Night of the Broken Glass and the Kindertransport

By Fritz Voll

A Mission to Save Jewish Children

"Reichskristallnacht," Night of the Broken Glass, November 9, 1938, was a turning point in the fate of Germany"s Jews. The synagogues had been burned, Jewish shops ransacked and residences plundered. More than 20,000 Jews had been rounded up and imprisoned. Others were murdered on the streets. Jewish family bank accounts were frozen and Jewish schools closed. Many families began to turn all their thoughts on escape, especially on saving the children.

An English relief effort provided the so-called Kindertransport, that over nine months took some 9,300, mostly Jewish children, from Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia to England. The children had to go without their parents and lived with strangers, waiting for the Nazi madness to pass. They did not know that only one in ten would ever see their parents again. Many of the younger ones did not even know why they had to leave their parents. The older ones were glad to flee the isolation from other kids and the constant harassment from teachers, other children and neighbors. In England some of them were placed in well-to-do families, others in modest homes and many had to move a few times. They had to learn English and adjust to the life of their new families. For a few years they were able to write to and receive letters from their parents. But in the early 1940s that also ended and there was absolute silence.

Besides a number of books about the Kindertransport there has so far been only one documentary film about the rescue effort, "My Knees Were Jumping: Remembering the Kindertransport." A film by Melissa Hacker (1995). Another documentary is in preparation for release in 2000 that has the working title, "Until We Meet Again: Stories of the Kindertransport." The film’s producer is Deborah Oppenheimer. Her mother had been 11 years old when her parents sent her away on a Kindertransport train. She never saw them again. The writer and director of the film is Mark Jonathan Harris, who won an Oscar for his Holocaust documentary "The Long Way Home."

The filmmakers were able to persuade the Kindertransport Association to mail out an invitation to send materials and memories. They then reviewed hundreds of old diaries, photographs, documents letters, memoirs and testimonies of participants in the Kindertransport. They also filmed the train route from Berlin to Holland and the boat crossing to Norwich.

It is not hard to imagine the trauma these children suffered and at that time there were no professional counsellors available. Many have broken their long years of silence and have written their memories. The few, who found their parents alive, often wanted to stay with their foster parents because they could not communicate well in German anymore. One lady remembers being pulled out of the train by her father only to end up in a concentration camp where she survived. Norbert Wollheim, one of the persons interviewed shortly before his death, had taken part in the organization of the Kindertransport in Berlin. His own wife and child died only a few years later in Auschwitz.

Many of the children of those who were part of the Kindertransport want to learn about the stories of their parents and do not want them to be lost when they die. These stories are also part of the Holocaust and should never be forgotten.