see the first real photographs of the Kindertransport. One photograph takes you inside the Kindertransport as it shows you the children inside a train carriage. This is a rare and unique visualization because it is THE Kindertransport image – the children on the train during their journey. This is not a departure scene but a transfer scene at the Dutch border where the children felt free and away from harm. The German guards had departed the train, and the children are pictured smiling at the photographer. It shows their relief.
The photographs at the WHL also present the children’s medical checks upon arrival, their first meals, their first childhood moments in the UK at play (football and darts), children sleeping upon arrival, and policemen standing by the children. There are also adults holding some of the younger children in Holland. These photos are not staged. The photographer/s seem to have been observing the children and spontaneously capturing many different moments with many different emotions on display from exhaustion to a cheeky smile. These photos also show the different age ranges of the children. There is not the same obsession with very small children like there is in the AI photographs.
Some of the most striking photographs are those in Picture Post by Gerti Deutsch and Kurt Hutton who were refugees themselves. They may have been reflecting upon their own experiences of exile as they photographed the children adapting to a new way of life while trying to hold on to the old one. In their photographs at Dovercourt, Harwich the children are still wearing their tags with their Kindertransport numbers on. The children were not named for fear of their safety, and their family’s safety at home in continental Europe. They were unknown in a way. These children who were photographed have become part of the historical record. Their images were even used in newspapers and adverts to inspire the British public to donate and even foster them.
That is where the story may have ended. We may have never known who the children were pictured in these photographs had not some children – now adults – recognized themselves when they saw the images years later. Many though have longed to see a photograph of themselves on the Kindertransport. Some knew that photographs were taken of them and they would like to see them again. Others have spent a lifetime trying to see if they were photographed, if their journey was documented. These photographs would be a confirmation and affirmation that the Kindertransport happened to them. That they were a part of it, especially if nothing else exists.
This is why the discovery of the Kindertransport lists was so important. Now I can look at the lists, identify the child’s number, and find them in a photograph. That is exactly what I did at the WHL. Over 80 years on from the Kindertransport we are just beginning to read the photographs. Even when we have had photographs of the Kindertransport, there has been a mystery around them as we did not always know who the children were. Many of the photographs we have are of the first transports only so there are many Kinder who were never photographed. Likewise, there were few chaperones photographed too. In some cases, there are no photographs of some of the children’s families to look back upon as these were destroyed during the Second World War. Thus, any photograph is precious to a survivor, and their family as so much was taken from them.
The AI photographs are suggesting something which is not there in the historical record – detailed scenes of departure. There are no disclaimers to state that the images try to imagine what this moment may have looked it. They do not symbolically try to understand the story or to reflect upon the tensions between the Gestapo, the parents, the children, and the chaperones. The children in these fake images do not even look into their parent’s eyes. Instead, they have no agency, no reactions even. This is something being done to them but in the real photographs their personalities still come through. Furthermore, the image of the train has to depicted in all these photographs even though in some cases the children travelled via ship and plane. I hope that, through education and policy making, these AI photographs are labelled as such and do not continue to misrepresent the history and memory of the Kindertransport.
