Sixty years ago, Kindertransports spared thousands of children their parents’ tragic fates. Now their stories are told in a new film and a sculptor’s tribute.
What would you put in a suitcase for a child you thought you would never seeagain? This is the question that thousands of parents from Germany,Czechoslovakia, Poland and Austria had to confront in 1938 and 1939, havingdecided to send their children, alone, to Britain as their only chance of survival.
Each child was allowed only one handbag and one case. They had to be able to carry it themselves and the contents were rigidly restricted: no jewellery orvaluables, no money, musical instruments or cameras. Each child had to take anunbreakable cup, washing supplies and enough food for three meals.
Some 10,000 children came to Britain in this way, rescued by the Kindertransports. Their story is told, narrated by Judi Dench, in the documentary film Into the Arms of Strangers, which had its royal premiere lastnight.
“I grew up only vaguely aware of the fact that my mother had been a child on the Kindertransport,” says Deborah Oppenheimer, the film’s producer. “She was of a generation in which you kept your suffering very private – she wanted to put the past behind her.”
In 1993 her mother died and Oppenheimer discovered letters from her mother’s own parents, who had died in a concentration camp. These helped to piece together the story of how she had escaped from Germany at the age of 11, of her journey to England and of being taken in by a London family.
It spurred Oppenheimer to make her film. “I wanted to explore issues of choice,” she says. “Would you send your child away? Would you take a child in?
Even the children themselves faced a choice: whether they were going to be resilient and whether they could reconcile their feelings of abandonment.” Some were emotionally scarred by the experience and, even in old age, are still grappling with the sense of loss.
Flor Kent, 39, a Venezuela-born sculptor now living in London, was moved by the story of the Kindertransports – one of her best friends at school in Caracas was the daughter of a Kinder. Two years ago she had an idea for a memorial to this extraordinary mission: an enormous glass suitcase, 2m by 1.85m, which would contain some of the objects to which each child clung, to be displayed in the middle of the concourse at Liverpool Street station. “The station was the first encounter most of these children had with England after their long and difficult journey and it remains for them a highly emotional place,” Kent says. It is hoped that sufficient funds to complete the project will be raised by next year.
Two years ago Kent put advertisements in Jewish newspapers asking for objects that the Kinder had brought with them. “I didn’t expect much; it had been 60 years and things get lost or thrown away. But the response was incredible. People sent me their most precious possessions. One woman wrote to say that she had put some objects in her will for me but cannot give them to me yet. They have enabled her to get through life and she still needs them.”
Among the items Kent has received for her glass suitcase are a set of wooden coathangers, hand-painted with the words Fur Das Kind (For the Child), a now virtually fur-less 1920s toy dog and a pair of ice skates. “The man who sent me these explained that they were never worn in England and ‘never dusted or touched by anyone since my mother threw them into the case’.”
Kent has been sent diaries which the children were expected to fill in every day, parents hoping, perhaps, that one day they might read about the missing years of their children’s lives. She is puzzled by the large number of socks she has received, less so by the identity documents stamped with a “J” and visas.
For some it is the non-essential items that have proved the most enduring. Ruth Sellers, 16 when she left Germany, has donated her mother’s wedding veil. “It’s a bit squashed, but I hope it is good enough to go in the case. I’m now 78 and I felt my children would not want it; it’s part of my past, not theirs,” she says.
Josi Knight, 15 when she left Slovakia in June 1939, has given an apron that her mother made and wore every day. She never saw her parents again; they died in Auschwitz.
Wendy Wood and her younger sister Frieda donated a typical Aryan-looking blue-eyed doll with its original green dress, old-fashioned knickers and vest which Wendy remembers watching her mother make. Her parents, too, were killed in Auschwitz.”I was given it as a Chanukah present, and it was one of the last reminders of home,” Wood says. “All the other things were necessities; this was the only thing that linked me to the past. Now I feel ready to part with it. It’s almost like giving a thank you present.”
Once Kent had worked out the design of the suitcase, she approached a leading conservation scientist in an attempt to work out a method of providing an oxygen-free atmosphere so that the items would not degrade with time. Robert Child, the head of conservation at the National Museum of Wales, is confident that he and his colleagues have solved most of the problems. “It involved finding a special glass that is strong enough to withstand vandals or temperatures ranging from 40C to -10C,” Child says. “We also needed to filter out the ultraviolet light and to humidify its nitrogen, as any paper would otherwise shrivel. ”
The suitcase is intended to be a “live”, or rotating, exhibit. Kent has been sent so many objects that she has decided to change them periodically, and the Imperial War Museum has agreed to curate the sculpture by looking after any artefacts not on display and by monitoring the condition of those that are. “Flor has gathered an amazingly good collection,” says the deputy director of the museum’sHolocaust Project, James Taylor. “What you will see is evidence of a crime – a crime of separation, or in many cases of murder. Preserving such items means bringing people into contact with what went on in ways which television or a book cannot.”
Into the Arms of Strangers is released on Nov 24. For further information on the project contact rg@wjr.org.uk