Ep. 17: The Kindertransport with Amy Williams

From the earliest days of the Third Reich through the end of the war, there were organized efforts to rescue Jewish children from the Nazis.  Perhaps as many as 10,000 were rescued in this way, but without their parents.  They ended up in a variety of countries and had diverse set of experiences.  

In addition, the story of the Kindertransport has worked its way into the cultural memory of the Holocaust, particularly in the United Kingdom.  In this episode, I spoke with Amy Williams about the incredibly complex history of these operations and the ways in which they have been commemorated.

Dr. Amy Willams is currently a fellow at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School, New York. For the past two years she was the module leader of the undergraduate module “Holocaust and Genocide” at Nottingham Trent University. Her new co-authored book with Prof. Bill Niven “Memory of the Kindertransport in National and Transnational Memories: Exhibitions, Memorials, and Commemorations” has recently been published by Camden House. She is working on her next co-authored book with Bill for Yale University Press on the transnational history of the Kindertransport, due to be published in 2026. Her third book for Mitteldeutscher Verlag entitled “Kindertransport: Eine Spurensuche” or “In Search of the Kindertransport” is a testimony book based on 150 interviews.

Williams, Amy and William Niven. National and Transnational Memories of the Kindertransport: Exhibitions, Memorials, and Commemorations (2023)

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You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Waitman (00:00.838)
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Holocaust History Podcast. I'm your host, Waipman Born. And today we're talking about a topic that I think is really interesting because it asks us to think about both the good side of allied responses to the Holocaust and potentially, you know, some of the negative sides. And that is the Kindertransports, which is the evacuation of children, the acceptance of children fleeing the Nazis.

during World War II, during the Holocaust. And it's a really, really interesting topic. And one of the ways that I was first introduced to it is I saw a video, and I think it was a talk show, where they had one of the guys at Nicholas Vinton, who had been involved in it, and he's on there talking about it. And then they said, would all of the children or relatives of children that he had rescued stand up? And there's like a whole, the audience is basically all these children.

And so it's really, really interesting. And it's also really interesting in the ways in which the nations that participated in this remember this particular event. So as I always like to do in this podcast, I reached out to the best person I could find who knows a lot about this topic, and that is Dr. Amy Williams. So Amy, welcome to the podcast.

Amy (01:22.101)
Thank you so much, thank you for having me.

Waitman (01:24.294)
Yeah, so can you, before we get started, can you just introduce yourself, tell us, you know, how you got into this, where you're coming from, and what projects you're working on.

Amy (01:32.885)
I'm back in the UK now. I've been living in America for a year. I've had a fellowship at the Solberg Institute at the New School to work on a book for Yale University Press with Professor Bill Niven, which will look at the transnational history of the Kindertransport. But prior to that, Bill and myself worked on another book on the memory of the Kindertransport. And then I'm also working on another book.

on the testimony. So I did over 150 interviews during COVID. And that's what that book looks at. But how I came to the Kindertransport is really interesting. I actually didn't know anything about the British side of the Kindertransport. I actually came to the Kindertransport from the Swiss perspective. So my dad was sent to Switzerland in the 60s. For health reasons, he had asthma and things like that. And,

we had this battered suitcase in the attic, like with the Red Cross logo on, and he had all these letters from his parents. His parents didn't go. And when I just started to do some research around his sort of story for school, I found out that this area in Switzerland had a long history of welcoming children. And it started with the kinder transport kids go into from Germany and Austria to Switzerland.

And then in the post -war period, children who had experienced or lived through the bombings were rehabilitated there. Children from the camps were rehabilitated there. And then in the post -war period, the French, the Germans, the Italians, and the British got together and said, this area is known for helping children. In the post -war period and onwards, anybody that's got any health problems will be sent there. And you know.

helped out sort of thing. So yeah, that's how I came to Kindertransport history really.

Waitman (03:30.374)
That's fascinating. I mean, it's almost like they're, I mean, it sounds like in some ways they're almost post -war kinder transport. They're not, but I mean, you know, the dealing with dealing with the fallout of the Holocaust and dealing with the people left over, but then moving, moving them as well. Right. And maybe we should start, I guess, the very basic piece, because I think I've been messing up by calling it the kinder transports as if there was more than, more than one. So what is, what is the kinder transport?

Amy (03:38.517)
Mmm.

Amy (03:42.965)
Mm -hmm.

Waitman (03:59.654)
and how do we sort of define it? What is it?

Amy (04:02.901)
I think you're right. You can use Kindertransport or Kindertransports. The Kindertransport is a label which has been typically applied to one moment or to one movement rather to Britain at one particular time. So after or following Rosh Pag -Grom night and before the Second World War, it's often referred to as this movement of around 10 ,000 mainly Jewish children to Britain.

But that's not the case. There were several kinder transports in a different context that came to Britain. So the ones that left Germany, the ones that left Poland, the ones that left Czechoslovakia and Austria. You could all see them as their own kinder transport movement to Britain, or you could see them as a group. But in the context of Nazi persecution of Jews, the term was actually first used as early as November 34.

It was used in the context when 53 German Jewish children were sent by their families to America. And this is what I found when I was in the archives in New York. And they were really concerned about their education and things like that, and didn't see futures for them in Germany. So the Germans and the Americans used the term kinder transport as early as 34. So I mean, I can talk more to that in a moment, but...

I would sort of say that the Kindertransport isn't this sort of national enterprise that we see as being very British. It was a transnational collaboration between many different groups, many different countries. I think the British scheme has sort of dominated popular understandings, but there was many, many versions of Kindertransport or Kindertransports. As I said, there were ones that started in 1934.

After the Val de Heve round up in July 42, the term is extended. So the term, instead of meaning what we now know as rescue, and this is a really, you know, post -Hawk view sort of thing, like it didn't always mean rescue. So after July 42, Nazi officials, including Eichmann, used the term to refer to essentially to the deportation of children.

Amy (06:21.173)
So there's a real ambivalence around the term, especially if you think of, so there was, yes, yeah.

Waitman (06:26.31)
When you say deportation of children, you mean like deportation of children to the killing centers, not out of Europe. Right. So like a kinder transport is literally a transport predominantly of children out of occupied Europe to or out of occupied France, in this case to one of the extermination centers.

Amy (06:33.525)
No, so from like drancy to altruism, it was...

Amy (06:46.293)
Yeah, yeah. And some of these, some of these, you know, Sobibor, for example, used the term kinder transport that the actual site used the term kinder transport to refer to, you know, that movement of children. You know, there is a real, as I said, ambivalence around the term. There was three transports from Danzig, and I found a list of a fourth transport that was meant to leave, and it had the names of 71 children on it.

you know, and hardly any of them, when I started to track them down, survived, they were all deported. So they were meant to go on one kinder transport to safety, but ended up on another one, you know, towards their deaths. A lot of the kinder, for example, that ended up in Belgium or France or Holland, you know, those countries became occupied. And we have letters that the children write to the Gestapo offices saying, you know, I want to go home. I'm, I'm...

you know, I'm desperately homesick. I want my parents, you know, that they've now been invaded sort of thing. And they'd go stop and say, yeah, you can go home. You're not a political threat. So they go back home to mom and dad in Germany and then are deported or in other cases, they end up going to places like Drancy or Vesterbrook and, you know, are interned there and either remain in these camps or are deported. I know one...

a kinder transporter was pretty much forced to build the railway to Auschwitz from Holland. And another one who was also interned in that camp was present for Anne Frank's medical examination as well. So the kinder transport stories is, I think we have a rather limited view of it and it's much more complex and diverse than we've been led to believe.

Waitman (08:30.438)
Wow.

Waitman (08:41.862)
And isn't history always that way? And that's why I'm really happy to sort of to hear from you about this. Maybe maybe we look go back to the beginning like it in thirty four. You know what?

Amy (08:44.757)
Mmm.

Waitman (08:56.038)
You could make the argument, you know, again, this is hindsight, you know, 2020 hindsight, but, you know, wow, parents must have really been thinking ahead. But also that seems like a really sort of a huge risk in 34, because you don't really know what's going on. So what are how does this develop over time? And then how do the how do the different how do they will use the kinder transports in terms of like different because it does as you are delayed out, you know, there are different.

Amy (09:18.389)
Mm.

Waitman (09:25.638)
iterations of this, you know, you have sort of the inner inter Europe kinder transport, right? Where it's from Germany to another European continental country. But then you have the ones that we're more familiar with to, you know, to places outside of continent Europe. So maybe how does it start? How did the 1934 one start? What is what is that all about?

Amy (09:45.173)
Yeah, so that started with the German Jewish Children's Aid, who were an American organization, and they actually go on to help, you know, into the 30s and 40s with other kinder transports. But they work through, in some cases, they work through London as well. There's a particular lady, Gabriella Kaufman, or Gabrielle, she's sort of this sort of driving force behind that.

And yeah, the parents sort of can see that, you know, the children aren't particularly safe at that point, that, you know, they're not allowed to go to college and things like that. So, yeah, they send them off for, I would say, safeguarding reasons, you know, to ensure that they get an education. You know, they live in the Clara de Hirsch home in New York to start off with, and then they, you know.

find their way in the big world in New York. So yeah, it starts off really as a, I would say more as a safeguarding then for educational purposes. And then after that movement, we have in 1935 and 1937, we have the Dexton children. So these are movements from Bayallistock, often via Britain to New Zealand. And this was done by the Dexton family who had

Polish, Russian, Jewish roots and saw what was going on in that particular area.

Waitman (11:17.734)
And so in this case, though, these would have been, you know, people who, because because Bialystok, of course, isn't isn't under any Nazi threat in 3537. So this is more like again, this really what's interesting about this. This is a group of people who are just kind of, I guess, responding to general anti -Semitism slash general lack of of opportunity in Poland. Right.

Amy (11:25.237)
No, at that, no.

Amy (11:36.405)
Yes. Yeah.

Amy (11:41.613)
Yes, definitely. And then you have, you know, our movement kicks in around 36, 37 with the Inter -Aid Committee that, you know, we rescue around 500 children before the, you know, our version of the Kindertransport. And then obviously after Raja Pragram night, that's when, you know, as we know it, the Kindertransport comes into being.

particularly from a British perspective. But, you know, as you were saying, the kinder didn't just come to Britain, they go to Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, Belgium. We found two that went to Iceland. They go, you know, all over Scandinavia, which is a really, you know, it is starting to be researched a lot more. There's new exhibitions coming out. But again, I think we think the kinder transport is one very British.

Two, that there was nothing before it as if like the Kindertransport just appeared and happened in like this vacuum, you know. There was a whole buildup prior to that, you know, after the polling action, you know, when the German Jews were pushed onto the Polish border, a lot of the children that were displaced there end up on Kindertransports and the British and the Americans fund, sorry,

Jewish orphanages and schools and things like that prior to getting those children out. So there are networks already creating prior to that. And the stipulations around the Kindertransport really come about with the Evian Conference. I think sometimes there's a bit of a disconnect with Evian and the Kindertransport, but the stipulations around the Kindertransport were pretty much laid down at Evian. We found direct links and connections there. What I find really interesting,

Waitman (13:36.134)
And can you tell for our listeners, sorry, can you tell for listeners really quickly what the Evian Conference is?

Amy (13:42.197)
Yeah, so Evian happened in 1938. It was when, you know, America sort of brought everybody together in France, in Evian, and sort of called for a conference to sort of address the, as it was called, the Jewish problem, you know, to address what was happening with regards to where Jewish refugees could flee to or not flee to. This conference,

You could argue that a lot of doors were closed. You could argue some doors were open or sort of slightly ajar sort of thing. A lot of countries didn't particularly do much, we could argue. But in terms of the Kindertransport, a lot of like World Jewish Congress and things like that really petitioned to get the sort of rights of the child heard. There were these particular motions put forward to really...

push forward legislation that really helped children and this is what then the committees after Evian so the intergovernmental committees sort of focus on. What I find really interesting again with the Kindertransport history we sort of see it separate sometimes in in relation to other movements of children. I found that

Obviously we know the Euthylia transports were happening way before the kinder transport and after 30, after you know after Rajapar Guam night the British slow the movement of or issuing certificates for the Euthylia children and this is a real big impact because hardly in December there are hardly any if non certificates for these children these more Zionist children to leave to go to Palestine.

And they write to our, what I'll call it, the Kinder Transport Committee. Obviously, it was made up of many different people, but they write and say, look, can we get our children on these trains? We can't get them out. Then you have the opposite. When they get to England, the Kinder Transport Committee writes to the Youthalier Committee and is like, we can't home all these children. Can we place them on your farms around the UK? And there's a real tension between both of these groups because they're

Amy (16:03.413)
both desperately trying to save children, but the British are slowing one, you know, that it's sort of inexpensive. So the Leuther Lear movement started in the early thirties and that was a movement to sort of train Jewish youth to go to British mandate Palestine to sort of, yes, yeah.

Waitman (16:09.254)
And what is the, what is the youth, youth earlier movement?

Waitman (16:21.542)
So it's kind of like the Hashem or Hazer sort of in Eastern Europe kind of, you know, prepare people to go, you know, kibbutz and farm and things like this in Palestine. Yeah.

Amy (16:33.173)
Absolutely, yeah. And yeah, so some of these kinder end up on these sort of Euthylia farms in England and are brought up, you know, by people who have these particular views and...

Waitman (16:45.67)
But they may not have actually come from families who have those. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Amy (16:49.269)
No, exactly. So like the, you know, these sort of networks they get placed in really can change and have an impact on their upbringing, their views, their sort of, you know, trajectory in life. Like, you know, there was some were very inspired to move to Palestine and Israel at various different times and for many different reasons. So that's something that I've really found really interesting in the research that I've been doing recently, because it's not something that we typically

think about, but in terms of like the children that came to England, we have this sort of myth that, you know, they got here, they all went to foster families and that was it. In the archive, I found that even before the war, children had already moved to America, Australia, Chile, New Zealand, Cuba and Uruguay from Britain. And there was sort of like a motion.

that they were going to move to other places such as Shanghai, Palestine, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, India, Canada, Argentina and Greece. You know, they had these thoughts of moving further. You know, the arc in the transport was temporary. They were trans migrants. They were never meant to stay in Britain. They were always meant to journey on this sort of £50 bond that they had, that the parents and

whoever could get their child on a Kindertransport had to pay. And then I found this really interesting file in the American archives. This £50 was sort of thought that, you know, you'd pay this and this would help them, you know, re -emigrate beyond Britain to America or Palestine, where hopefully it was thought that they would be reunited with parents or family members. Before the war and into the war period, the Americans, you know, are trying to find out.

the kinder who were here tried to get them reunited with their families because they have affidavits and the British say they have to pay more. So this £50 bond, they're actually doubling or tripling it sometimes. So it's so difficult when the children are here to get them to America because they have to pay more. And I found that staggering really.

Waitman (19:09.926)
And then they're, they're, they're asking for this payment sort of after the child has been split up from the parents. So now you have to go through the extra bureaucratic step of trying to find out who the parents, who the parents of the child are and ask them to send more money from presumably like Germany, which makes things more difficult, right?

Amy (19:17.045)
Yes.

Mm -hmm.

Amy (19:24.373)
Absolutely.

Amy (19:31.573)
Yeah, or like the family in America has to pay more. But just to sort of just going back on that, so that the term kinder transport, as I said, was used in 34 to refer to the Americans. The first use of the term in a British context, it's actually called England transport. So on the 3rd of December, it's called England transport. And then on the 6th of December, it changes to kinder transport. So this term is really shifting constantly in the

French perspective, it's called Frankreich transport. And then you also have my Germans really bad, so I will botch this. But there's a term used which is kinderversichtung, or something like that. And Eichmann and Kurt Lischka and other people use this sort of term, which essentially means the shoving out of children as well in German. So,

the term kinder transport is used interchangeably with many many other terms which also mean kinder transport.

Waitman (20:35.974)
to include a term which is kind of the opposite of what we understand the Kindertransport to be, which is, you know, murdering them, which is something that I learned just right now. That's amazing to me. And yes, that makes things more complex if you're finding Kindertransport in Nazi documents and you're trying to figure out if that means actually saving or the exact opposite of saving.

Amy (20:41.493)
Yes.

Amy (20:56.597)
Exactly. No, it's no, just that that's that's the tricky part of it. And I think that's what hopefully the book that I'm doing with Bill now on the histories is really trying to understand the kinder transport and broaden the term concept conceptually and temporal temporal. I can't say that word today. Temporarily. Yeah, exactly. Because there are so many different versions of kinder transport.

Waitman (20:58.982)
Yeah, so go ahead.

Waitman (21:16.902)
Temporarily.

Amy (21:26.325)
And I did find in one file from the British files that the refugee committee state very early on, I think it was around July 1939, that they're not looking at kinder transports out of Hungary. They were not going to look at rescuing children from there. And again, this sort of myth around this 10 ,000 number that came to Britain, there was in the Hansard, there's actually discussion around letting 50 ,000 children in.

which is a much larger amount than 10 ,000. But it was the refugee committee themselves that capped it at that in July 39 because they couldn't home their children. So, you know, the kinder transports to Britain, you could argue, came to an end because of the war. There was one in 1940 from Holland that came on a boat. But, you know, they could have let in more people.

and there were attempts and a willingness to letting more people but the children couldn't be homed.

Waitman (22:33.222)
Yeah, I mean, I think this is this is an important moment to also consider some of the changes in Nazi policy, which we talked about in this podcast before, from a a. Immigration solution to the so -called Jewish question and then a move to the physical solution to the Jewish question, which is murdering murdering Jews, you know, and, you know, up until.

Amy (22:42.037)
Mm.

Waitman (23:01.062)
I would argue summer, fall of 1941, right? The Nazis still want to get rid of Jews, but their idea is to make them go elsewhere, right? And so, you know, there's the idea of sending them to Leblén, in a Leblén reservation, the Nisco plan, which doesn't work. Partially because local Nazis, like, I don't want you to dump Jews in my area. You know, I'm trying to make my area sort of free of Jews.

But then there's also the Madagascar plan, right, which is to send them to this island off the coast of Madagascar. And that doesn't work because, you know, the Nazis don't have control of the seas and they can't, they don't have boats anyway. But the point is that I'm coming to here is that the Nazis, for a good portion of the Third Reich, are trying to get rid of Jews by making them go elsewhere. And that's not a benign thing, right? If they were able to dump all the Jews of Europe,

on Madagascar, millions of them would have died and it would not have been a nice thing. But the main method would have not been to murder them. And so one of the things, and I'm coming to my point, I promise, but one of the things that, one of the moments that we use as a sort of signifier is in October of 1941, when the Nazis sort of say, no more immigration. Up until that point, they've been trying to force,

Jews to leave. Of course, the problem with the way they did that was they didn't want anybody to leave with any kind of wealth. And so there's this sort of systematic expropriation that, you know, A, makes it difficult for these people to emigrate anywhere because of sort of discriminatory immigration policies that require, you know, you to prove your wealth, et cetera, et cetera. But also, you know, it causes you to sort of

you know, have second thoughts because you don't know that you're going to be murdered. And so, you know, the decision to give up all of your wealth and property, you know, makes it makes more difficult point being that, you know, when you say that the kinder transport committees had sort of decided we can't take any more anybody else. They've done that right. If I'm reading correctly, like basically two years before.

Waitman (25:27.622)
the Nazis themselves have stopped immigration. So the Nazis would have been happy in some level to send more and more people to these areas. But the committees themselves, is that right? Is that an accurate representation?

Amy (25:43.765)
Yeah, but yeah, definitely, particularly from the British perspective, Britain, you know, couldn't home the children and not enough people came forward and even when they did the children that ended up on these sort of in boarding schools or on farms or in convents, you know, it's also a time then that they become double refugees, as they become evacuees as well. So Britain is is

dealing with several different things, you know, it's trying to help kinder. The year before the kinder transport started in 37, we have 4000 Basque children that we take in. We also take in Maltese, Gibraltarian, Guernsey and Jersey children as well. So, you know, Britain has a sort of, you know, it has an intake of all these children and, you know,

can't place them, essentially. So yeah, in terms of particularly in July 39, the Refugee Committee is really struggling to home people and says, for the moment, it's got to cap it at 10 ,000 because it's overwhelmed at this point. In terms of the Americans, the Kindertransports do carry on. There is a movement still out of Germany in 1940.

to children to America. And these movements sort of carry on in terms of the children that had fled into France and then who escaped into Spain and Portugal and then off to America. They carry on sort of that way. But that's the dangerous, obviously crossing across the sea, but also at that point as well, trying to, you know, I always find it fascinating these children that had escaped on kinder transports then traveled across.

Europe on these sort of other refugee networks and become part of other stories and the Spanish fighters that were in the Spanish Civil War, they're using those same routes across the Pyrenees to flee. I know that's diverging slightly, but yeah, essentially, I think more could have been done, but the refugee committee.

Waitman (27:57.51)
Well, and it might be a point to mention, you know, because we're always going to go here, you know, is the government, the government's role in this, right? Because one of the, and I have to tell this because it's my favorite strange immigration slash rescue story from the Holocaust, is this guy named Trujillo, who was the dictator of Dominican Republic. And,

Amy (28:02.581)
Mm.

Amy (28:15.701)
Mm.

Waitman (28:22.918)
He was like one of the only countries who was like, we will take as many Jewish refugees, you know, as you can send us. Of course, one of the reasons he's doing this, he's kind of a fan of Hitler and he's kind of a fascist and he wants to sort of whiten his population. But, you know, I remember I went to an exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City on these people who, on these Jewish refugees who had gone to the Dominican Republic.

Amy (28:39.093)
Mm -hmm.

Waitman (28:50.054)
And it was amazing because you had these people who were, you know, they were fairly assimilated, middle -class, you know, relatively urban German Jews who end up like on a banana plantation, you know, in Dominican Republic, you know, and, and the stories, I mean, it's great because they, because Trujillo took entire families, everybody. but the stories are really interesting because, you know, you have these people that are, you know, living this, this Caribbean lifestyle that they have like no

you know, connection with whatsoever, right? And, you know, one of those strange quirks of, of sort of the war, but the reason I bring it up is, A, it's, I think it's just kind of crazy, but interesting, but also, you know, cause you mentioned that in the British case, and I presume elsewhere as well, you know, the, the aid organizations are like, we can't home these people, which then begs the question, well, certainly the government could have homed people, right?

So, but it also highlights that I think that the reception of Kindertransport children was predominantly a private charity operation, not a government operation. Can you talk a little about that and sort of how that works?

Amy (30:07.893)
Definitely, I think, you know, it's not too, too dissimilar to now, you know, outsourcing our responsibility. So we, yeah, the Kindertransport really came about because the Quakers, Jewish organizations and Christian groups lobbied the government into action, you know, it was, it wasn't necessarily the government coming up with this idea or plan. Yes, it was government backed and supported, but it wasn't sort of,

you know, it wasn't their sort of drive to do this. They were really, you know, challenged into doing it. And when the committees first approached the government, they said no. This is also a, you know, this sort of welcoming myth that we have, you know, Britain is there, you know, standing there with open arms, it rejected the Kindertransport to start off with. It was, you know, on the second go sort of thing that

Home Secretary who was also a Quaker, sort of, you know, really sat down with these people and listened to them and, you know, asked, you know, asked the Prime Minister again. So yeah, like I said, it was government sponsored, but not government, you know, financed or anything like that. It was eventually there was some funds from the Lord Baldwin Fund and things like that. But, you know, most of the funds came from

individuals or organizations, you know, grassroots sort of things. In America, you know, we all know that the Wagner Rogers bill, which would have, this was in 39, which could have rescued around 20 ,000 children to go to America, didn't pass Congress twice. So there wasn't a sort of scheme like that, a government -backed scheme to rescue children. In the...

In Holland it was very interesting that there's a lot of documentation with the Dutch complaining to the British that we're being slow and dragging our heels, you know, sending paperwork. In Holland when you arrived the government quarantined you for two weeks. We never did that but the Dutch did that they quarantined the children for two weeks and sometimes they went missing, you know, in these camps where adults were as well and the refugee committees couldn't really get to them.

Amy (32:27.541)
in Belgium the stipulation was you sort of had to know the person to be invited to go, it was sort of like an invitation sort of things and in Scandinavian, the Scandinavian countries looked to Britain as well, there were a lot of letters backwards and forwards to our government, to sort of our government to give them guidance and advice really which is interesting to read. But just you know talking about you know do we always want to you know

you know, bring these people in and look after them, you know. As the war progressed, Britain interned all these, a lot of these children, I won't say all, but a lot of these children, particularly those who, you know, were 15, 16, 17 at this point. And there's a really interesting story that I'm rather obsessed with at the moment. There was quite a few kinder that end up going to Bolivia. It's sort of like, be interned or go to Bolivia.

And they go to Bolivia, they have a very different lifestyle as opposed to growing up in Britain. And then after the war, when some of the Nazis and their followers sort of escaped to those sort of countries, their children go to school with one another, which is very, must have been very traumatizing as well to see that in your day -to -day life. But yeah, we can think about,

Waitman (33:37.19)
no.

Oof.

Amy (33:52.917)
Yeah, outsourcing our responsibility. We home these children for a short period of time and then we sort of turn on them and classify them as spies and enemy aliens and ship them off.

Waitman (34:04.23)
And so was the government's role then basically just, we will grant immigration documents to them, you know, and then it.

Amy (34:12.757)
Yes, yeah, essentially, yeah, it was a visa waiver scheme so they could come in, you know, so that they could land in, you know, have an entry visa for Britain.

Waitman (34:22.662)
And then, but basically after that it was, there must be a private organization who will care for them to ensure that they don't draw on government funds and that kind of stuff. And was there, I mean, it's always the elephant in the room, but was there any discussion about the parents? And this just seems to be...

Amy (34:33.653)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Waitman (34:51.046)
to put this because it's it's you know as a parent myself I'm just thinking about what it would be like to sort of send my daughter away and then have a government that would just sort of say that that that's fine for her but like you don't need to come. You know it doesn't mean that that it doesn't mean that you know Jewish refugees without children should like you know aren't special or you know or shouldn't shouldn't be saved either but it's really interesting that.

the government would sort of hang its hat on, well, at least we're saving the children. It's kind of like, if you're an animal rights activist, but you only like the cute animals, it's weird, isn't it? Were there discussions about like, hey, can we bring families over? Can we keep families together? Can we keep the children with their families?

Amy (35:46.997)
Yes and no. I mean, you know, there was a lot of the parents and the refugee committees, you know, the refugee committees write to the parents, so, you know, they're so constantly apologising that, you know, they can't do more for them. So the refugee committees are very much aware of this in terms of the government, not really. There was a few discussions around it, but you know, it was, you know, very much based for children. They could come over.

on domestic visas and there was the movement of the intellectuals as well prior to. But yeah, there was very little done for families. And I'll come back to that point in a second, but you have kinder essentially becoming rescuers, particularly the older ones who have a more of an understanding what's going on. They desperately knock on doors to try and get mom and dad over, pleading with people essentially to take them in as a...

cook or a chauffeur or something like that. So it's interesting that the kinder take on this responsibility of trying to save parents as well. You also have, yeah, so many discussions of parents then trying to get out through other means. So like the parents write to the children saying, you know, we've gone to this embassy or this embassy or this consulate. So that they, I think,

Originally, a lot of parents, when I've been looking through letters, were trying to get their family out. So we're looking for group visas to go to Shanghai or America or things like that. And when they saw, you know, what was happening after Kristallnacht and, you know, those months prior to the war, when they heard about the Kindertransport, it was the parents that thought, we can't, there's no sort of room for negotiation in some places, you know, we can't get a group.

a family visa sort of to go to one particular place. Let's get the children out first, there we're safe and then we can focus on trying to get ourselves out. And that happened in many cases. Obviously, mum and dad sometimes were successful and were able to get out and were reunited. And again, this reunion comes at many different times during and after the war. But in a lot of cases, mum and dad, you know,

Amy (38:05.333)
don't get out or they get out to one particular country and then are invaded sort of thing. So yeah, there was a real lack of discussion around around family visas. And I think that what I found really interesting was, you know, when the tragedy with Ukraine and Russia started, there was this sort of, and it was really led by kinder transport families, you know, the term Ukraine transport came into existence.

And this was, you know, trying to really learn and implement lessons from the kinder transport and have family reunion transports. Okay, dad couldn't leave the country, but mom could. And I, you know, we can debate whether we have helped, you know, Ukrainian refugees enough or not, but at least mom and child did come out together this time round. So we could argue that, you know, that there was more of an understanding to like,

keep the family unit together for as long as we could. And what I've also found from my research, yes, a lot of the time parents couldn't come out, but we could see the kinder transport as delaying the family separation process, particularly if siblings or cousins or friends were on the same transport or were reunited in England. So a lot of the children traveled with, I don't know, you know, an older brother or something like that.

and this delayed that separation process a little bit longer. Obviously, mum and dad weren't there, but there was some sort of family unit that was still intact.

Waitman (39:40.39)
Yeah, I mean, I think when I was listening to you talk about the children that were knocking on doors to try to get jobs for their parents, it's one of those situations kind of like when there's an absent parent or the parent has various challenges and a child has to raise their sibling as a parent, right? It's putting an extra level of stress upon someone who is not a grownup yet.

I can't imagine how stressful it must have been to have your parents writing. I've heard or seen other places, similar examples of this, where the parents are like, can you please try to get us out? And it's like, you know, it's like the kids 13, 14, you know, that's just, I mean, I don't blame anybody in this situation, but it's just a horrendous responsibility that then, you know, if things don't turn out well, that child for the rest of their life is going to be wondering, you know, like, did I do enough to...

to try to, you know, when it's not their fault, whatever happens, you know, and that's kind of a fascinatingly awful sort of psychological effect of the Kindertransport.

Amy (40:42.133)
No.

Amy (40:49.365)
Totally, and there was so much displacement and uprooting before the Kindertransport. So, you know, again, after Kristallnacht, the families had to move locations, had to move in with other families, all these things. Their worlds became more restricted. And so many parents at this point, when I've been reading and interviewing people, committed suicide.

or grandparent committed suicide or dad was taken to a concentration camp, you know, the family unit was fractured and splintered even before going on a kinder transport in some cases. So the kinder are also dealing with the fact that, you know, mom or dad has passed away as they get on a kinder transport. So there are those narratives as well. And what we don't often talk about is that some of the older boys were interned in concentration camps like,

Buchenwald, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, before going on a kinder transport. So had witnessed atrocities taking place before going as well. So having real adult experiences and being around those violent attacks prior to leaving as well. They grew up very quickly and their childhood was taken away from them. But yeah, the...

I always wonder, you know, those letters that we have, there's one particular that I'll never forget. It was sent by parents two weeks before they were deported to Auschwitz to their two boys. Sorry, I always cry at this point. And it says, you know, like, be good. We've raised you. We didn't have you for a long time. We're so grateful to the people that took you in. They list.

all the people in their family that have already been transported. And then they say it will be our turn next. And if you're reading this letter, we might not see you again. You know, passing on that, those final words of advice and wisdom and love, you know, parenting through these final letters, it's heartbreaking to read. And I think, you know, you can...

Amy (43:09.301)
you know, talk about, you know, government policies and, and, you know, very top level, but reading these letters really hits home the impact that, you know, not letting in these people had, you know, that they're just devastating to read.

Waitman (43:24.678)
Yeah, I mean, and I think that's a beautiful example of. And we'll get to this in a minute because I have a question of the history before we get to the memory. But again, this, this, this, this, this sort of feel good Disney fide kind of hooray, you know, Kindertransport memory or official public memory. But then as you point out, that's it's under you scratch the surface of that and you find that the policy is, you know,

Amy (43:39.669)
Mmm.

Waitman (43:54.95)
in some ways just incredibly brutal, you know, and creates these really awful situations, you know, where children are sort of forced to become the responsible party or they're faced with these kinds of letters. I mean, I remember, you know, obviously nothing like this, but when I was a kid, my parents went on a cruise and...

I laugh. It's not really funny, but they went on a cruise and I was staying. I had somebody staying with me and they had, they left a letter, which basically was like, if the ship sinks and we all die, you know, who wait, man is going to go live with. I was going to, I was supposed to go live with my godparents, you know? And I remember I found that and I had read it, you know, and it was awful, right? Because like my parents had written this thing out. And again, that's, that's nothing like the situation we're talking about.

But, you know, I can only imagine based on how upset I was about something like that, which is not at all likely to happen, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, when you're a kid, you don't think about your parents dying. You know, it's not a thing that is in your sort of... I mean, you will later when you're older, but when you're an adolescent, this isn't something you think about. And so again, just this idea of, you know, even...

Amy (44:59.445)
Mm.

Waitman (45:21.478)
Even if the family writes that letter and then reunited with them later, that's traumatic for the kids to have to have to even think about the fact because when you're a child, your parents are sort of your whole world. And the idea that could be gone is, is kind of crazy. So what are, what are some of the other challenges for these children when they're arriving and how old, what's the youngest and sort of oldest that you can be to sort of qualify for this? And because I suspect that at different age points, you know,

there are different challenges and difficulties that this children experience.

Amy (45:56.245)
Yeah, so you could be to go on a kinder transport to Britain, you could be an infant all the way up to 17. I think we have examples of, you know, six months twins or siblings, you know, being put on, you know, all wrapped up in their little bundled up in like baskets sort of thing. There's a story about these two children and yet all the way up to, you know, to teenagers becoming turning adults nearly.

you know, 14 upwards. You know, each country had their own conditions around the Kindertransport and sort of defined the child in terms of ageing and things like that very, very differently. The Wagner Rogers Bill defined the, you know, childhood very differently to our British scheme as well. But this sort of reflected the sort of...

ideas around social work at that time as well in each country. So yeah, in terms of, I mean, you know, a baby won't know its name. It might not know, remember its mom and dad. It, you know, probably hasn't learned the language yet in, you know, German in any sort of fluency. So these children come to Britain and the particularly the younger ones.

adapt to, you know, speaking English very quickly. In some cases, they're adopted by, you know, really loving families that really, you know, try to do right by them. A lot of families, you know, may not have, you know, understood, you know, Judaism and things like that, but on a human level, try to do their best by them, even if they couldn't take them to synagogue or things like that, if they lived in more rural areas.

And then you have the opposite where some families really abused the children. And this, you know, ranged from all, all different ages, physically, sexually, emotionally, you know, they were, they were exploited for domestic work in some cases. In other cases, they were sort of used to sort of be like the pet of the, of their child sort of thing, you know, this like buddy that would follow them around sort of thing.

Amy (48:19.925)
So the reasons behind why people came forward to, I mean, just in terms of foster parents, why people came forward, there are many different reasons that, you know, people came forward because they couldn't have children of their own. And this was an opportunity to raise a child, you know, and give love to somebody that was in need. Like I said, other wanted some, you know, free labor, essentially. Others may have had good intentions and, you know,

that they quickly became and went down a very dark route. Some wanted to do it for the prestige. I know one MP sort of took in a child to look good in front of colleagues. Exactly. So yeah, and then the children that went to like orphanages and foster homes like that, some were looked after by...

Waitman (49:05.382)
for clout as it were.

Amy (49:17.461)
by the adults there. And some were essentially just left to their own devices, you know, and eventually had to go out and get a job sort of thing. You know, foster families were meant to look after the child until they were 16, 18 sort of thing. And in some cases that didn't happen at all. I know one child that I think she went to about nine different foster families. She just could not settle. They didn't understand the trauma she'd experienced. You know, a lot of the younger children wet the bed.

and the families were sometimes very understanding and others were like, well, what are you doing sort of thing, act normal sort of thing, whatever normal means. Some were, as I said, beaten and things like that. Yeah, there was a lot of different experiences depending on, again, where you went to, if you went to a rural area, you may...

be the only sort of Jewish person in that area. If you were in London, you may have more contact to a Jewish community. Some children were, I suppose, forcibly converted and their identities changed, particularly younger ones. You know, some families changed their name without them knowing. And it was really, you know, particularly at the end of the war, this was very challenging and difficult, particularly if the parent had survived.

because the parent wanted their child back, you know, they lived all this time without them. And some cases went to court, you know, the foster family did not want to give the child back. You know, in some cases the child wanted obviously to go back to mom or dad or both. And in some cases they wanted to remain with their foster family. You know, this mom and dad were a stranger. They couldn't speak, they couldn't communicate. You know, they...

the mom and dad would obviously traumatize themselves, however they'd survived the horrors of war. So yeah, it was terribly complicated in the post -war period as well. And I know Rebecca Clifford, I think you've interviewed her book on survivors talks about this in terms of what happened in the post -war period, particularly with the children that survived the camps, but the kind that go through those sorts of experiences as well in terms of, you know,

Amy (51:35.829)
how difficult it was in the post -war period to start life again in some cases. Some foster families wanted the child to remain in England, but mom and dad had moved to America. And you've got that uprootment of moving to another country in the post -war period. Some kind are moved to places like Israel after the war because they wanna...

you know, start their own kibbutz and like kibbutz levy was known as the English kibbutz. It was set up pretty much by a lot of, a lot of kinder and the kinder transport becomes subsumed into a narrative about the sort of wider concept of Jewish resistance and bravery and spiritual triumph. And then some kinder moved to, one moved to Nepal, others moved to Australia to be reunited with distant family members. So there's, you know,

it's not uniform, the story is not the same, you know, it varies from individual to individual.

Waitman (52:47.174)
I mean, it sounds like there was also a breakdown in the vetting process of like families, you know, because you would hope, you know, hope that in a normal modern context, like a foster family is, is very well vetted for like, why are you doing this? And like, you know, what, what do you have the means to take care of children? Like, what is your sort of emotional maturity, etc, etc, etc. Whereas, you know, it sounds like in this case,

Amy (52:48.853)
Mmm.

Amy (52:59.765)
Yes.

Waitman (53:15.27)
they were just desperate for anybody who'd be willing to do it. And so like anything else, you have bad actors, for lack of a better word, who slip through the cracks and then end up, you know, taking a child for less than great reasons. But we've talked on this a lot already, but I mean, we've touched on it, but let's look at the memory piece. I know that's kind of what you work on a lot, and I don't want to like, you know, not talk about this.

Amy (53:19.431)
Mm -hmm.

Waitman (53:42.47)
Because it is held up as one of these things. And let me be clear, you know, I'm not just sort of sticking it to Britain. You know, the United States did not cover itself in glory either when it comes to, you know, saving Jews from Holocaust via immigration, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, it's one of those things that gets held up whenever anybody criticizes, for example, British immigration policy, et cetera, et cetera, in the modern

context or, you know, any other context, like, but we did this, you know, it's kind of like, you know, anybody criticizes the British role in slavery, the responses, but we were the first to outlaw it and, you know, and, you know, and likewise, it becomes sort of this, this.

Amy (54:12.949)
Mm -hmm.

Waitman (54:29.574)
this touch point in World War II memory alongside like the Battle of Britain and these kinds of things as sort of the blitz spirit and just like this, this sort of archetypal British memory, which as, which as Amy's already pointed out on the one hand, that was an absolute good, you know, and absolutely help people and was absolutely generous and kind. But, you know, has this other side, which is that it, it, it can be used to sort of mask failings.

Right? How does this work for Britain, but how does this work for Germany? How does this work for other countries?

Amy (55:04.469)
Yeah, so this was sort of the concept of my first book and PhD really. I looked at how particularly the host nations, so I looked at I think maybe five or six host nations, particularly the English speaking host nations sort of remember and present the Kindertransport. And I think in Britain we have this sort of, as you rightly said, this sort of...

celebratory and self -congratulatory narrative which we should have. We rescued these people and these people survived and they've had families and contributed so much to our society. However, everything that we've been talking about shows that we need to really debunk some of these myths around the Kindertransport and the sort of... My book looked at...

it really examinized this claim that British memory is, you know, this positive, rosy memory of the Kindertransport. And I looked at, well, how was that constructed? You know, how did it come about? You know, how has it been able to sort of dominate the discourse? And a lot of the memorials and museums really focus on this point of arrival and welcome, which is obvious, you know, as we should, as I said, but then anything beyond...

arrival and welcome is sort of neatly sort of marginalised or overcome these sort of, you know, it's what I looked at was how maintaining this positive narrative of the Kindertransport depends on the handling of these critical aspects. So anything that talks about internment, for example, in a museum is oftenly in a drawer.

where you can pull out, but also quietly put away very quickly. So there's this like management of marginalizing some stories over other, or that can be done with color or the arrangement of material. What I found in America is that they are very self -critical because obviously the Wagner Rogers Bill did not pass. So that they're very critical in that respect. But there's a real interesting competitive memory.

Waitman (56:59.462)
Mm.

Amy (57:21.365)
with with Britain in particular, it's like, yeah, well, we didn't help the kinder in 3839. But we did help them after and during the war, you know, a lot of a lot of these children left Britain and came to America and America is their homeland now. So there's that that's an interesting dynamic. And this this redemptive narrative is present, you know, in America and, and in Britain as well. I found that

in Australia and New Zealand, the narrative was a lot more balanced. And we could argue that, you know, there are a lot of gaps in their memories. The Kindertransport, as you said, doesn't really have as this central role as it does in England or Britain rather. I mean, this is quite obvious to say, but their memories are more transnational and focused. And you could obviously say, well, obvious they're on the other side of the world. The kinder had to travel, you know, a greater distance.

But it's not just because of that. When I was looking at definitions of how museums talk about the Kindertransport, for example, British ones often say they came to Britain and may give a little reference or a little nod to the fact that they went to other countries. In Australia, they listed every country these children went to, which I found really refreshing because we don't always see that in British museums. And I...

Waitman (58:48.966)
I mean, it's kind of like the competitive piece, right? Like you can say, we took in X thousands and then not mention that actually we didn't really, because then X number of them went elsewhere. It's like, you count them once and then let that sort of stand, sort of misleading by omission of like, we're also not gonna tell you that they went elsewhere.

Amy (58:49.173)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Amy (58:59.893)
Yes.

Amy (59:07.773)
Exactly, and particularly like the children that came to Britain, you know, and prior to the war, at least 1000 left. You know, this sort of, you know, we rescued 10 ,000. Well, a good chunk of them left before, you know, the outbreak of the war, they were moving on to America and other places. And what I found, particularly in British and American museums,

And our memorials to a degree. There is a renationalization of universal values as well. As if, you know, it's Britain and America that these children can start their childhoods again. You know, we are the rescuers sort of thing. You know, we uphold human rights better than anybody else and look at the Kindertransport.

Waitman (59:53.382)
Mm.

Waitman (01:00:00.742)
Well, and potentially, I mean, it almost seems like there's this idea that they wanted to come to Britain and America because we are the sort of torchbearers for democracy and liberal values, where obviously the children couldn't have cared less, you know, even if they understood those concepts. And the parents probably didn't have much of a choice anyway, and any place is better than Nazi Germany, right? But

Amy (01:00:06.389)
Mm.

Amy (01:00:11.765)
Yes.

Amy (01:00:19.221)
Mm -hmm.

Waitman (01:00:28.486)
as you as you're it seems like you're pointing out that this sort of serves to reify these like, you know, the the beacon of democracy kind of, you know, ideals of says a lot more about the nation state itself rather than what they actually did during the war.

Amy (01:00:43.253)
Exactly, and in terms of the Canadian perspective, I thought that those exhibitions were interesting in Canada because they showed this sort of real unresolved tension between sort of the saviour narrative and the enemy narrative. So Canada did take in kinder, particularly after the war, you know, to be reunited and things like that. But during the war,

they were essentially there as enemy aliens. You know, they were sent from Britain to Canada on these enemy alien ships. And in Canada, they wore a uniform with a big red circle on, which was like, you know, essentially wearing a target. And the Canadians really openly reflect on this. In our exhibitions, you will see stories about internment. You'll never ever hardly see.

any reference to the fact that kinder were in turn. A lot of even new exhibitions don't haven't, you know, talked about this or the fact that kinder became domestics. Those sort of, you know, we really need to see the kinder transport more broadly. And it does fit into all these other histories, all these micro histories that, you know, make up this broader, broader, broader history.

And then in Germany, German memory was really actually quite late to the Kindertransport. But when it did come into being, it looked more on the persecution of children. So everything that sort of led up to the Kindertransport. So as we talked about earlier, the displacement, the fracturing of families, the trauma and all that sort of stuff, that's what sort of...

German memory really focused on to start off with around the Kindertransport. The emigration side in terms of where they went when they fled Germany was less of a focus. It is becoming a focus now and that's what I find really interesting at which we talk about at the end of the book, how these memories are starting to converge and learn from one another. So German memory has had an impact on British memory because I think there's more of a...

Amy (01:03:02.293)
you know, to really think about the parents more, what their fates were, what the fates of like the wider family was and all the children that had places on kinder transports and couldn't leave or the children that just never were able to board the trains. So I think that there is a dialogue there and it's becoming louder but I still think these sort of...

national narratives that fit very neatly into the wider narratives of the Holocaust within those countries still persist, but that there is a movement.

Waitman (01:03:35.64)
Well, there's that interesting, yeah, there's that interesting, there's two statues. You know, the one in, see, there's one in Germany. I think they're both at train stations or things like that, but one is in Germany and it has, it has children, I think it has two groups of children, right? It has one that's sort of going on the transport, like hooray, and one that's not going on the transport the other direction, right, to extermination centers or whatnot. But then in the UK,

Amy (01:03:37.621)
Yes.

Waitman (01:04:03.654)
It's just the ones arriving, hooray, you know, from, which to me, it seems maybe that's a microcosm of the whole thing, you know, with sort of this triumphalist memory of it, you know, which is, you know, because it could have been, you could have designed that memorial in a different way, right? You could have had the children arriving, hooray, and then, you know, in the background, our children sort of watching from behind a fence or something that sort of indicates that they couldn't go, right? But you don't.

It's interesting, again, the ways in which these countries try to spin as the wrong works. I'm not trying to suggest that it's all the sort of nefarious attempt to deceive, but we naturally as human beings like to present the best side of ourselves. And I think this is part of it. And I wanted to ask, is there any sense that Germany in a weird sort of way,

out if it's going to land right, but it is also trying to take some pride in the kinder transport in allowing them to leave. Or is it still very much sort of the justified sort of self -criticism of Germany during the Third Reich?

Amy (01:05:21.877)
I think it's mainly self -criticism. And I think there's a real reflection now, particularly on the new exhibitions, that they'll look at the parents' stories and these letters and what the Germans could have stopped after the Kindertransport, the fates of the families and parents. I don't think it's celebratory in the sense of like, yeah, we let these children go sort of thing. I don't think it falls into that category.

Waitman (01:05:50.438)
Right, right.

Amy (01:05:51.349)
But I think in terms of, you know, some children didn't board transports to life, they boarded trains to death. You know, the Germans were one of the first countries to really look into that in a lot more detail in terms of the kinder transport. So like, for example, that we often think the term

going back to the term, was coined in like the 80s sort of thing, we know in the 80s, 90s with the first reunions. And the first use of the term in the postal period is the Eichmann trial. They talk about the Kindertransport. I think it's convoy 26 that goes from Drancy to Auschwitz in August 42. And they use the term Kindertransport.

And I think that the German memorials reflect that. Frank Meisler created those memorials and he was a Kindertransportee that left Danzig. And the memorial is at Friedrichstrasse in Berlin because that's where he changed trains. And that sort of movement, one train going in one direction and the other, reflects German memory, but also what Frank then came to understand.

I suppose as understanding the kinder transport and understanding that a lot of siblings didn't make it sort of thing. I think that when you see Frank's memorials all together, when you are aware of this transnational network in your head, you can really see a critical narrative. And if you understand that memorial in relation to the one in Britain, you see a much more diverse, complex narrative appear.

But if you're not aware of that, and I sort of talk about this in the book and you just see the British one, you have a very different understanding if you don't, if you're not aware of this transnational network and this transnational network can, you know, you, you sometimes need other tools or other things to access to understand the transnational narrative around the Kindertransport. So like the Stolperstein, for example, like there are a lot of those that talk about

Amy (01:08:07.253)
children that escaped and didn't, and they'll use the term kinder transport. But again, if you're not aware of those things, then you might not understand the broader history or memory of the kinder transport. So, you know, I do believe that there is a transnational memory of the kinder transport out there. And I talked about that in the book and what I mean by that. But I think, yeah, you sort of need tools.

Waitman (01:08:08.486)
Mm -hmm.

Amy (01:08:34.805)
to understand and unpick that story. Whereas the national narratives are a lot more easier to sort of see and, you know, to engage in because they are, I suppose, more visible, you know, they've been around a lot longer, but there is a movement towards a more complex narrative around the kinder transport. And that is really, I really want to stress this, it is because of the kinder themselves. You know, they,

have done so much for Kindertransport memory. Not to like, you know, I'm not trying to say that the historians or the museums or the archives have because because they gosh they have to, but the kinder have really been this driving force to really say no, this is our story. Listen, like it's diverse, it's complex. You know, we moved to all these different countries, we had all these experiences.

Waitman (01:09:31.718)
Well, I suppose I want to come back to part of that as well, but it's worth pointing out that, you know, the Paddington, Paddington Bear story, right, is like, I mean, in a good way, in a bad way, right. It's sort of inspired by that, right. By the, by the Kindertransport. And again, you know, my daughter loves Paddington Bear, you know, and, but the story is like a totally nice feel good story mostly. Right. And again, you know, like those children.

Amy (01:09:35.797)
Mmm.

Amy (01:09:43.861)
Mm -hmm.

Amy (01:09:51.925)
Mm.

Waitman (01:10:00.166)
even in the best circumstances, it was very, very hard for them. And again, I think that's part of it. And I think it's interesting to consider, I mean, this gets to another deep question, which we may not have time for, because it's that deep, but this question of who and what constitutes a Holocaust survivor, right? Which again, it's not a debate that I think is...

is useful in the sense of categorizing people's suffering. I only think it's interesting in what it says more about the larger sort of definitional kinds of issues. Because far be it from me to sort of decide who gets to call themselves anything. But one sort of absolutist position might say that these children are

didn't survive the Holocaust in the sense of, you know, they, they didn't, they weren't in the camp, they weren't hiding. But I think after listening to you, we would all agree that they are obsolete Holocaust survivors because gosh, you know, they're the trauma that they experience as a direct result of the Holocaust, even if they didn't, weren't firsthand sort of persecuted. I'm using scare quotes here for those of you that want persecuted by the Nazis, I, you know, put on a train, put in a ghetto, put in a concentration camp. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's astounding.

You know, and, and I would argue potentially, I'm curious what you think about it, but you know, there also obviously were lots of children that survived the Holocaust in camps and ghettos in hiding, et cetera. But you know, ultimately they are, many of them are, are faced with the same challenges that the Kindertransport children are. you know, they, except that they had, you know, they had a much more difficult time of sort of daily life during the Holocaust, but many of them are trying to find family or.

you know, fit in in a place that's foreign to them or end up, you know, moving to a place, as you point out, that's completely foreign, you know, along with all the sort of emotional and traumatic baggage that they've acquired.

Amy (01:12:07.509)
Definitely, and I think just to come back to your point about the children that survive through hiding or through the camps, these children, after the war, some of them come to Britain and some of the kinder help rehabilitate them. So some of the older children are sent to Windermere and places like that and do help rehabilitate these other children.

So, you know, survivors helping survivors is a really interesting story there. But then, you know, some of the kinder that moved to Israel when Jews flee from North Africa and Yemen, they also rehabilitate those people as well. So these stories really, you know, connects and that they're not separate stories. And even Rabbi

Solomon Schoenfeld, who helped children on kinder transports before the war, sort of extends the term because he starts helping children who would survive the camps. And you know, you could look at the term being extended in terms of a post -war context to help these children. But yeah, the concept of who is a survivor is really interesting because I think for many years, a lot of the kinder didn't see themselves.

as survivors, they were directly told that by other people, but also they didn't feel like that themselves. I think today we recognise them as survivors and rightly so. For my book with Bill, we're really looking at who is a kinder -transporter? Is it the children that...

got on the train that obviously, you know, is it the children that didn't get on trains? Is it the children that got on trains to other directions? You know, that's a real important point for our book. Yes.

Waitman (01:13:59.59)
Hmm.

Waitman (01:14:12.422)
Or the 34 group, you know, versus the sort of the latter group, right? They both are fleeing not to persecution, but one is more sort of urgent and more informed about what they're fleeing than the other, right?

Amy (01:14:14.261)
The latter, yeah. Mm -hmm.

Amy (01:14:26.357)
Exactly. And then in terms of like compensation and things like that, it was only in 2019 that the German government, because of the claims conference and other people, you know, did a separate fund for Kinder that they could apply to because they were not recognized for other certain, you know, funds. And I, when I was in New York, I really had a really privileged meeting to sit down with the claims conference and go through how this all came about and what stipulation was.

to get this sort of claim and it sets out who is the kinder transporter and the claims conference constantly had to go back and I wouldn't say battle but sort of argue the case that Danzig wasn't in the definition to start off with. So that had to be changed and added. And then this sort of in America, this is concept of the 1000 children. Again, it's a real post hoc view of history. I know the survivors themselves.

tried to give a name to themselves because they knew of the Kindertransport and they knew they'd got to America on a rescue operation. But this sort of name doesn't apply. Like it was never used. It wasn't used in official documentation. You could see them as kinder and eventually they were brought into this claim as well. So I think it's taken a long, long time for the kinder to feel...

they can use this term but also and not just be the refugees you know they're refugees and survivors you know.

but also officially to be recognized as a survivor, you know, came in very late and some people had already passed away at that point. So, you know, the kinder that I always think about that passed away in the eighties that never knew about these reunions or anything like that may have passed away not thinking of themselves in those way, in that way.

Waitman (01:16:36.198)
Yeah, I mean, it seems like, you know, one of the things that goes through this work is of a lost childhood in the sense that, you know, these children had to grow up so quickly. I mean, I'm thinking about your example, which would be on another podcast of, you know, the kinder transport survivors helping Holocaust or helping, you know, camp ghetto.

hiding survivors, right? I mean, like, that's a job for like a grown adult with a degree in like social psychology, et cetera, et cetera. You know, I can't imagine, you know, even if they volunteered to do it, you know, the stress that puts on a young person to try to sort that out. And then, you know, this sort of...

I wonder if there's this feeling of sort of unworthiness from these survivors that, I mean, it's not rational. I don't mean it that way, but you know, they were sent away by their parents to a different country. They never really a hundred percent were able to fit in because they were, you know, because of obvious, you know, rational reasons. You know, I remember I took a group of

of Cadets to Poland with the Auschwitz Jewish Center, which I do every year. And last year we did it and we listened to a survivor, a Jewish survivor in Krakow talk and she had been hidden by a non -Jewish family. And it was fascinating because she was very open about the fact that she actually was angry at her parents for doing that and that she actually got on better with.

her sort of hiding family and never really bonded with her mother over this because she sort of held her mother responsible for these awful things. And even, she's what, 70, 80 now, and you can still see that as trauma, right? And I wonder if this is part of this struggle for the Kindertransport children to sort of say, we're not special, we don't feel special.

Waitman (01:18:53.254)
we don't feel like we deserve this again it's not a rational response but it's more of an emotional sort of for formative are former problematic years we we felt like we were we were that make sense i might just sort of overly overly psychologizing this early you know

Amy (01:19:05.237)
Yeah, no, no, no, no, totally. We've definitely had those conversations and particularly with second gen, you know, a lot of second gen will have those conversations with mom and dad or, you know, will talk to me about those things. So, yeah, no, definitely. It's definitely a conversation that a lot of families have and are still having.

Waitman (01:19:29.318)
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. The the. Can you talk a little about the reunion piece? Because I think before we before we end, I mean, that that sounds really interesting because it seems like in some ways that's kind of like a group therapy. Kind of event, right, where you can get together with people. You know, we've had a very, very specific experience that that you share with them that you don't share with anybody else.

Amy (01:19:38.005)
Mmm.

Amy (01:19:48.597)
Yeah, so after the war, the Kindertransport narrative really got sort of lost and it was, I suppose, on the verge of, you know, falling off the cliff and it was, you know, children, well not children, they were adults then, after the war, who had sort of, I suppose, private reunions. So if you were in a hostel or in a particular home, and you kept in contact, they did, they did try and reunite before the sort of more public and known ones.

that come around in the late 80s and 90s. And again, it was all driven by the kinder themselves, you know, in Britain, there was Bertha Leviton and lots of other people that got together and you know, met in London and it was like, gosh, you know, there are other people like me, there are other people that, you know, family, yeah, have, you know, these like,

Waitman (01:20:45.83)
What's like family? It's like, you know...

Amy (01:20:47.253)
like you know without knowing sort of thing like you you can you know there's a feeling or a vibe or that you know you could just being with them I think helped a lot of people and it helped second gen as well because if you had a parent that didn't speak this was like a whole new arena because you could hear other people speak now and they became as the like the kinder transport association in america they're a they are a family as well they're a they're very serious

organisation, you know, they do a lot of work in schools around the world, memorials, all these different things. But at the core, they're a family, that there are people that have similar experiences and can understand them and they can communicate, can sit down, you know, they're there for one another. And I think that's really, really special because, you know, so many kinder grew up without families, you know, they have this sort of wider adopted

family as a result sort of thing. And again, for second, I think this is really important for second gen particularly, I always get really choked up when they talk about them not knowing grandparents and being really envious of people that had grandparents growing up. Well, if you know other kinder, they become, you know, that surrogate family that you never had sort of thing. And I think that there's a real value there and you know,

beyond looking at the history and memory of it, you know, just on that personal level. That's a really important part as well.

Waitman (01:22:25.126)
Yeah. And it touches on something that I think runs throughout, you know, our search for sort of understanding the Holocaust, particularly from a memory perspective, you know, which is that it's these sort of circles, sometimes intersecting, sometimes not, right? Where, you know, a Holocaust survivor, say we're using sort of a standardized term, someone who was in a camp or ghetto, you know, they may be interested in talking with other Holocaust survivors.

Amy (01:22:30.709)
Mm.

Amy (01:22:45.397)
Mm -hmm.

Waitman (01:22:54.918)
about their experiences because they know that that person understands at some basic level what they went through in a way that other people don't, whether it's other members of the Jewish community or their children or whatever. I mean, and this is not just tied to specialize in the Holocaust. I mean, it goes with combat veterans as well. You know, I'm not going to talk to you about my experience because like you just can't understand. You don't have the basic understanding of what it was like. Right. And.

Amy (01:23:09.621)
Mm.

Amy (01:23:18.485)
Mm.

Waitman (01:23:23.27)
But I mean, I think it's really interesting in the Holocaust perspective, you know, where you have these questions of how do you work through...

Amy (01:23:31.079)
Mm.

Waitman (01:23:32.966)
trauma, essentially, right? And this is for a generation, arguably, in which therapy and talking about your feelings is not really a thing that you did, right? At least not formally. And it's not a thing that society sort of valorized or accepted either. You know, I suspect if you went to a psychiatrist or a psychologist in 1953, people are like, you know, you're crazy.

And so there is this search for other venues, even if you're not talking about it, but just being around the people that have had similar experiences to you. I think there's something really powerful about that. And the Kindle Transport is another example of that, you know, where, because I think often for survivors and people that have gone through these kinds of experiences, it can be exhausting to have to explain it to

Amy (01:24:23.253)
Mm.

Waitman (01:24:30.246)
people who lack the most basic, not because they're dumb or anything, but they lack the basic sort of visceral understanding of what it was that you went through. And you sort of have to like, it's like when you're, you probably have had this experience when you're listening to like a show, a foundation, oral history, right. And, you know, sometimes the interviewers are great and sometimes they're not so great. And sometimes you can just see, you can see the interview, the interviewee, the survivor just turn off because.

Amy (01:24:37.333)
Mm.

Waitman (01:25:00.006)
the interviewer has done something to signal that they really have no idea of even the basic experience. And the person who is, who is, you know, putting themselves out there is just like, you know what, forget it. Like, I'm not going to go through this with you because you don't, you haven't done your homework and, or you just don't, you're not going to get it. And then they, and then they sort of, they sort of dip into their, you know, well traveled story.

Amy (01:25:17.493)
Mm -hmm.

Waitman (01:25:26.918)
you know, that they tell the school every year or whatever, you know, but because they're not going to put themselves out for it. I mean, is that something that makes sense? I mean, I feel like it's something that I see in my work, but also other people, but also it's something that is reflected with the with the Kindertransmort as well.

Amy (01:25:34.709)
of a show.

Amy (01:25:42.549)
for sure. Yeah, definitely. And I think I find it really interesting. And again, this is slightly biased because I obviously talk with more kinder than anybody else in terms of other people's experiences. So many kinder reach out to fellow refugees from from other, you know, tragedies and conflicts and genocides, you know, that a lot. We've done a lot of conversations between kinder and Bosnian.

survivors, you know, there's a real reaching out across time and space to have conversations with people that have gone through other horrific experiences. But then just going back to your previous question, you know, because of talking in groups and because of these networks that the kinder and their families have created, there's kinder transport dialogue on Facebook that was created by Tamara Meyer.

And that is a real network of digital network of really bringing people together and really finding out in a lot of cases, you were on the same train as me. Do you remember this or this or gosh, you grew up a street away from me or, you know, there are all these interesting stories that I found out because I've been allowed into these spaces that.

the kinder created years ago, you know, years and years ago, this is not new. They've been doing this work for a long time before we all cottoned onto it. You know, that they have talked a lot about connections between their stories, you know, do you remember this or that? And, you know, again, the fact that we can sort of, you could really do a map around Europe of where some of them were and how close they lived and...

Waitman (01:27:12.422)
Right.

Amy (01:27:29.589)
how they found out about the Kindertransport, did their parents know them, you know, one another. We found out very recently that some parents were on the same trains, you know, eastwards sort of thing. So like all those stories, you know, you think of these individual stories of the kinder, you know, leaving home and going somewhere.

But actually there are so many interconnections between all the different families that came on the Kindertransport or didn't, sadly. You know, a lot of the...

Waitman (01:28:04.102)
When it's almost like they're reverse engineering a family history, you know, because like, I would imagine that if you're a Jewish person and you a Jewish kid and you end up in, you know, Yorkshire someplace, you know, like you're completely isolated and you have no idea that anybody else is going through similar things than you, you know, whereas if you were, even if you were in an immigrant, a Jewish immigrant that ends up in a Jewish community someplace else.

Amy (01:28:05.525)
Totally, yeah.

Amy (01:28:15.765)
Mm.

Waitman (01:28:34.214)
you're surrounded by people that have had these similar experiences. And you can sort of, you can sort of do that Jewish genealogy thing, right? Of like, your, your grandmother was, you know, in the shuttle with my grandmother and this kind of stuff, which you can't do if you just lack that most basic familial connection, right? To what your, to what your past is. And so, you know, sometimes we talk about the creation of a collective memory as a impediment to memory, right? Because it can be, it can, it can, it can,

Amy (01:28:51.797)
Mm -hmm.

Amy (01:28:57.557)
Mm.

Waitman (01:29:03.75)
It can add memories that somebody might actually not have remembered, right? This is the, it was Mengele on the ramp at Auschwitz when, you know, it may not have been Mengele. It was clearly a doctor, but you have just internalized it. It must've been Mengele because you've heard that. But it sounds like actually in this case, it is less adopting a sort of collective memory than, as I said, reverse engineering. you were there. I was here.

Amy (01:29:11.957)
Mm -hmm.

Waitman (01:29:29.382)
you know, did you see this thing? I saw that thing and it's excavating rather than creating in a certain sense, right? Yeah.

Amy (01:29:32.565)
Totally. And it really helps dispel myths and, you know, the kinder themselves and their families have done a lot with regards to that. You know, they've really, you know, the myth that really persists, and I know it annoys a lot of people, that the first transport out of Berlin was full of orphans. It wasn't, you know. Yes, there were some children that sadly, their parents were no longer there or they were in an orphanage. But

know, a lot of people that I've spoken to had parents, you know, they weren't these sort of abandoned or children that had grown up with no sort of family unit. And that's because, no, just to say that that is because of these sort of networks that exist, either digital or in person, where they've said, you know, my mom was on the first transport, well, what was her family background? And, you know, it comes from that really.

Waitman (01:30:14.438)
Well, these people would go ahead.

Waitman (01:30:29.958)
Well, and I mean, again, it's interesting because you also then have again this responsibility where like that children shouldn't have, you know, but they do, which is now they're responsible for their parents' memory, you know, because they may be the only ones that exist that, you know, knew about that person, right? And so then they become responsible not only for, not that they are responsible, but for telling their story, but also...

Amy (01:30:35.445)
Mm.

Amy (01:30:39.541)
Yeah.

Amy (01:30:47.477)
Mm -hmm.

Waitman (01:30:57.958)
telling their parents' story. And so I could see how someone, you know, I may be an orphan now, but I wasn't always an orphan. I had parents, you know, and their story is part of my story, right? Which I think gets to, you know, potentially the question of like, you know, I suspect that at least initially a lot of these children, you know, were children of parents of a certain social class with certain means, because otherwise you don't have the access either sort of...

Amy (01:31:07.189)
Exactly.

Waitman (01:31:27.302)
socially or financially to sort of do this in the first place, right?

Amy (01:31:29.781)
Exactly and just to go back to that point that yeah a lot of I've lost my I've lost my trial thought now sorry no no it's fine no it's gone it'll come back in a moment.

Waitman (01:31:40.134)
Sorry.

Amy (01:31:48.549)
that was it. Sorry. That was it. You spoke about, yeah, families. Yeah. So to think about...

Waitman (01:31:49.478)
No, because what was I talking about? I was talking about...

Amy (01:31:59.669)
Sorry. Yeah, that was it. Thank you. Yeah, in the first book we did, we talked about a concept that we came up with called personal transnational memory, whereby, you know, the kinder, you know, it might, they zigzag, they move across time and space. But a lot of this personal transnational memory boiled down to these parallel journeys, the kinder weren't just recalling their stories. They were talking about what happened to mom and dad or a sibling or things like that. So,

Waitman (01:32:02.278)
the responsibility for family memory.

Amy (01:32:29.717)
Again, they've been doing this for years and it's just something as I started to interview more people, you start to see that they're not just explaining their story, they're really talking about a wider story and placing that, the kinder transport experience within the wider family story as well. So we really need an integrated family history of the kinder transport as well, because it's not just this one journey. There's one...

family that I know nine children came on a kinder transport all at different times and you know, not all together, but nine children got out. Mom and dad's fate was very different and the wider family as well, but that's nine individual kinder transport journeys within one family. And then you have, you know, the cousins, la la la la. So it's really important to not, to see the kinder transport within this wider family narrative as well, because mom and dad,

may be displaced to Shanghai or something like that. And it may take five years after the war to be reunited. There are all these sort of transnational stories that exist within or parallel to the Kindertransport as well.

Waitman (01:33:48.742)
yeah i'm almost imagining you know writing a book where you sort of have

figuratively, you know, the story of the Kindertransport child in color and then in grayscale behind it is, you know, what's happening to their parents at the same time, you know, in in woodch or they've been deported to wood or or Minsk or whatever. And, you know, but we could we could go on for another another two hours. This is amazing. But we probably shouldn't. So maybe we should close with the question that I always ask, which is, you know, what is.

Amy (01:34:05.141)
Mm -hmm.

Amy (01:34:11.061)
Hahaha.

Waitman (01:34:23.878)
What is one book on the Holocaust that you would recommend for our listeners?

Amy (01:34:26.229)
I want to be cheeky and sort of break the rule because there's a book that I would, I know I'm so sorry, and one of those. A book that I would recommend in terms of reading a survivor account is by Hannah Zach -Miley and the book is called A Garland for Ashes. It's incredible. It's a kinder transport narrative. She zigzags, she moves across time and space. She starts in the present. She moves backwards in time. She...

Waitman (01:34:32.806)
Go ahead. Everybody else does, so go ahead.

Amy (01:34:56.149)
She talks about her parents and their fate, but also a little boy called Kurt and how he was gonna go on a Kindertransport and didn't, and how they said goodbye to one another. She talks a lot about reconciliation and journeying back to piece together her story. And then a more, I suppose, academic book from the historian side is...

either Lynn Julius uprooted or there's an edited volume called The Holocaust in North Africa. And I want to include those because my granddad was in Egypt just after the war and, you know, there was connections there. But also when I was in the archives recently in New York, I found a movement of children, Kindertransport, or not, we'll decide another day, but a movement of children from Yemen in 1936 to Palestine. So,

They're the books that I'm very obsessed with at the moment.

Waitman (01:35:58.47)
That's amazing. And I will put those in our reading list for our viewers or our listeners rather. For everybody else, thank you so much for listening. Please go give us a rating, a comment, say something nice if you're finding these to be meaningful and useful. And Amy, thank you so much for coming on. This was amazing. We could go for another two hours, but thanks so much for coming.

Amy (01:36:00.117)
Thank you.

Amy (01:36:22.037)
Thank you for having me. Thank you.