1 - the j kc - the j kc · march 26 & 31, april 2 at 7:30 p.m. march 27 & april 3 at 2 p.m....

- 1 - Kindertransport Resource Guide

White Theatre

March 26 & 31, April 2 at 7:30 p.m.March 27 & April 3 at 2 p.m.March 30 at 9 a.m.

Rated PG

By Diane SamuelsDirected by Darren Sextro

Presented by Special Arrangement with Susan Schulman, Literary Agency, LLC

This production partially underwritten by the Center Season Patrons Fund

Resource Guide

Compiled by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and Hannah MichelsonEdited by Tracie HolleyArt Direction by Hannah Michelson

Cast

Helga Elizabeth A. HillmanEva Margaret VeglahnEvelyn Ellie DeShonFaith Jessica FranzRatcatcher Justin SpeerLil Pam Haskin

Production Staff

Director Darren SextroAsst. Director Christina SchaferProduction Stage Mgr Catherine LewisAssistant Stage Mgr Kim KershnerScenic Designer Shane RowseLighting/Sound Design Jayson ChandleySound FX Design Roni LancasterCostume Design Julia RasProperties Design Bill Christie

Special thanks to the staff of the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and to Esther Bergh.

Credits & Sources

Photos courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Maps of Greater Germany, September 1939 and Europe, 1939 courtesy of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

The views or opinions expressed in this guide, and the context in which the images are used, do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of, nor imply approval or endorsement by, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Other sources: Shared Experience Education Pack by Gillian King; Hall & Childs Education Pack

Kindertransport About the Show

White Theatre

Tickets: (913) 327.8054 theJKC.org/boxoffice


The state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims – six million were murdered. Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), people with mental and physical disabilities, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi Germany.

(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Between December 1938 and May 1940 nearly 10,000 refugee children, 7,500 of whom were Jewish, were relocated from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to Great Britain. This effort was called the Kindertransport.

The Kindertransport represented not only the generosity of the British government and people, but also a significant example of Jewish pro-activity in their own rescue and great family sacrifice. Jewish parents, with the foresight to see the potential danger of Nazi policy even before the outbreak of World War II, made the difficult decision to separate from their children in the hopes that they would be safer with strangers in a foreign country.

The first transport to leave Germany was composed of orphans from Berlin and landed in Hartwich, England on December 2, 1938. Later transports, which were organized by the Jewish community, gave priority to children whose emigration was urgent because they or their parents were in concentration camps or their families were no longer able to support them. Priority was also given to homeless children and orphans.

About half of the children who came to Britain were placed with foster families. The children’s experiences varied - many found genuine support and affection with their foster families and integrated into the family. Others were very unhappy. Life in Great Britain represented a significant cultural shift from central Europe both in social practice and language. There was often very little support for the practice of religious or cultural Judaism, though the children were otherwise well-treated with access to education and basic necessities.

The children who were not placed with foster families, generally the older children, were more likely to live in hostels or on farms. In 1940, as the war reached Britain, approximately 1,000 of these older children from the Kindertransport were imprisoned as enemy aliens.

Having left home with few belongings and financial resources, but with a strong hope of reunification, the children maintained contact with their parents. Initially, letters still moved between countries and families wrote of hopes and plans for their future together. The beginning of the war in 1939 made communication much more sporadic and difficult when the German government restricted the delivery of mail to and from Jews. By 1942, almost no communication was possible as deportations began to death camps in the East.

At the conclusion of the war in 1945, the Kinder waited to be reunited with their parents. For most, that reunion never happened. For a lucky minority, a parent or other family member who had survived the Holocaust came to find them. Reunions were not always happy as children had grown and changed and parents were also changed by their experiences. Many Kinder, usually those with no living relatives, made the decision to become citizens of Great Britain, while others emigrated to Israel and the United States.

Definitions The Holocaust

Kindertransport

- 4 -Kindertransport Resource Guide

1938 January German Jews must turn in their passports. Only those who are about to leave Germany will be issued new

passports.

January 5 The government revokes all legal name changes granted to German Jews before January 30, 1933.

March 13 Austria is made a part of Germany in an event known as the Anschluss. All laws against German Jews are immediately applied to Austrian Jews.

March 29 Jewish social welfare, relief, and charity organizations and institutions lose their tax-exempt status.

April 26 The Decree for the Registration of Jewish Property • Requires Jews to value and register all property with the authorities, including all jewelry, artwork, furs,

and luxury items worth more than 5000 Marks.

• Forbids the sale or lease of property so registered.

May All Romanian Jews living in Germany are expelled.

May 28 Reinhard Heydrich orders male Soviet Jews living in Germany to be imprisoned in concentration camps until they can prove they will be leaving the country.

June 14 Jewish businesses must be registered. A business is considered “Jewish” if even one of the following is the case:

• The owner is Jewish

• A partner is Jewish

• A member of the board of directors (as of January 1, 1938) is Jewish

• Jews own more than one-fourth of the shares or have more than one-half of the votes

• A branch of a Jewish business is considered Jewish if the manager is a Jew.

June 14 The Fourth Supplementary Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law (one of the Nuremberg Laws) forbids Jewish doctors to treat non-Jewish patients after September 30.

July 6 A law provides that marriages between Jews and non-Jews may be annulled.

July 6 – 16 Representatives from 32 countries meet at Evian, France, to discuss what to do about Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria. Most refuse to allow any more Jewish immigration, even though the Nazis are trying to force them out.

July 16 A law is passed listing all of the commercial service businesses which Jews must now close down without compensation for any financial losses. Among them are:

• guard services

• brokerage agencies

• marriage agencies catering to non-Jews

• travelling salesmen

• real estate agencies

• credit information bureaus

• visitor’s guides

July 23 Jews must apply to the police for special identification cards by December 31. Every Jew over the age of 15 must carry such a card at all times.

July 25 Jewish doctors lose their licenses and must close their practices, without compensation for financial losses.

July 25 The first eviction law against German Jews lets non-Jewish landlords cancel leases on Jewish doctors’ apartments.

August 1 Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi official in the SS, establishes the Office of Jewish Emigration to speed up the process of forcing the Jews to leave.

August 17 German Jews are required to change their names by January 1939.

• Men must add the middle name Israel and women must add the middle name Sarah.

• Parents of newly born Jewish children are limited to picking names from an “approved list” compiled by the Ministry of the Interior. All names on the list reflect the lowest of antisemitic stereotypes.

The Third Reich 1938 & 1939


• All name changes and new names must be recorded on birth and marriage certificates by the local Order Police (an organization similar to our National Guard).

• All name changes and new names must appear on all personal documents, court records, and official correspondence.

Sept. 16 A Berlin court rules that the laws protecting non-Jews who rent homes or apartments do not apply to Jews.

Sept. 27 Jewish lawyers must close their practices by November 30 in the German territories and by December 31 in Austria. They would not be compensated for financial losses.

Sept. 29 England and France sign the Munich Agreement, giving Germany the Sudetenland region in Czechoslovakia.

October 5 German authorities, honoring a request from Swiss authorities, stamp a large red letter J on the passports belonging to Jews, in order to keep them from trying to smuggle themselves into Switzerland.

October 10 The German army occupies the Sudetenland.

• All laws against German Jews are immediately applied to the Sudeten Jews.

• The Germans expel several thousand Sudeten Jews to Czechoslovakia, from where they are sent to Hungary, then back to Germany, and then back again to Czechoslovakia. At one point, they are placed on a riverboat on the Danube and kept from anchoring on any river bank. Finally, in freezing weather, they are forced into tent camps in a bleak no-man’s area between Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Oct 27-28 More than 54,000 Jews who are Polish citizens living in Germany are expelled from the country and forcibly transported to the Polish border. The Poles deny them entry. About 17,000 are left stranded in terrible conditions in a camp near the frontier town of Zbasyn, Poland. The rest are allowed to return to Germany.

Nov. 7 In Paris, Herschel Grynszpan, a 17 year old Jewish boy whose parents are among the Jews taken to Poland, assassinates Ernst Vom Rath, the First Secretary of the German Embassy. The Nazis will publicize this event as a pretext for Kristallnacht.

Nov. 9 Reinhard Heydrich orders the Gestapo to seize the records of every Jewish community in the Reich, as well as the records and archives of synagogues, community organizations, and cultural institutions. They will be kept in Frankfurt at the newly established Research Institute on the Jewish Question.

Nov. 9-10 Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) in Germany and Austria: a pogrom of terror, violence, and vandalism, in the course of which:

• more than 200 synagogues are set afire or completely destroyed

• 7,500 Jewish shops and businesses are vandalized

• 30,000 Jewish men are imprisoned in German concentration camps (Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen)

• Jewish homes are ransacked, burned, or destroyed

• nearly 100 Jews are killed

Nov. 12 The Measure for the Elimination of Jews from the German Economy bans all Jewish economic life in Germany as of January 1, 1939and completes the economic segregation of German Jewry.

• All businesses – whether large or small – still owned by Jews must be transferred to non-Jews.

• All Jewish managers and workers must be fired.

• All Jewish stockholders lose their right to vote in their companies.

• Jews can hold only those jobs where they work or practice with other German Jews.

• Jews have “to sell their enterprises, as well as any land, stocks, jewels, and artworks.”

Nov. 12 Other severe measures are passed, as well.

• Insurance companies estimate that damage to Jewish property during Kristallnacht will cost 25 million Reichsmarks (about $10 million at the time). The government lets them pay the claims to the Jews, then takes the money from them

• The Jewish community is fined 1 billion Reichsmarks and forced to pay for repairing the damage they suffered during Kristallnacht).

• Jews are banned from resorts and beaches.

• Jews are denied access to cultural institutions.

• Jewish publications and newspapers are banned.

Nov. 15 All Jewish pupils are expelled from public schools. They may attend only segregated Jewish schools.


Nov. 19 Jews are excluded from public relief and the general welfare system.

Nov. 28 The Minister of the Interior allows all local officials to bar Jews from certain public places and to limit their use of others to a few hours a day.

Nov. 29 Jews may not keep carrier pigeons.

Dec. 2, 1938 The Kindertransport: After Kristallnacht, 9,354 children from & May 1940 Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, most of them Jewish, are

granted safe haven in Great Britain under the auspices of the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany. Most of these children will never see their parents again.

Dec. 2-3 All Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia are required to register with the police.

Dec. 3 Heinrich Himmler forbids Jews to have driver’s licenses.

Dec. 6 By order of Berlin’s police chief, Jewish residents of Berlin are banned from

• theatres, cinemas, night clubs, concert halls, convention halls, museums, fairs, and exhibition halls

• sports facilities – including ice-skating rinks and public and private swimming pools

• city districts containing most of the government offices, major cultural institutions, and public monuments

Dec. 6 The Japanese open the harbor of Shanghai (China), which they control, to Jewish refugees without visas or special papers, despite American, British, and French efforts to keep them out. The Japanese also allow the refugees long transit stays in Japan. Shanghai becomes a refuge for nearly seventeen thousand German and Polish Jews.

Dec. 8 Jewish scholars and researchers are barred from university libraries.

Dec. 8 The Fight Against the Gypsy Nuisance, a circular issued by Heinrich Himmler, requires that “all settled and non-settled Gypsies, and also all vagrants living a Gypsy-like existence are to be registered with the Reich Criminal Police Office – Reich Central Office for the Fight Against the Gypsy Nuisance.”

Dec. 20 Jews may no longer train to be pharmacists.

Dec. 20 All unemployed Jews who are fit for work must register for forced labor, where they will be kept segregated from both the general community and non-Jewish laborers.

Dec. 21 Jewish women are barred from being midwives.

Dec. 28 Another series of segregation measures is enacted on the national level.

• Jews are barred from all

� sleeping and dining cars on trains.

� public swimming pools

� hotels that cater to Nazi Party members.

• Jews may not

� enter certain places

� show themselves in public at certain times of day

� Non-Jewish women married to Jewish men are encouraged to divorce their husbands or suffer “the disadvantages” imposed on Jews.

� Jews will gradually be moved out of their homes and apartments and forced into houses owned and inhabited only by Jews.

• Income tax exemptions for Jewish children are abolished.

• Children are defined as persons who are not Jews.

December 12, 1938. A Jewish youth, wearing a numbered tag, sits on a staircase with her head in her hands after her arrival in England with the second Kindertransport.


1939 January 17 The Eighth Supplementary Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law bars Jews from engaging in all remaining

para-medical and health-related occupations: dentistry, pharmacy, and veterinary medicine.

January 24 Herman Goring appoints Reinhard Heydrich as chief of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. The SS now have the power to make decisions about all matters having to do with German Jews.

January 30 Adolf Hitler, speaking publicly in the Reichstag, declares that, if war breaks out, the Jews will be annihilated.

February 10 The Evangelical Church of Thuringia bans its baptized Jews (laity and clergy) from its churches. By July, this ban has spread to the Evangelical Churches in other parts of Germany.

March 4 Unemployed Jewish men are made to do hard menial public labor and kept segregated from non-Jewish laborers.

March 15 Germany takes over Bohemia and Moravia in Czechoslovakia and occupies Prague. All laws against German Jews are immediately applied to Bohemian and Moravian Jews.

March 25 All German children between the ages of 10 and 18 (except those labeled non-Aryans) must join the Hitler Youth.

April Mass arrests of Jehovah’s Witnesses throughout Germany. Only those who renounce their faith are freed.

April 30 Laws leading to the eviction of German Jews from their homes and their segregation in so-called “Jews’ houses.”

• Local authorities (cities, towns, and villages) may restrict Jews to specific houses or neighborhoods.

• Non-Jewish landlords may evict Jewish tenants from their houses and apartments if they can prove that those tenants will be able to find another place to live that is owned and occupied by Jews.

• This law enables local authorities to force Jewish landlords and Jewish tenants living in buildings owned by Jews to

� register any vacant rooms or space in their houses and apartments

� rent those spaces to other Jews who can then be thrown out of non-Jewish owned houses and apartments

May The general population census enables the government to complete the registration of all German Jews and half-Jews. Local police in each village, town, and city are required to

• make sure that the census cards of those considered Jews or “half-Jews” are marked with the letter J.

• send copies of all census lists to the appropriate SS office in Berlin.

May 13 - The voyage of the St. Louis, an ocean liner belonging to the German Hamburg-America Line. Of its 936 June 21 passengers, 930 are Jews fleeing Germany, many of them families with children. 907 of these have Cuban

landing certificates, but no visas. Arriving in Havana Harbor on May 27, those without visas are denied entry, and the ship is forced to leave on June 2. It drifts up and down the coast of Florida for a few days, but neither Cuba nor the United States will admit the refugees. The ship turns back to Hamburg on June 9. Between June 13 and June 14, the Netherlands, England, Belgium, and France agree to accept the refugees. Ultimately, almost 600 of them will be killed in the Holocaust.

June Two thousand Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) from Austria are deported to concentration camps.

June – July Adolf Hitler directs Dr. Leonardo Conti to develop a euthanasia program for adults labeled “genetically diseased.”

July 4 The Tenth Supplementary Decree under the Reich Citizenship Law (a Nuremberg Law) establishes the Reich Association of Jews in Germany. This organization is

• run by representatives of the German-Jewish community.

• supervised and controlled by Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SS and the Gestapo.

• responsible for all matters having to do with German Jews:

� organizing and carrying out the Nazis’ forced emigration schemes.

� regulating separate social welfare and educational institutions for German Jews

July 21 Adolf Eichmann establishes a branch of the Office of Jewish Emigration in Prague, to speed up the process of forcing Czechoslovakian Jews into leaving the country.

August 23 Germany and the Soviet Union sign a Non-Aggression Pact. This pact will assure Soviet neutrality in exchange for territory when the Germans invade Poland

Sept. 1 Germany invades Poland. World War II begins.


Between December 2, 1938, and September 2, 1939, through the efforts of the Refugee Children’s Movement, chaired by Lord Gorell, 9,354 unaccompanied refugee children from Central Europe arrived in Great Britain in what has come to be known as the Kindertransport. Most of them, fully seventy percent, were Jewish children between the ages of four and seventeen.

The terrors of Kristallnacht and the expansion of the Nazi campaign to segregate, isolate, and impoverish German, Austrian, and Czechoslovakian Jewry had caused their frantic parents to make an extreme and, until then, unthinkable sacrifice. They sent their children away to a completely foreign country in the hope of preserving their lives, even though they might never see them again. In the words of one young German Jewish girl:

I want you to imagine my parents’ predicament, as well as that of thousands of other parents. Mine had to choose between putting two young children, ages eight and ten, onto a train, knowing only that they were going to England and might never be seen by them again, or keeping the children with them, thus hindering their own chances to escape. The other possibility was for all to be deported to a concentration camp.

The Kindertransport was made possible by a change in the British government’s immigration policy in the wake of Kristallnacht. On November 21, 1938, the House of Commons passed a bill permitting Jewish children under the age of eighteen to enter the country without passports. However, this bill was not without conditions. Each child had to be healthy. Each child’s maintenance had to be guaranteed by individual sponsors, who also had to post a fifty-pound bond – then a considerable sum – to insure their charges’ eventual re-emigration. Nor was it without complications. Although passports were not required, each child still had to submit a health certificate, a photograph, and an application to the British Home Office, which checked the documents and sent them to the Record Office for entry permits. In turn, the Record Office sent the documents to Passport Control to be stamped and sent back to the children’s places of origin.

Along with the Refugee Children’s Movement, which had been created for just this purpose, an entire network of individuals and organizations came together to expedite this process – among them, the Quakers, prominent British Jews like the Rothschilds, and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. They pressured government officials to speed up the paperwork. They located sponsors and housing. They arranged for secular and religious education and job training. They even got the Lord Baldwin Fund, originally organized to provide financial aid to adult Jewish refugees from Germany, to put up the money for the bonds. In addition, on behalf of those children for whom foster homes could be found but no official sponsors or who had been brought to Great Britain as members of Youth Aliyah and other Zionist youth groups, they persuaded Parliament to pass the Guardianship Act, appointing Lord Gorell the collective sponsor.

Even so, the process used up precious time. Meanwhile, the applications kept piling up, always outstripping the supply of available placements. For example, in November of 1938, in Vienna alone, there remained 35,000 Jewish

A Brief History of the Kindertransport

December 2, 1938. Jewish refugee children, who are members of the first Kindertransport from Germany, arrive in Harwich, England. Among those pictured is Vera Ribertsky, sixth from the left.


children. Furthermore, everything had to be coordinated with the activities of the children’s emigration departments of the central Jewish organizations in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. These groups had to find the endangered children, divide the limited number of placements among them, and arrange their departures. Unfortunately, two additional complications made this already monumental task even more difficult. First, the organized Jewish communities in those countries were in great disarray – much of their leadership arrested, most of their records impounded, and all of their influence gone. Second, the German emigration officials whose permission was required for the children to leave and whose cooperation was important in arranging their departure, were members of the SS. As a result, organization was piecemeal, taking place on a city-by-city basis, with information too often spread by word of mouth, and travel arrangements subject to the whims of Nazi officials. For example, they often allowed the transports to leave only on Saturday, forcing observant Jewish families to violate their Sabbath, a day of rest when travel is forbidden. Also, they did not let the children take money or valuables out of the country, and limited them to only as much as they could carry, forcing them to leave behind books, toys, and mementos that might have comforted them during the long years of displacement and war.

The route to Great Britain usually involved a train trip through Germany to the port of Hamburg or through the Netherlands to the port of Hook, and then a steamship across the North Sea or a ferry across the English Channel. Because parents were not allowed beyond the waiting rooms in railroad stations, special chaperones, usually young Jewish men and women, accompanied the children to England and then returned to the Continent. When they arrived in Great Britain, the children were taken by another train to London, where they were first housed in special reception centers and then sent on to their foster placements.

Adjustment to new surroundings was not always easy. Although the Refugee Children’s Movement encouraged those children placed in individual private homes to integrate and assimilate as much as possible into their new environments, many children felt lonely and alienated. Youth Aliyah, however, sought to keep its charges together, and created a number of agricultural training centers where the young people lived, studied, and worked collectively. Many children placed individually eventually asked to join these centers in order to experience the companionship and strong Jewish identity values lacking in their foster placement surroundings.

The last Kindertransport from Germany arrived in Great Britain on September 2, 1939, the day after the Germans marched into Poland. On September 3, both Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, halting emigration from Germany and Austria. The final transport left the Netherlands on May 14, 1940. Most of the children never saw their parents again.

Circular label removed from the suitcase used by Margot Stern when she was sent on a Kindertransport to England


Annex - to incorporate (a country or other territory) within the domain of a state

Anschluss - the German annexation of Austria into the German Reich on March 13, 1938

Antisemitism/antisemitic - hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group

Aryan - used in Nazism to designate a supposed master race of non-Jewish Caucasians usually having Nordic features

Deportation - the removal from a country of an alien whose presence is unlawful or prejudicial

Emigration - to leave one’s place of residence or country to live elsewhere

Enemy aliens - an alien residing in a country at war with the one of which he or she is a citizen

Genocide - A term coined by historian Raphael Lemkin during World War II to describe the systematic and planned destruction of an entire religious, racial, national or ethnic group.

Gestapo - Acronym for Geheime Staatspolizei, meaning Secret State Police - a division of the SS

Haggadah – Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder

Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) – a Nazi youth auxiliary group established in 1926 for young boys. Membership became compulsory after 1939.

Immigration – the process of coming into a country of which one is not a native for permanent residence

Kindertransport (Children’s Transport) – informal name of a series of rescue efforts which brought thousands of refugee Jewish children to Great Britain from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940.

Kristallnacht - The Night of the Broken Glass. On this night, November 9, 1938, almost 200 synagogues were destroyed, over 8,000 Jewish shops were sacked and looted, and tens of thousands of Jews were removed to concentration camps.

Passover - a Jewish holiday beginning on the 14th of Nisan and commemorating the Hebrews’ liberation from slavery in Egypt

Propaganda - ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause; also: a public action having such an effect

Quakers - a popular name for a member of the Religious Society of Friends, a group instrumental in organizing and supporting the Kindertransport program

Refugee - one that flees; especially: a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution

Seder - a Jewish home or community service including a ceremonial dinner held on the first or first and second evenings of the Passover in commemoration of the exodus from Egypt

Grynszpan, Herschel (1921 – unknown) - A Polish Jewish youth in Paris. His concern for his parents’ fate led to his shooting of the third secretary Ernst vom Rath of the German Embassy in Paris. This provided an excuse for the staging of the Kristallnacht pogrom.

Hitler, Adolf (1889 - 1945) - Leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party) after World War I. As head of the Nazi party he was named Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. He quickly moved to consolidate power, eventually establishing a dictatorship.

Hartwich, England – point of arrival in Great Britain for Kindertransport children. From Hartwich, children with sponsors were transported to London to be placed with foster families. Children without sponsors were housed in a summer camp in Dovercourt Bay and in other facilities until foster families could be located.

Isle of Man – an island in the Irish Sea between Ireland and Great Britain where England housed enemy aliens beginning in 1940. Among those enemy aliens were nearly 1000 Kindertransport children.

Glossary Terms

People

Places


Ernst Winter (later Ernest) was born in Berlin in 1924. After Hitler’s rise to power, Ernest witnessed the mistreatment of Jewish neighbors, and saw his own family members separated. His older brother Avner was sent to Israel by his mother. His father died, leaving the family destitute. Ernst was sent to live in a Jewish children’s home. In 1938, he witnessed Kristallnacht. The children’s home staff realized that at age fourteen Ernest was vulnerable to arrest, and that his presence in the home could endanger the other children. When they heard of the British-sponsored Kindertransport coming through Berlin, they decided to send Ernst on it. It was a dangerous process, as Ernest had to travel through Berlin alone in order to ask his mother’s permission to leave and also to obtain an exit visa at the Police Station. He was allowed to leave, but never saw his mother again. After he left, she went into hiding, but was later captured and transported to Auschwitz.

Traveling out of Germany was perilous, with Gestapo checkpoints and harassment. When they arrived in the Netherlands, though, the children were welcomed at every station with food and encouragement. They left from the Hook of Holland to cross the rough seas of the English Channel by boat, and were welcomed in England.

The war began, and Ernest was sent by the Quakers to live on a farm. He worked on several different farms throughout the war, trying to earn enough money to join his brother in Israel, but was not adopted by any of the families. In March 1942, he and his brother both received a letter from Auschwitz asking for money for the release of their mother. Neither brother had the means to send money, which became a lifelong sorrow for both.

After the war’s end, Ernest converted to Christianity and earned a scholarship to an evangelical missionary training institute. He graduated at the top of his class, and went to Israel to reconnect with his brother. Ernst then emigrated to North America, where he reconnected with the former matron of the Jewish children’s home where he had lived as a child, who told him that every one of the children at the home had been killed on their way to the concentration camp.

True Story Ernst Winter

December 2, 1938. Members of the first Kindertransport arrive in Harwich, England. Among those pictured is Frances Rose, at the far left, and Ersnt (later Ernest) Winter (center).

LEFT Confirmation notice sent to Norbert Bikales by the Jewish Welfare and Youth Placement office telling him to report for the Kindertransport to France on July 3, 1939. RIGHT Passport issued to Eva Rosenbaum a few days before she left on a Kindertransport to England.


From Diane Samuels - The Author of Kindertransport

Spring 1993

Three incidents led me to write Kindertransport. The first was a discussion with a close friend, in her late twenties and born into a comfortable, secure home, who described her struggle to deal with the guilt of survival. Her father had been on the Kindertransport and I was struck by how her parent’s feelings had been passed down so fully to her. The second was the experience of another friend who, at her father’s funeral, overheard her mother recalling her time at Auschwitz. Until that moment she had no idea that her mother had been in a concentration camp. The third was the ashamed admission by a fifty-five year old woman on a television documentary about the Kindertransport, that the feeling she felt most strongly towards her dead parents was rage at their abandonment of her, even though that abandonment had saved her life. What is the cost of survival? What future grows out of a traumatized past?

Past and present are wound around each other throughout the play. They are not distinct but inextricably connected. The rerunning of what happened many years ago is not there to explain how things are now, but is a part of the inner life of the present.

I interviewed a number of the Kinder as part of my research. They were all very open about their lives and feelings. Many of the actual experiences are woven into the fabric of the play. Although Eva/Evelyn and her life are fictional, most of what happens to her did happen to someone, somewhere.

May 1999

Since the first production of Kindertransport at the Cockpit Theatre in London in 1993, the play has been performed in a vast array of places. It has had a flourishing life in the United States since it was produced off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York in 1994 and has enjoyed numerous productions, both amateur and professional, from Santa Cruz to Buffalo. More surprisingly, it won an array of prestigious awards for a production in Japan. It has been produced at the Market Theatre of Johannesburg in South Africa and toured Israel. I met an Israeli playwright and wondered aloud to her why it took a while for the play to be produced there. ‘Ah, in Israel’, she replied, ‘We have had enough of the Holocaust. We have other concerns we want to explore, we have done this enough.’ I in turn replied that the play is not about the Holocaust, not a history play at all, and certainly does explore territory to which Israelis can relate very directly: the question of how human beings survive after they have suffered deep emotional trauma and how the damage caused is passed onto the following generation. Also, at its heart, the play is about that universal and timeless aspect of human experience: the separation of a child from its parent. Every person on earth, whatever their age, can relate to that.

December 2, 1938. Jewish refugee children, who are members of the first Kindertransport from Germany, arrive in Harwich, England.

About the Play From the Author


It is late 1930s Germany and Helga and Werner Schlesinger are parents faced with the difficult choice of keeping their beloved daughter Eva in Germany with them, or letting her become one of the Kindertransport children, who are sent to the UK, alone. Helga, in her early thirties is preparing her daughter to travel with thousands of other Jewish children to safety, thanks to the rescue effort, known informally as Kindertransport. The bond between them is strong and although Helga reassures Eva that they will be reunited soon, she hurriedly prepares her daughter for the separation and for the self sufficiency she may need.

When Eva arrives in London, speaking no English, and feeling very much abandoned, she is taken under the wing of Lil Miller. Lil helps and encourages Eva in her futile attempts to have her parents join her in the relative safety of Britain. As those hopes fade, Eva continues to be cared for and raised by Lil. She adopts the English name Evelyn. Her German Jewish background also fades as a fledgling English identity is formed along with a new Mother/Daughter bond with Lil.

Eva is seventeen when Helga, older and seemingly frail, is reunited with her daughter. This is a revelatory moment of particular poignancy in the play. Helga is upset by the change in her daughter. The change in name is a slight on her heritage. The change in her accent and language is a slight on her culture. Helga implores her to join her to start a new life with her in America but Evelyn has firm roots and a settled naturalized life in England. Helga leaves her daughter again. This time forever.

It is many years later when Evelyn’s daughter Faith starts to uncover her mother’s past. In a scene reminiscent of the action that took place between Helga and the nine year old Eva, the twenty year old Faith is reluctantly preparing to leave home. The invisible ties and tensions of another Mother/Daughter bond are revealed. Whilst sorting through her mother’s attic, Faith finds books and papers from a past that she never knew existed and that Evelyn had long since buried. The confrontation that follows explores the notions of identity, belonging and the multi- dimensional strength of the Mother/Daughter bond.

Kindertransport depicts the agony of separating a child from her parents and wrestles with the consequences of that choice, an act of sacrifice that also wreaks devastating results.

EVEYLN - Mother of Faith Evelyn is very English, very middle class. Divorced from Faith’s father. On the surface, very poised and self-contained. She is extremely house-proud, a careful hoarder and an obsessive cleaner. As the play unfolds we learn that, beneath the poised exterior, she is in a state of extreme internal conflict.

FAITH - Eveyln’s only child Faith is in her early twenties. Living with her mother, but about to move to a flatshare with friends. She still retains contact with her father. Faith is a dutiful daughter who exhibits genuine love and concern for her mother, but alongside this affection there is a very deep well of resentment.

EVA Evelyn’s younger self. She is nine years old when the play begins and seventeen at her final appearance. She is Jewish German by birth, but becomes increasingly English. She is bright, brave and resourceful, but ultimately unable to cope with the complex emotional trauma caused by the separation and unexpected reunion with her birth mother.

LIL - Eva/Evelyn’s English foster mother We see Lil as a woman in her early thirties and as a woman in her eighties. She is from Manchester. She is a strong, honest, straightforward, down to earth character. She has two children of her own. There seems to be a particularly close bond between her and Eva/Evelyn. Lil also appears to be close to her granddaughter Faith.

HELGA - Eva’s mother In her early thirties at the beginning of the play, Helga is an affluent, middle-class, sophisticated woman. She is warm and affectionate towards Eva, but maintains her emotional composure as she prepares to send her daughter away. When we meet her again at the end of the play, she has experienced extreme physical and emotional suffering and is completely transformed.

THE RATCATCHER A mythical figure who also plays the Nazi Border Official, the English Organizer, the Postman and the Station Guard. The Ratcatcher himself is a sinister and threatening presence drawn from the legend of the Pied Piper. Although the other characters that he plays are very different on the surface, Eva perceives an element of threat from all of them at key points during the action of the play.

About the Play Synopsis

Characters


The Story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin

German translation: Der Rattenfanger

In 1284, the town of Hamelin was suffering from a dreaded rat infestation. One day, a man claiming to be a rat catcher approached the villagers with a solution. They promised him a shilling for the head of each rat. The man accepted and thus took a pipe and lured the rats with a song into the Weser river, where all 999,999 drowned.

Despite his success, the people reneged on their promise and refused to pay the rat catcher, on the basis that he had failed to produce the heads of the rats (which were, of course, still attached to their bodies in the river). The man left the town without argument, but returned several weeks later seeking revenge.

While the inhabitants were in the church, he played his pipe again, this time attracting the children of Hamelin. One hundred and thirty boys and girls followed him out of the town, where they were lured into a cave and sealed inside. Depending on the version, at most two children remained behind. Other versions claim that the Piper returned the children after the villagers paid several times the original amount of gold.

The earliest mention of the story seems to have been on a stained glass window placed in the church of Hamelin c.1300. The window was described in several accountsbetween the 14th century and the 17th century but itseems to have been destroyed.

About the Play The Ratcatcher

Excerpt from Kindertransport: Act One, Scene One

HELGA Which story do you want?

EVA The Ratcatcher.

Faith pulls out a hard-backed children’s story book identical to the one HELGA is holding. Pipe music.

FAITH ‘Der Rattenfänger’.

HELGA Not that one, Eva.

EVA You said I could choose.

HELGA Choose something else.

EVA I don’t want anything else.

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1592 painting of the Pied Piper copied from the glass window of Marktkirche in Hamelin.

The rats of Hamelin. Illustration by Kate Greenaway for Robert Browning's "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"


Nazi occupied Europe was a fearful and unpredictable place. The general population were encouraged to fear and discriminate against the Jewish community through the use of Nazi propaganda which portrayed them as a threat to the German economy. For Jewish people, their lives had become increasingly marginalized and they feared for the safety of their families with the impending war.

Kindertransport provided hope for parents, giving a chance of survival for their children. But the uncertainty of their own fate and of a reunion in the future, made this a tough decision. Parents feared how their children would fare in England and naturally questioned whether they were making the right decision. For children, it was difficult to fully understand what was happening and why they were being separated from the people they loved.

In the play, fear is a major recurring theme. At the beginning of act one, Helga’s fear for her daughter is visible when she insists Eva must learn to thread the needle on her own. Helga knows she is going to be apart from her daughter and wants to give her the knowledge and skills necessary for her future. This is seen further when Helga tells Eva she has had her watch, jewelry and Star of David hidden inside her shoe. It indicates that Helga has an awareness that she may not survive, as well as a mothers’ will to secure the future for her child, not just financially - but also spiritually to the Jewish faith through the Star of David. Helga’s fear is a controlled fear, she acts strong and takes on her role as mother to ensure what she believes to be the best for her child.

Eva’s fears are childhood fears, what she fears is different from what her mother fears. Diane Samuels’ portrays Eva’s childhood perspective through the character of the Ratcatcher. The Ratcatcher is a mythical figure based on the German children’s story of the Pied Piper. The Ratcatcher led the children out of the town of Hameln using his enchanted pipe because he was not paid for luring rats away in the same way. The story is considered a scary childhood story because all of the children disappeared.

In the play, the story forms part of the narrative as Helga reads it to Eva. ‘It hissed’, ‘It spat’ reads Helga, indicating his role of antagonist in the play, acting as an inhuman, snake-like character. Eva joins in, reading ‘eyes as sharp as razors’, signifying his evil and fearsome character with an ability to see everything. The Ratcatcher is given a dark and dominant presence in the play, arriving in key parts of the narrative with eerie music and his dark shadow projected across the stage.

The Ratcatcher exists in the play similarly to how he does in the original story, warning against those who are not counting their blessings, telling them he will find them. The Ratcatcher can be understood to symbolize what the characters are repressing and trying to run away from, as well

as the consequences and loss that this fear creates when the past catches up with them. In doing so, the characters are forced to examine the effect that it is had upon their present relationships, such as Evelyn’s relationship with her daughter Faith.

The Ratcatcher is played by the same actor who plays the Nazi, board official, organizer, station guard and postman. This is a dramatic device known as doubling, and is useful to emphasize the fear and unpredictability Eva faces. It also has an ability to create tension for the audience because these are all authoritative figures who are in some way or another responsible for progressing the narrative. This tension is supported through the Ratcatcher music which creates a dramatic mood and atmosphere for the audience.

Themes Fear

Excerpt from Kindertransport: Act One, Scene One

RATCATCHER Who is not counting?

HELGA Whispered the shadow.

RATCATCHER Who has forgotten their blessings?

HELGA It hissed.

RATCATCHER I will find you.

HELGA It spat.

RATCATCHER I will search you out whoever wherever you are.

FAITH (turning onto another page) My God, and the shadow growing legs...

HELGA ‘ . . . and strong arms and spiky nails...’

EVA And eyes sharp as razors

HELGA The Ratcatcher searched for the ungrateful one. He searched and searched but all in vain.

RATCATCHER Who will make up for the lost blessings?

HELGA He raged.

RATCATCHER If not the one guilty soul, then all.

HELGA And he raised an enchanted pipe to his snarling lip, making a cruel promise to all the people of Hamlyn.

RATCATCHER I will take the heart of your happiness away.

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Separation is a defining condition of the Kindertransport. It ensured the safety of children by separating them from the persecution and suffering they faced if they had stayed. However, it also separated them from the love and support of their parents and all they had known as home.

In the play, separation acts as a recurring theme in which Diane Samuels’ explores the lasting effects that this has caused for the characters, from the initial boarding to the present day.

In act one, Eva is separated from her parents when she is forced to board the Kindertransport to escape to freedom in England. Eva possesses an innocence about the experience ‘Mutti! Vati! Hello! Hello! See. I did get into the carriage. I said I would. See, I’m not crying. I said I wouldn’t.’ Eva’s departure is marked with a nervous excitement, showing her confusion as to what is happening as she tries to confirm to herself and her parents that everything is going to be fine.

This is in contrast to her arrival in England where she assumes that there is no one there to meet her and starts to cry. It is also in contrast to when Lil takes her to the train station to be evacuated from Manchester as the war begins. As Eva faces separation a second time, this time miserable and marked with the fear of the Ratcatcher ‘He’s coming to get me. He’s waiting in the shadows. Don’t make me go.’, she leaps off the train and avoids being separated from her English mother.

The Ratcatcher symbolizes separation as much as he does fear. At the beginning of the play, Eva is reading the story of the Ratcatcher and asks ‘What’s an abyss, Mutti?’. Helga replies ‘A huge gash in the rocks’. In the story, the children disappear as they are lead into the abyss by the Ratcatcher.

In the play, the abyss can be understood to signify the void that being separated from a loved one creates in a person. After Eva leaps off the train, she questions ‘Am I in the abyss?’ indicating her fear of separation. Through the music of his enchanted pipe, the Ratcatcher has the power to draw people away with him, away from their parents, their home and for Eva, her faith. In the play, the music plays together with the trains whistles and ‘Weaves around the train’s chugging’, providing a symbolic representation of the separation of mother and daughter.

The train can be understood to act as a symbol of separation in the play. The children are placed on the train and it is responsible for taking them away from their parents and their home. In contrast, trains were used during the Holocaust to transport Jewish people to their deaths in concentration camps. It can be suggested that Samuels’ took this into account in writing the play, symbolizing what was ultimately their last journey and the loss of hope of a reunion.

In the play, Helga survives the war and is given the opportunity to reunite with her daughter, however when the two meet, she is rejected by Evelyn who feels guilt and resentment towards her mother for not being given the choice to stay and suffer with her. Evelyn is also torn with her loyalty to Lil who cared for her and allowed her to stay when she faced evacuation. Helga leaves for New York and the two are separated once again, symbolized by the ships horn as she departs.

Despite trying to distance herself from her past, Eva’s separation from her own parents has a lasting effect on her life. It has influenced her decisions in life, particularly her decisions to reject her mother and what was her identity. By repressing what has happened in the past, Evelyn only separates herself from her own daughter Faith, who perceives her to be cold and controlling. Ironically named, she is also separating Faith from her identity by restricting her of her Jewish roots.

Themes Separation

Excerpt from Kindertransport:

EVELYN You should have hung onto me and never let me go. Why did you send me away when you were in danger? No one made you. You chose to do it. Didn’t it ever occur to you that I might have wanted to die with you. Because I did. I never wanted to live without you and you made me. What is more cruel than that? Except for coming back from the dead and punishing me for surviving on my own.

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Identity is what makes us who we are. It defines us and affects how we understand and interact with the world around us, from our relationships and friendships, to how we view others in society.

Identity is the perception of our self in relation to others, and it is shaped by many social structures such as gender, where we grow up and even our beliefs. In childhood, identity can be confusing to understand because children are still learning about society as they develop into adulthood. The issues faced by many of the Kindertransport refugees made identity even more difficult to understand. In their own country, their identity had been attacked and destroyed through Nazi persecution and discrimination. In England, they were separated from their families and had to adjust to a whole new way of life in an English society, with sometimes non-Jewish families who did not understand their practices.

In the play, this loss of identity is evident for Eva as she makes her journey from Hamburg to London. Eva’s identity is restricted to being labeled with a number. The label removes her of her name and in doing so dehumanizes her. The Nazi officer is keen to remind Eva not to forget ‘who she is’, drawing a star of David on her label, signifying the Nazi belief that her Jewish identity is a negative and something which she should be discriminated for. Eva’s label positions her as a minority, where she is grouped together with other refugees and marked as different.

The conflict of identity is shown clearly in the narrative with the contrast between Eva and Evelyn, creating two separate characters; Eva, the young Jewish girl and Evelyn, now older and taking on an English identity. When she reunites with Helga, her mother, this is difficult for her to comprehend and highlights the issues that the Kindertransport created.

Helga tells Eva that Eva was the name of her great grandmother, emphasizing that her identity is grounded in the family roots. However, Eva has forcibly had to change and adapt, subscribing to an English family and distancing herself from her past. She is unwilling to accept her mother or her identity because of the resentment of feeling abandoned and the guilt of leaving while her parents suffered at the hands of the Nazi’s.

Evelyn has denied herself of her culture and roots, and in doing so also denies Faith of hers. As she is forced to confront and discuss her past with Faith, it is clear that the effect of her own experience has had consequences for Faith, creating difficulties and a lack of understanding between the pair.

Despite holding onto the box of documents and photographs since she arrived in England, only when the truth begins to unravel does Evelyn decide to rip them up, symbolizing the effect the past still has on her as well as her desire to

forget it. This is alarming for Faith because she is once again restricted in her own understanding of who she is and her family roots.

Samuels contrasts the ideas of remembering and forgetting, showing how people are bound to identity and their past. The play illustrates the impact that the war had on the identity of families and relationships at the time and continues to have in the present day,

Themes Identity

Excerpt from Kindertransport:

OFFICER D’you know it at least?

EVA Pardon, Sir?

OFFICER Know your number. If you don’t know it you might forget who you are.

EVA 3362, Sir.

OFFICER (taking out a pen) Don’t want you to forget who you are now, do we?

EVA No, Sir.

OFFICER Let me remind you.

He draws a huge star of David on the label.

There. That should tell ’em wherever it is you’re going. Best to keep them informed, eh.

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1 - the j kc - the j kc · march 26 & 31, april 2 at 7:30 p.m. march 27 & april 3 at 2 p.m....

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