The Kindertransport in British Historical Memory Caroline Sharples
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The Kindertransport in British Historical Memory Caroline Sharples The Kindertransport holds a key position within British public narratives of the Holocaust. It is frequently presented in terms of a self-congratulatory narrative which emphasises British humanitarian traditions and offers a heroic tale of derring-do on the eve of war. The fact that this was the only country to adopt such measures in the aftermath of Kristallnacht adds to the mythologised image of Britain ‘standing alone’ against the National Socialist menace. Such representations follow in the wake of a longstanding celebratory historiography. It is only in more recent years that a more critical analysis of the scheme has emerged, with new works pointing to the limits of British immigration policy and the problems inherent within the programme itself, including abuse and exploitation. This article examines why the Kindertransport occupies such a prominent place within British historical consciousness. It identifies persistent silences within its representation as well as new developments that have occurred through more recent historical research. These individuals are true British heroes and a source of national pride for all of us. We pay tribute to them for the inspiration they provide now and for future generations to come. – Prime Minister Gordon Brown, 10 March 2010.1 In April 2009, the then British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, returned from an emotionally-charged trip to the former Nazi ex- termination site at Auschwitz determined to pay testament not only to the suffering of millions, but also the ‘sacrifice and service’ of those who tried to alleviate it.2 In addition to pledging financial support to help maintain the memorial site at Auschwitz, Mr. Brown also came away announcing his backing for a proposed ‘Hero of the Holocaust’ medal for British individuals who aided European Jews during the Second World War. Less than a year later, these awards were, indeed, bestowed upon 28 Britons including Princess Alice of Greece who aided orphans and sheltered three Jewish women during that country’s occupation, and Major Frank Foley, a spy in the British embassy in Berlin who issued thousands of false visas to Jews. Among the two surviving recipients was Nicholas Winton, whose name is indelibly associated with the rescue of over 600 Jewish children from Czechos- lovakia in 1939 as part of the Kindertransports.3 16 Caroline Sharples Indeed, recent years have seen a variety of awards being presented to the man whom Tony Blair famously dubbed ‘Britain’s Schindler’, a term echoed persistently in virtually all press coverage of Winton. In 2002, Winton received a knighthood in the Queen’s New Year Honours List and he has become the subject of several doc- umentaries relating to the refugee programme.4 Winton has come to personify the Kindertransport; Tony Kushner suggests he has become the ‘archetypal figure’ of the Christian rescuer.5 Moreover, it can be argued that the increased recognition of his courageous work, by former refugees and both British and foreign heads of state alike, is typical of a wider, continuing public fascination with the scheme. Since the turn of the century, there have been numerous examples of the Kindertransport’s resonance within British memorial culture. In 1999, a plaque was unveiled outside the House of Com- mons by the former Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, inscribed ‘in deep gratitude to the people and Parliament of the United Kingdom for saving the lives of 10,000 Jewish and other children who fled to this country from Nazi persecution on the Kindertransport, 1938-1939’. In 2000, the scheme was the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary, Into the Arms of Strangers produced by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer, and two separate memorials have since been created for Liverpool Street Station through which so many of these refugee children passed: Flor Kent’s Für das Kind (2003) which is now housed within the Imperial War Museum, and Frank Meisler’s 2006 bronze sculpture of five refugee children which continues to look down on commuters today. The Kindertransport has also proved an integral part of Holocaust Memorial Day since its inception in 2001, and was particularly prominent during the 2003 commem- orations when the theme was ‘Children and the Holocaust’. The Kindertransport, then, can clearly be seen as occupying a crucial place within Britain’s historical consciousness. It should be noted that this intense level of interest in the Kindertransport is not occurring in a vacuum but can, perhaps, be seen as a response to the sheer outpouring of memoirs and oral testimony from the refugees themselves that has occurred over the past two decades in Britain. Put simply, we now have more information than ever before on what life was like for the children who fled to these shores in the aftermath of Kristallnacht.6 These former refugees are themselves extremely well-organised, holding regular meetings and reunions, a factor which stems back to the fiftieth anniversary of the scheme in 1989. Arguably, that occasion produced a sense of urgency .