THE KINDERTRANSPORT: HISTORY AND MEMORY Jennifer A. Norton B.A., Australian National University, 1976 THESIS Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in HISTORY at CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO FALL 2010 © 2010 Jennifer A. Norton ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii THE KINDERTRANSPORT: HISTORY AND MEMORY A Thesis by Jennifer A. Norton Approved by: __________________________________, Committee Chair Dr. Katerina Lagos __________________________________, Second Reader Dr. Mona Siegel ____________________________ Date iii Student: Jennifer A. Norton I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format manual, and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to be awarded for the thesis. __________________________, Department Chair ___________________ Dr. Aaron Cohen Date Department of History iv Abstract of THE KINDERTRANSPORT: HISTORY AND MEMORY by Jennifer A. Norton The Kindertransport, a British scheme to bring unaccompanied mostly Jewish refugee children threatened by Nazism to Great Britain, occupies a unique place in modern British history. In the months leading up to the Second World War, it brought over 10,000 children under the age of seventeen into the United Kingdom without their parents, to be fostered by British families and re-emigrated when they turned eighteen. Mostly forgotten in the post-war period, the Kindertransport was rediscovered in the late 1980s when a fiftieth anniversary reunion was organized. Celebrated as an unprecedented act of benevolent rescue by a generous British Parliament and people, the Kindertransport has been subjected to little academic scrutiny. The salvation construct assumes that the Kinder, who were mostly silent for fifty years, experienced little hardship and that their survival more than compensated for any trauma they suffered. This study challenges the prevailing triumphant narrative and its underlying assumptions by examining the government policies that allowed the children to come to England and the effects of these policies on the children‘s lives. The British government‘s decision to bring only children and not their parents left a majority of them orphans after their families were murdered in the Holocaust. Exacerbating the trauma of separation was the government decree that the program be entirely privately organized and funded and that the children‘s welfare be overseen by non-governmental agencies, which were ill-equipped for such a task. Relying upon Kinder testimony, the official documentation of the rescuers and parliamentary debate proceedings, this study analyzes and contests the redemptory narrative and examines how it has been shaped and reinforced by the government, the rescuers and the Kinder themselves in the seventy years since the program‘s inception. __________________________, Committee Chair Dr. Katerina Lagos _______________________ Date v To the Kinder and the families they lost. Home is where some people know who you are the rescue was impersonal it was no one‘s concern what use we made of the years given us one should not ask of children who find their survival natural gratitude for being where ten thousand others have come too Karen Gershon The Children’s Exodus vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study would not have been possible without the testimony of the Kinder; to them, my profound gratitude for sharing their often-painful life stories. Special thanks to those with whom I personally interacted and who shared their memories with me: Ralph Samuel, Ellen Fletcher, Leo Horowitz, Bea Steinberg, Marie Donner, Stephanie Smith and Helga Newman. Thank you to my wonderful thesis advisors, Dr. Katerina Lagos and Dr. Mona Siegel, for their unwavering encouragement and guidance. They have challenged me to become a better writer and historian and have helped me believe in my academic dreams. Dr. Siegel, thank you for introducing me to History and Memory, and Dr. Lagos, for helping me discover my area of expertise. I would also like to thank Dr. Palermo Dr. Ettinger and Dr. Marashi for stimulating seminars and discussions. I am indebted to Dr. Palermo for his willingness to work with me while I was in Poland. His help and the Craft Scholarship grant enabled me to complete my program on time. The staff at the Weiner Library, London, deserve special acknowledgment especially archivist Howard Falksohn, who helped me enormously. To my family and friends, I appreciate your forbearance while I researched and talked endlessly about the Kindertransport. Tom, miłością mojego życia, dziękuję za wszystko. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Dedication ................................................................................................................................ vi Acknowledgments.................................................................................................................. vii List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................ ix Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION …………... .……………………………………………………….. 1 Challenging the Myth .................................................................................................. 5 2. THE KINDER IN SCHOLARLY LITERATURE ............................................................ 9 3. THE KINDER ................................................................................................................. 29 Parting and Separation .............................................................................................. 31 A New Life in Great Britain ....................................................................................... 38 The Consequences of Separation ................................................................................... 85 4. GOVERNMENT POLICY AND THE KINDERTRANSPORT ....................................... 92 British Refugee Policy .............................................................................................. 93 Kristallnacht and the Kindertransport ......................................................................... 106 Parliament and Child Migration .................................................................................. 110 Parliament and the Kinder ....................................................................................... 117 Postwar Perspectives ............................................................................................... 123 5. THE RESCUERS .......................................................................................................... 129 The Anglo-Jewish Community and the Refugees .................................................... 131 The Refugee Children‘s Movement ............................................................................ 140 Rescuers Outside the Movement .................................................................................. 160 6. CONCLUSION: THE TRIUMPHANT NARRATIVE ................................................ 170 The Emerging Myth: 1938-1945 .............................................................................. 171 The Kinder and Narrative Construction ...................................................................... 183 Summary ................................................................................................................. 192 Bibliography......................................................................................................................... 195 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AJR Association of Jewish Refugees BCRC British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia BOD Board of Deputies of British Jews CBF Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief [Formerly the Central British Fund for German Jewry] FAR Movement for the Care of Children from Germany First Annual Report 1938-1939 HHC Hansard, House of Commons HHL Hansard, House of Lords JRC Jewish Refugees Committee KTA Kindertransport Association MCCG Movement for the Care of Children from Germany MP Member of Parliament RCM Refugee Children‘s Movement ROK Reunion of the Kindertransport SAR Refugee Children‘s Movement Second Annual Report 1940 VHA Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation Institute ix 1 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION On September 4, 2009, a vintage British steam train carrying twenty-two elderly men and women pulled into Liverpool Street Station in London, England. There the passengers had an emotional reunion with Nicholas Winton, the frail 100-year-old man whom they credited with saving their lives seventy years earlier. The passengers and their relatives were completing a four-day journey that began in Prague, reenacting the passage of the last of the eight children‘s transports organized by Winton in 1939.1 Winton, then a twenty-nine year old London stockbroker, devoted the better part of a year to arranging the emigration of 669 Czech Jewish children whose parents, fearing their fate at the hands of the Nazis, were anxious to send their children to England. ―Winton‘s children‖ were among the more than 10,000 Jewish young people from Nazi controlled Europe who were allowed into England as unaccompanied transmigrants in the months following Kristallnacht, a movement that became known as the Kindertransport. Knighted in 2002, Sir Nicholas Winton, now the most recognized symbol of the child rescue program, was utterly unknown to the British public until about twenty years ago. Failing to elicit any interest in his papers after the war, Winton stored the scrapbook