On 2 December 1938, approximately 200 children from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin were sent to Harwich, Great Britain, in what would become known as the first Kindertransport (German for “Children Transport.”)
Within months of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, tens of thousands of Jews attempted to leave the country. While world leaders gathered at the Evian Conference to discuss the “refugee problem,” little progress was made. Even in the wake of Kristallnacht, very few countries opened their doors to Jewish refugees, after violent mobs, encouraged by Nazi officials, had destroyed approximately 300 synagogues, 7,500 businesses, countless homes, and even Jewish cemeteries. While initial figures released by Nazis officials indicated that 91 Jews had died in the pogroms, recent studies have suggested that there were in fact hundreds. But in light of those events, British Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare sped up the immigration process by issuing travel documents.
Overall, most Kindertransport conveyances left from Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and other major cities in central Europe, with children from smaller towns and villages traveling to these collection points in order to join the transports.
After the transports arrived in Harwich, children went to London to meet their foster families. Those without sponsors were housed in a summer camp in Dovercourt Bay and in other facilities in which they stayed until families agreed to care for them or hostels were organized to house them.
The last Kindertransport left Germany on 1 September 1939, the day the German army invaded Poland. The last transport from the Netherlands left for Britain over a year later on 14 May 1940, the same day that the Dutch army surrendered to German forces. In total, the operation, authorized by the British government and conducted by individuals in various countries and religious and secular organizations, rescued approximately 10,000 children, the vast majority of whom were Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Most of these children would never see their parents again.
