Kindertransport is a German word that means "transport of children". It refers to the organized immigration of 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Free City of Danzig (now Gdansk) to Great Britain. The reason for the Kindertransport programme was that while hundreds of thousands of people were trying to escape the advance of the Nazi Reich, the free world was increasingly closing its doors to them. Jewish refugees were treated as agents of the Nazis, as if they were not in fact the first victims of Nazi terror.
As in other refugee crises, someone came up with the idea of providing temporary shelter, at least for children. And so in the second half of November 1938, shortly after the events of the so-called Kristallnacht in Germany, Austria and the occupied Czechoslovakian borderlands, the efforts of British political activists led to a change in the immigration rules there. The authorities agreed to allow visa-free immigration of orphans and child refugees threatened by the advancing persecution of those identified as Jews.
But the children had to arrive alone without their parents and could not be older than 16. For each child, refugee committees or private individuals had to post a substantial monetary bond. Both Jewish and Christian, Quaker and left-wing organisations were involved in the organisation of the Kindertransports.
The most famous name of all the British volunteers who came to Czechia during the so-called Second Republic and made themselves available to local refugee organizations is Nicholas Winton. He was responding to an appeal by Marie Schmolka and Hanna Steiner, representatives of a refugee committee struggling with the dire situation and the growing hatred of the local population towards Jewish refugees after Munich. The Jewish refugees were perceived by the nationally oriented press of the Second Republic primarily as Germans, the ancient enemies of the Czechs.
Winton was then commissioned by Doreen Warriner, director of the Prague office of the British Refugee Committee, to organise emigration aid for children. Dozens of people working in Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia were involved in the preparation of Kindertransports leaving Prague. Many, like Winton, came from abroad to help people in need.
Over nine months, 10,000 children arrived in Britain and were placed with foster families. The vast majority of them never met their parents again.
At what age did you first leave home alone to live abroad, without your parents? How long did you stay abroad?