We discuss the Kindertransport program through which around 10,000 children were saved from Nazi occupied Europe from November 1938 until German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940.

Image

A picture of one of the tags that children wore around their neck when arriving in Britain, as a way for them to meet with their foster families. This numbered identification tag was worn by Henry Schmelzer when he was a member of a Kindertransport sent from Austria to England in December 1938.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Provenance: Henry Schmelzer
Source Record ID: Collections: 1989.215.2

Errata

Kristallnacht started on November 9th 1938. The Beer Hall Putsch started on November 8th 1923.

Bibliography

“A Bipartisan Move”, Washington Post, 14 Feb. 1939; see also “Clerics Ask US Help for German Child Refugees”, Newport News [Virginia] Daily Press, 10 Jan. 1939.

Rymph, C. (2020). American child welfare and the Wagner-Rogers Bill of 1939. Jewish Historical Studies, 51(1). https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.jhs.2020v51.019

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Vintage Press, 1997.

Escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport (Encounter: Narrative Nonfiction Stories). Emma Carlson Berne. Capstone Press. February 2017.

In America 1933-45: Response to the Holocaust, Rescuing the Future

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport. Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer. Bloomsbruy Publishing PLC. November 2017

“Introduction to the Holocaust.” Holocaust Encyclopedia

Jeffery Gurock (Editor). America, American Jews, and the Holocaust: American Jewish History. Taylor and Francis, 1998.

Judy Bolton- Fasman. “And Then: The U.S.’s Culpability in the Holocaust”

The Night of Broken Glass: Eyewitness Accounts of Kristallnacht. Edited by Uta Gerhardt and Thomas Karlauf. Translated by Robber Simmons and Nick Sommers. Polity Press, 2009.

Interviews from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C.

RG Number: RG50.614.0038. Oral History Interview with Norbert Wollheim. The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust memorial Museum.

RG Number: RG-90.008.0012, Oral History Interview with Ernest Goodman, The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Museum, Washington D.C.

RG Number: RG-90.008.0027. Oral History Interview with Ralph Samuel. The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C.

RG Number: RG-90.008.0035. Oral History Interview with Gita Rossi Zalmons, The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C.

The Kindertransport - When Britain Came to the Rescue