Kindertransport in WWII

I'm using a magazine and other websites from the library that one of the librarians told me to use "History Today"

• Kindertransport was the transport of Jewish Refugee Children in places like Nazi Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria and safely into Great Britain
• No one older than 17
• Children were separated from their parents and sent to boarding homes in Great Britain
• First transport was 200 children from Berlin to Harwich, England on December 2, 1938
• At least two transports every week with about the same number
• When WWII had officially began in 1939 10,000+ refugees had been sent to Great Britain

The Journey to Britain

• All of the children had to say goodbye to their families on the railway
• Many of them never got to see them again
• Nazi guards would sometimes raid the carts and look for valuables scaring the already frightening children
• Many excited but also worried about what life in Great Britain would be like

Life in Britain

• Many were amazed with how different life was in Britain

- Plenty of food

- Allowed to go where they wanted without discrimination (no separation of Aryans)

- Higher standard of living

• Some went with family friends or relatives in the UK
• Not great for some in new foster homes with new mean "aunts and uncles"
• Not all people who came forward to help with foster care were the best but they needed the space due to the influx of children entering
• Anti-Semitic life and new land had ruined most of the childhoods of them
• Children started to do everything they could to get their family out of Nazi Europe once in the UK
• During WWII communications had been killed between the children and their homelands - many were not "enemy nations" falling into Hitler's hands
• Showing gratitude for Britain was hard

- Younger girls knitted things for the troops

- Older grils joined the army forces of the UK and became nurses

- Boys volunteered for the army when they were old enough

• As the war went on the refugees were often made fun of for their "strange" names and many times interned as alien enemies to places like Australia or Canada
• Children of Kindertransport learned of assimilation because many of them did not even consider themselves religious