Original subtitles

WOMAN: I still have dreams, and certain things come back.

I don't know what age I am, but life is quite normal.

Whatever we're doing is an everyday happening.

And this is when I wake up.

And as old as I am, I'm still sobbing.

[Children singing "Alle V gel Sind Schon Da"]

NARRATOR: In 1933, few of the Jewish families

who lived in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia

foresaw how much their lives were about to change.

None of their children realized

how soon their childhood was about to end.

WOMAN: I was a very happy little girl growing up.

My father absolutely adored me.

I mean, there was never anything

that I could have possibly done wrong.

My father used to go out with me shopping.

And I always used to admire this one suit,

which was for ladies. I was only a kid.

And I always said, "Oh, daddy, I would love to wear that suit."

So one day, he said, "Should we go in there?"

And I said, "That's for big ladies. I--I can't--"

"Well, let's go in there."

And he went in there and they took my measurements,

and that suit was made for me.

And I came home, and my mother was devastated.

"What are you buying this little girl all this stuff for?

She doesn't need that."

And my father said, "She is my pride and joy,

and she needs everything I can get for her."

[Vienna Boys Choir singing]

MAN: my parents were sort of middle-class people,

and my father was a middle level bank manager

and my mother, a lady of leisure.

And I was a very much desired first child.

Uh, they were both around 30 or so.

We had one of these very nice apartments in Vienna

with a high ceiling,

lots of light, as I remember it, big windows,

and I guess I was spoiled. I mean, in addition to them,

there was of course the inevitable maid,

nursemaid in the house, in those days.

Uh, my grandmother looked in often and lived nearby.

And it was, in many ways, a rather idyllic life.

And I was indeed sort of the center of the universe.

[Choir singing "Ja Do Lesa Nepojedu"]

WOMAN: we had mother, father, and my sister,

who was 4 years younger than I was.

We had a very happy childhood, carefree childhood.

My father was always busy during the week,

but when he was home, he often took me for walks

by the river, mostly, and talked about everything.

And that brought us probably closer.

I always felt father and I

were protecting my mother and my sister.

I don't know what we were protecting them from.

Heil! Heil!

Heil! Heil!

WOMAN: I was about just under 8 years old

when, when uh, Hitler came to power.

I'd got some school friends, and my mother always tried

to make a birthday party for us.

The table was set.

We were--I was sort of very excited.

Nobody came.

Not a single child came to this birthday party.

And, uh, that was the first terrible blow to me.

I know it sounds trivial,

but it was the first sort of comprehension for a child

to understand that you are ostracized,

that there's something different about you.

[Singing]

NARRATOR: For Jewish children, life under Hitler

became increasingly isolated and threatening.

While the Nazis stripped their parents

of their jobs and citizenship,

the children were gradually barred from schools, parks,

theatres, swimming pools.

WOMAN: I was over-protected

because of the Hitler dangers outside the home,

but very much loved in the home.

My mother sitting on my father for a cuddle

was an everyday occurrence.

I had to join in, because otherwise

I would have been jealous.

So he had to have both of us on his lap.

My father used to say, "I'm too old to start again."

Although he spoke perfect English,

he felt he was just not young enough

to start in a new country.

And the other sentence, which was because

his father and grandfather and so on,

uh, were born in Germany,

that this has got to change, that this madman, Hitler,

can't possibly last.

MAN: I feared every day.

I just was, uh, most unhappy going to school.

I was walking on the street.

6 or 7 boys came, called me "Jew bastard,"

and then attacked me and threw me

through the plate-glass window.

I was cut severely,

and I had to go to the hospital for stitching,

and I didn't want to go to school there any more either.

I-I just felt that I was threatened constantly.

NARRATOR: As Hitler strengthened his control,

he began looking for opportunities

to extend Germany's power beyond its borders.

In March 1938,

German troops entered Austria

and, without firing a single shot,

annexed the country to the Reich.

WOMAN: The first thing that happens when a disaster strikes,

nothing changes.

You think there's going to be some great drama,

and you go to bed, put your nightgown on,

and you say the shema to your mother, and then you go to bed.

and you think, oh, this isn't so terrible.

But the next morning,

my parents took me downstairs into the street.

The streets were full of new uniforms I'd never seen.

And the young people wore the red bands around their arms

with the swastika, and I didn't know what that meant.

And they were stretching out their arms in the Hitler salute.

And there were flags everywhere, these new red flags,

with the white circle and the black swastika.

My main sense of something wrong was the haste

with which my parents got me back into the house.

FUCHEL: Suddenly, I couldn't go to my normal school any more.

And I was sent off to a makeshift school

at the end of the tram line.

And I did it alone, even at age 7,

and went to the end of the line,

and then I would just walk on till I came to this house.

Word got back to my parents that while on the tram,

I was a very talkative little boy.

I told them all the bad things that Herr Hitler was doing.

I thought that Herr was his first name, of course.

And, uh, and the word got back to my parents that maybe,

um, they should-- I shouldn't be travelling alone.

And my father then came with me.

And he didn't say much, but he hardly ever did,

but he, you know, let it be known

that it's not wise to go around

saying bad things about Herr Hitler.

NARRATOR: In the weeks following the annexation of Austria,

Nazi authorities had enacted all the anti-Jewish laws

it had taken Hitler 5 years to put into place in Germany.

MAN: Anyone coming from Vienna, it was very dramatic.

The reality of it struck me when my parents talked about

giving up the apartment, that we have to leave.

And that was something, you know,

that just--the bottom falls.

I mean, everything falls out of you.

I mean, this is all I knew.

And we had to give it up, we had to leave.

And that probably was the biggest blow I had.

I mean, just the idea that it'll all end the way it is.

My mother was an activist,

and she knew something had to be done.

And the decision was to go to England

to be hired as a domestic

because the English would take young women

who would not interfere with the labor market.

The plan was, she would go ahead,

she would try and get me out, and my father.

SEGAL: This is the time when I remember.

There was no conversation among the grownups

except how to get out of Vienna.

It's interesting because we are now asked,

"How come you didn't leave?"

And when I think of what it meant to leave,

what--it-- how impossible it was to leave.

First of all, you had to have a sponsor

in the country you were going to who would promise that one

would not become a burden on the government.

You would have to get a visa

from the State Department or the government to be allowed in.

Then you had to get an exit permit from the Nazis.

All these things had to come together,

and they had a time span in which they would expire,

and you had to collect all these things together

so that they would all be ready.

And it usually didn't happen.

The hardest thing was, though, to find a country to go to.

The countries that were under discussion were Argentina,

Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela, Shanghai, Cuba,

the Dominican Republic.

I remember going with my father to the American consulate.

There was a queue around the block,

up the stairs, around the room.

We are now in the late summer of 1938.

I got to the United States in May 1, 1951.

It was a 13-year quota for us.

NARRATOR: German troops had barely entered Austria

when Hitler demanded the annexation of Sudetenland

in Czechoslovakia.

He insisted that the province,

which was home to over 3 million ethnic Germans,

be allowed to secede and join the Reich.

On October 1, with international agreement,

German troops marched into Sudetenland,

adding 1/5 of Czechoslovakia to the Reich,

and opening the way for further dismemberment of the country.

HAYMAN: From then on, people were wondering

what's going to happen next.

Father was an optimist

because he did business with people in France

who wrote and said, "It's going to be bad. Get out."

But for father, no, things like that wouldn't happen.

He had a greater faith in mankind.

He always used to say that he would

rather trust people and be disappointed

than go through life not trusting anybody.

NARRATOR: Less than half a year later,

Hitler would destroy the Czech state.

But now the Nazis continued their persecution of the Jews.

In November, they orchestrated a vicious pogrom,

which they later called "Kristallnacht",

the night of broken glass.

ROSENFELD: I had had a strange dream in the night

that my father was being arrested.

Our evening meal that evening,

that was the last meal I ever remember having with my father.

I looked at him, and I thought,

well, I hadn't really seen his features properly.

And you know how you look at somebody intensely.

And something told me, you know,

I must imprint that image of him on my mind.

WOMAN: Before I went to bed,

my father, in a rather stern voice,

said to me, "if you hear any

"strange noises during the night,

"immediately get out of bed

and go into that wardrobe in the hallway."

And I said, "I don't understand."

And, quite differently than my father

would normally answer my questions,

he said, "Don't ask any questions.

Just do as you're told."

ALLARD: I was woken up at 2.00 in the morning,

with terrible banging on the door.

and there were two Nazis at the door, shouting,

"You're all under arrest.

Put some clothes on and come with us."

I remember it was a very cold, very dark night,

and we all went off to an assembly point,

which was like a big square.

And there were just thousands of other Jews.

And I mean thousands.

And there were people I knew and people I didn't know,

and people getting beaten up, and people crying.

I think everybody was petrified.

I remember, I think, also very vividly,

that they were beating up the rabbi,

and they had fetched the Torahs out of the synagogue.

And I think they were trampling on them.

[Glass breaking]

HELLMAN: I took my bicycle and went to school as always.

There was no Jewish business that I passed

that wasn't broken into.

The merchandise was either on the street or looted completely.

As I got closer to school,

I saw huge pillars of smoke coming from the sections

where the two big synagogues in Frankfurt were.

And I saw that they were on fire.

ROSENFELD: Our school happened to be

just opposite on the street where the synagogue was.

I was dragged out with the stream of children.

Everybody went to the playground to watch these flames.

And suddenly, somebody said, "Oh, there's a Jew.

Let's throw her on the fire as well."

I don't know how I got home.

I still don't know today how I got home.

And when I got home, my mother was absolutely shocked.

My father had been arrested.

My father was quite an outspoken person,

and so when they came to Buchenwald

and they took away all the men's braces and shoelaces,

he protested and said,

"You can't treat these old people like this."

So they made an example of him,

and they beat him to death in front of everybody

in order to instill terror and obedience.

They offered us my father's ashes in return for money,

and eventually the urn came.

And we buried it in the Jewish cemetery.

But, of course, whether it was his ashes, one never knows.

EPSTEIN: We heard loud banging on the door downstairs,

and so my aunt, my mother, and I ran up into the attic,

and we were hiding in an old wardrobe up there.

And I do remember the feeling

as though I had spent my entire life in that wardrobe.

And I also remember whispering to my mother,

"I want to get out of here, and not just out of this wardrobe.

I want to get out of Germany."

NARRATOR: World revulsion was swift,

yet Britain was the only country

willing to relax its immigration controls,

and then only for children who would not threaten

British jobs or public funds.

Days after the Nazi pogrom,

Anglo-Jewish leaders met with Prime Minister Chamberlain

and urged him to let into the country unaccompanied children,

Christian as well as Jewish, up to the age of 17.

6 days later, Quakers joined Jewish leaders

to present the government a concrete rescue plan

to be funded by refugee and religious organizations.

That night, the House of Commons debated the issue

and approved the plan.

MAN: My youth leader said, "Call Otto Hirsch.

There is a job for you to be done."

So I went and saw him, and he said,

"Listen. I have a request.

"We have been informed that the British government--

"the House of Commons--

"had discussed the destiny of children in Germany

"after all this publicity,

"and they are disgusted.

"They came to the conclusion

"to accept children for a certain time.

"We have an office for the operations.

See what you can do."

NARRATOR: As the transports got under way

in Germany and Austria,

thousands of Sudetenland refugees

continued to flee to Prague.

English stockbroker Nicholas Winton

was summoned by a friend to view the situation for himself.

He toured refugee camps with Doreen Warriner,

a representative of the British Committee

for Refugees from Czechoslovakia.

WINTON: We did have the feeling

that the position was much more urgent

than anybody in London thought.

Doreen Warriner said to me,

"I don't know what we're going to do about the children."

And almost spontaneously I said,

"Well, if when I get back to England

"I find that the Home Office will allow them in,

we'll try and get some of them into England,"

And when I went to the Home Office,

they said, "Under certain conditions,

you can bring in as many children as you like."

We had to produce somebody who'd guarantee

£50 against their reemigration,

which I suppose is about £1,000 today--

it was quite a lot of money-- and then I had to find a family

who'd take each individual child.

It certainly wasn't easy, but it wasn't that difficult.

I mean, it's more easy to get somebody to take a child

than to take a grownup.

I tried to get America involved

and wrote to a lot of the senators

and got a lot of answers saying how concerned they were

and all the various reasons why they couldn't do anything.

NARRATOR: In the United States, a congressional bill

to admit 20,000 child refugees died in committee.

One of the arguments against the bill

was that accepting children without their parents

was contrary to the laws of God.

SEGAL: My father said,

"Mummy and I cannot leave, but you're going to leave."

I said, "What do you mean, I'm going to leave?"

"You're going to England," he said.

"When?"

"Thursday," he said.

I knew that she ought--

that I ought to want to send her away,

but I couldn't imagine to give permission for her to go.

My husband said, "She must go,"

and he didn't listen to me.

He just arranged everything for her,

and I had to give in,

and I saw in the end that he was right,

but the hurt is unbelievable.

That cannot be described.

[Girl singing in German]

MAN: My father died when I was 3 years old,

and my mother, she had to go out to work,

so I wound up in the orphanage.

When Polish Jews were arrested all over Germany,

I'd found out that my mother was deported,

so I was on my own. I had nobody, no one, nothing.

I went to the Gemeinde,

and there was this wonderful woman.

She knew me, and she said, "Ah, Pascha,

what are you doing here? Where's your mother?"

And so I said, "My mother has been deported,"

And she said to me,

"You know, there's something happening now.

I think you should get onto it." It was the Kindertransport.

She said, "You better register immediately

"because you're all by yourself. What are you going to do?"

So I said, "Okay. I'll go to England,"

Just like matter-of-fact, as if it was nothing.

ROSENFELD: In hindsight,

I think my sister and I, we owe my father's death

that we have survived

because they selected children who had problems--

uh, who'd lost parents or whose parents

could no longer look after them--

uh, to go on the Kindertransport.

HAYMAN: Mother came home and said that she enrolled us,

and about a fortnight later,

my parents were told that I can go,

and a week or two after that,

they had the thing to say that my sister can go.

So, now both of us would go,

and that must have been very hard.

That would have been hard to decide that we both go.

We had about a fortnight before we left,

and into that fortnight, both mother and father

were trying to give the instructions and the guidance

that they hoped to have their whole life to give.

HELLMAN: My Bar Mitzvah was a month after Crystal Night,

and it was held in an attic.

My father was not there.

My father was still in a concentration camp,

and it was just my mother.

I felt terrible.

There was no celebration afterwards.

There was nothing.

You read your part from the Torah,

and you did your Haftarah, and you were finished,

and we were lucky that a minyan showed up altogether.

I certainly felt, the sooner that we could

get out of Germany, the better off it would be.

My house mother wrote to Baron James de Rothschild,

would he take 24 of her boys, her husband, herself,

and her two daughters?

And he wrote back in January that he would.

WOMAN: We thought of England as a land of lords and ladies

because of the king and queen,

and the two little princesses appealed to us very much.

We saw those pictures in the newspapers--

The coronation with their ermine clothes

and their crowns on their heads--

and we really thought, in England,

that is how people got dressed--

perhaps not every day, but sometimes on Sundays.

So that was our expectation of England.

ALLARD: I was told this was the best thing that could happen,

and I was so lucky because everybody around me

was trying to find places for their children,

and suddenly out of the blue,

I had a chance to come to England.

How lucky can I be?

EPSTEIN: My parents said that I would be able

to go back to school, I will learn another language,

I will live in London, I will be able to travel on the subway,

and painted a wonderful, beautiful picture

and added again and again,

"And we'll follow soon."

However, a few days or so before I was to leave,

I um, accused my parents of trying to get rid of me.

I said to my parents, "I'm really a gypsy child,

"and you're now trying to get rid of me.

You adopted me, and now you no longer want me."

I must have really deeply, deeply hurt my parents.

NARRATOR: Since German policy in 1938

was to force Jewish emigration,

the Nazis willingly let the children leave

as long as they did not take any valuables with them.

Each child was allowed one suitcase,

one piece of hand luggage,

and 10 Reichmark.

ALLARD: We had 4 days to pack and go.

And they were just so busy getting ready

the things I was going to take

that I don't think that they or I had time to think

about what was happening.

ROSENFELD: My mother prepared all our clothes,

lovingly embroidered our names in every piece of clothing,

even every handkerchief, every sock, everything.

CAHN: I think I took my teddy bear.

and my mother always slept on

a little pillow on top of her big pillow.

And I asked her whether I could take that with me.

So she said, "Sure."

HAYMAN: Mother had new clothes made for both of us.

We had a dressmaker at home who did all the sewing.

And some she bought.

Otherwise, around my neck, because we were baptized,

hoping that would be of some help,

I had a little cross,

and I had a little elephant,

and I had sort of, um, it wasn't a Jewish star,

but it was a little angel, which--I put them all together

because I thought the Almighty can choose

which religion he would like me to belong to.

Those are the things I remember.

SEGAL: I remember that last evening,

all the cousins and all the aunts came to say good-bye.

And there was one aunt who had twins,

who was extremely angry with my parents

for getting me onto this transport

and for not having managed to get her twins

onto the transport.

There was grief and panic and fury in that room.

And there was a moment, uh,

that my father took me between his knees,

and he said, "Now, when you get to England,

"you have to talk to all the English people you meet,

"and you have to ask them to get your mother and me out,

and your grandparents."

And because this aunt was there

and had been so unhappy and so angry,

he said, "And aunt so-and-so's twins."

Before long, I had a list of people, whom I, at 10 years old,

had promised to save from Hitler.

NARRATOR: The transports began in December,

barely 3 weeks after the Nazi pogrom.

Although a few children travelled by plane,

the majority departed by train.

Some trains left during the day,

many others in the dead of night.

SEGAL: Each child was given a number.

My number, and I still have it, was 152.

And this was a number every child put around its neck.

And a similar number was attached to our suitcases.

And there we stood, uh, in our groups of 50, I think it was.

And there was my mother and my father,

and my mother kept up a conversation with me

as if this was an ordinary and interesting thing

that was happening.

But I remember that she wore a pony fur with a fox collar,

and her face was inside the fox collar,

and I remember that although her speech was as if

everything was ordinary, her face, I remember, was hot.

It was-It was red and hot.

LEVERTON: Every parent promised their child,

"We will soon come and follow."

How otherwise did the parents get the little children

onto the trains?

"Give us a few weeks when things--

"either they'll blow over and you'll come back again,

or we will come and join you."

That was a promise every parent made to their child.

WOLLHEIM: There came the time to say to the parents,

"Listen, you cannot go to the platform.

"The police will not allow it.

We have to say good-bye here."

So I ascended the chair there. I addressed the people.

Where I took the courage to do that, I don't know.

But I told the parents, "Now it's your last good-bye."

LEVERTON: They didn't want the German public to know

what was going on because they had experiences

of parents weeping and fainting at the platform.

So we had to say good-bye.

Groups had to say good-bye in an anteroom.

And the scenes were pretty horrendous.

WOMAN: When my sister and brother left,

all the other parents were crying bitterly.

And I was so afraid.

I didn't want my mother to cry

because she was a very strong person,

and I thought, if she cries,

then terrible things will happen.

And I kept on looking at her, and I said,

"Don't cry. Don't cry. You won't cry."

And she didn't.

GORDON: I got to the station, which was crowded with people.

All the children had their parents with them,

and I was sitting there all by myself.

I had no parents, nobody.

I was just standing there with a suitcase.

There was nobody's shoulder I could cry on.

All I know is I was going away. I was going to England.

Whatever would happen would happen.

CAHN: My father-- every day he said,

"Pupela, I don't want you to go,

but I want you to go because it'll be good for you."

The day came, and we went.

My mother and dad went with me inside the train

and um, put my suitcase up.

My seat was right at the window,

and the German trains had great big windows,

and my father pulled that all the way down,

so I could be leaning out of the window,

and he hugged me and kissed me.

And I could see my father's face getting whiter and whiter,

and I thought, I only hope

nothing is going to happen to my father

because he looked so terribly, terribly pale.

And my poor mother was getting worse and worse,

and I couldn't wait for the train to go

because I--I didn't want to remember that.

And the guy came, and he waved the signal.

When the train started to go, my father says,

"Pupela, let me hold your hands."

and I held my hands, and I said, "I have to let go!

I have to let go!"

"No, no, no, no. I don't want you to go!

I don't want you to go!" And we were already--

my father couldn't walk fast because he walked on a cane,

and we went already a little bit and a little bit more.

And he took me by my hands and he pulled me out of the window.

And I fell. I could have fallen in between,

between the platform and the train.

It was like about that much of a space.

I didn't, but I got hurt and I was bleeding,

and I was devastated, absolutely devastated.

And my father was in seventh heaven

that he had his little Pupela, his little girl, back.

ROSENFELD: The parting was terrible.

That's the one thing I've never forgotten in all my life.

And she had been so controlled.

She'd always been a sort of solid support to us,

and suddenly she showed her feelings.

And it was terrifying. Really terrifying.

You saw this face that showed all the hurt and agony

she'd been through.

And I can still see my father at that mealtime.

But I would have liked to have had

a happier image of my mother.

That's the only image with this contorted face.

Full of agony... it's very sad.

HAYMAN: And I remember standing by the window

and waving good-bye and just trying very hard

to believe that we really will come back,

that it won't be for very long.

But when the train moved and they disappeared from sight,

you know, both Vera and I cried to each other.

EPSTEIN: My parents ran along the train on the platform.

And I still remember, sort of in my head,

I heard that refrain,

"You're leaving, you're leaving, you're leaving."

And I watched their faces,

and tears were streaming down their face, down their cheeks.

And I knew then, these people really love me.

This is why they're sending me away.

And I immediately started to write to my parents,

and I apologized for what I had said to them,

that they were trying to get rid of me.

GROSSMAN: In no time, the suitcase was gone,

the child was gone, the other children were gone--

just emptiness.

Then we turned around and went home.

I did not talk.

It was awful.

WOLLHEIM: The children went with the hope

that the parents would follow

or that one day they could come back,

and they would see them again.

I did not realize, and I could never realize,

that only 1 1/2 years later, from the same railway station,

trains would go in the other directions

to Hitler's slaughterhouses.

[Child singing in German]

SEGAL: I remember that all that day we sang songs,

we ate the things what our mothers had given us.

When we got to the border, it got very frightening

because the train stopped at the last station before Holland.

The big girls were very frightened, and they scared us.

They said, "Don't move."

You know what happens when you sit and you don't move?

You begin to tremble if--if you tense yourself enough.

I remember that--sitting there so tense that I was vibrating.

ROSENFELD: The Nazi border guard very officiously came around,

made some of the children open their suitcases.

They shouted at us and threw their weight about.

They were looking for new things people had, children had,

new clothes and this, and they didn't like that.

They gave the children a tough time.

Children kept crying and crying.

And we were there quite a while, and they took their time,

and they--they enjoyed doing what they were doing to us.

Then, suddenly, we were in Holland.

Everyone was cheering,

"Those damn Nazis, they should drop dead. Now we are free."

SEGAL: There was a howling, a yelling, a shouting, a singing.

It was the best party I've ever been at,

although I didn't really understand what it was

that was happening.

I was holding a big girl around the waist,

and she was holding me.

And they knew the songs they were singing.

It was, uh, very probably Zionist, a Zionist song,

but I sang "la la, la la"

because it was so much fun to be joining this party.

ROSENFELD: Not only were the frontier guards

on the Dutch side very nice,

they had a contingency of ladies who bought us cocoa

and Dutch zwieback.

And it was like manna from heaven.

It was wonderful.

We suddenly felt as though

you'd been clad in a cloak of lead or iron,

and it had been taken from you.

It was a wonderful feeling-- of freedom.

We started to smile.

I don't think any of them had smiled for a long time.

It was wonderful.

GORDON: Then the train went on to Hoek van Holland.

Got onto the boat, which took us to Harwich,

which was not a pleasant trip because the English Channel--

Huh! It's one of the worst places in wintertime to cross.

We had small children.

People got seasick,

and, oh, it was some how-do-you-do.

HAYMAN: I have a very vivid memory of waking up

and seeing the sea for the first time with the sunrise on it

and thinking how beautiful it was.

It was only the British Channel,

but it seemed a long, long way from home in 1939.

And so it was a mixture of elation,

because we saw something so beautiful and saw the sea,

while this fear was in me, which never left me for those 6 years

of "what's going to happen... at home?"

NEWSREEL COMMENTATOR: Refugees from terror.

First boatload from Nazi Germany.

Vanguard of an army of helpless children.

Uprooted from their homeland in a modern exodus.

NARRATOR: Each Kindertransport was led by adult escorts

on the condition that after delivering the children,

all escorts would return home

or else the transports would be ended.

WOLLHEIM: A couple of times, I travelled with them.

At one transport, the customs official checked and said,

"We have a problem."

He says, "This young man here brought a violin,

"which is very, very expensive.

And this is not an ordinary violin."

I said, "Well, don't forget these young people

"take music lessons,

"and obviously he likes music very much,

so he took his violin along."

This didn't sit well, so I gambled.

I said to that boy, "Are you able to play something?"

And he said, "Sure."

[Violin playing]

And he was playing "God Save the King."

And that boy, he couldn't be stopped.

He played all 3 stanzas.

When he was finished,

and he was very happy to have listened to that,

I asked the fellow,

"Are you now convinced, sir, that he likes music?"

And he said, "Yes!"

So he got his violin into England.

ALLARD: Then came the arrival at Liverpool Street station,

and everyone was being picked up.

And I wasn't.

I remember sitting in an enormous arrival hall.

And I just sat.

Nobody came to me, nobody talked to me.

And I think I must have sat an hour.

Maybe longer. I don't know.

And then came two people who were my guardians,

and they introduced themselves.

And they explained that they lived in Lincoln.

They didn't speak one word of German,

and I didn't speak one word of English.

If they said, "Lincoln," that could have been anywhere.

Never heard of the place.

My mother sent me off, saying,

"Whoever is going to be good enough to take you in

and give you a home, you must treat as a temporary mother."

And when we arrived back from Liverpool Street,

and we all went to bed in the evening,

I went up to her and put my arms around her,

and she pushed me away.

And the words were, "That's sissy."

She may have said something else, she may have said,

"We don't do this, that's sissy."

But the words "that's sissy" have never left me.

Narrator: The children arrived in England

at the rate of about 300 a week.

Those who were not already placed in foster homes

were taken to temporary centers

hastily set up in summer holiday camps, like Dovercourt.

SEGAL: They did try and keep us busy.

The memorable part of this camp experience

was that it was one of the coldest winters in history.

We all went for breakfast to this big hall,

and the snow came in through the cracks.

We had this curious food. We had kippers.

I mean, what little Austrian Jewish child

has ever heard of kippers?

Here was this salty shoe leather on our plates,

and it had snow on it. It was pretty interesting.

While we were sitting around the stoves,

always with our coats on and with our little gloves on,

there would come groups of people

to choose children to take away with them.

LEVERTON: We called it the cattle market

because every Saturday and Sunday we were told

to put on our best clothes, and visitors used to come.

We felt a bit like the monkeys in the zoo.

You know, we were being stared at and evaluated,

and people were chosen,

then taken away from the tables, and interviewed--

If you were suitable to be taken to their families.

Most families wanted little blue-eyed and blond girls

of about 3 to 7.

Little boys were accepted as well,

and the older children found it a bit more difficult

to find foster parents. Of course, by that time,

they hastily established hostels to take a big influx

of the children who weren't chosen quickly

because we had to be chosen fast.

In and out, the camp was filled.

Every week, another transport would arrive.

SEGAL: I was writing a letter to my parents,

and one of these ladies in a fur coat

bent down to me and asked me

if I would like to come to Liverpool.

I said, "Yes, I would like to come to Liverpool."

She said to the other woman, "Oh, she speaks English."

By speaking English, I mean I could understand

"Would you like to come to Liverpool?"

and I could say "yes."

And then they said to me, "Are you Orthodox?"

and I said, "Yes,"

and they wrote that down.

It was understood that I was going to go

to Liverpool the next day, and when the ladies had gone,

I wrote in my letter to my parents,

"By the way, what is Orthodox?"

LEVERTON: My brother had been chosen first

to be the playmate of a little boy in Coventry.

They asked me if I'd like to go to a family in Coventry.

Of course, I jumped at the chance.

I wanted to be near my little brother.

And they chose me as a maid,

but only I didn't know I was supposed to be a maid.

I hadn't ever thought of becoming a servant.

But I drew the line.

I point-blank refused to wear a uniform.

I think they took me to show off in front of the neighbors

because they were only working-class people.

The culture shock was very great,

and also the fact that my clothes were better than hers.

And she took great exception to that,

and she took the clothes and all.

The children whom we brought over and placed

I think, in the main, were satisfactory.

Uh, one can never claim 100%.

There were certainly some who weren't.

There were certainly some who were misused

and used as servants if they were of the right age.

I wouldn't claim that it was a 100% success,

but I would claim that everybody who came over

was alive at the end of the war.

WOMAN: You felt you wanted to do something.

There was a meeting in Norwich

of a few Jewish congregants and non-Jewish.

They said, "Any offers to take children?"

And my husband said, yes, with me,

and then some photographs were handed around,

and I remember there were some boy twins.

Oh, my heart aches,

but we couldn't afford it in those days.

We didn't know what was going to happen, you know.

So, that's when we took Kurt.

FUCHEL: Percy and Mariam picked me up at the boat,

and they took me back home.

At the entrance stood the maid,

who I would learn later actually ran the household,

and halfway up the stairs sat the little boy of 5

looking at his new brother.

COHEN: When we got home, my maid Selena was there,

and she said to me, "Can't we change it?"

He was filthy, you know, and smelt of sick and everything.

Anyhow, we gave him a bath.

FUCHEL: My grubby clothes, after 3 days of travel,

were torn off me, burned, I learned later,

and I was scrubbed from head to toe,

and then dressed in English clothes.

And then the family got together for a chicken dinner,

and that I remember;

that's a language I could understand,

uh, and I started to feel more at ease.

I learned English by being sent to a German man, rather old,

who lived a few houses down the same street.

And maybe I thought he was a Nazi,

but I was terrified of him,

and...but...

in fact, I was so terrified that I learned English so quick

so I wouldn't have to see him again

that 6 weeks later,

I wrote to my parents in English,

"I no longer speak German."

I never have, and I've never been able to relearn it.

COHEN: And he was very, very good.

He liked the sweet things, and John liked the savory,

but they got on very well together.

But I noticed--

well, we knew every night when it was dark,

he'd come down the stairs,

and he'd see the door was locked,

and that was one thing I remember.

SUGAR: My mother was in London,

so for me, the separation was not as traumatic

because I was going to something.

And I came to the London station,

and she just picked me up and took me where she was working.

And then I stayed in this very cold--

oh, God--this cold, fancy house in England

where they were exploiting the European maids, you know.

And of course, if you've ever been the child of a maid,

you know that maids are not supposed to have children.

They're not welcome. You can't stay there.

Then, I guess--I don't know how those decisions were made--

I would be sent to Belfast,

to the Jewish refugee hostel in Belfast.

When you see your life has been saved,

and you're brought into a hostel which is clean,

and there's food there, and other children there,

how could you not be happy in that place?

But to me, it smelled of orphanage--

which, of course, in due course, it became--

an orphanage is the thing that frightens

every child out of its wits.

I mean, to be, you know, Charles Dickens,

to be in a workhouse, to be in an orphanage.

HELLMAN: My first impression of Waddesdon Manor was...

it was like a dream,

like a castle I've--I've seen in pictures.

But never...

never seen anything in--in person.

The Cedars was a servants' house.

26 of us lived in the Cedars.

First thing we did was throw a soccer ball on the lawn

and kicked it around.

And the local boys wanted to see what was all of a sudden

being brought into their little village.

When it was time for dinner, they said,

"We'll see you tomorrow."

I was so excited.

I was absolutely so exuberant,

I ran in to my housemother and told her,

"Somebody who's not Jewish wants to see me tomorrow."

ROSENFELD: We did start going to school there, actually,

and it was marvelous.

I'd never realized what school really was like--

that you could participate.

And I did enjoy it so.

And the wonderful part about it, it had a library.

I waded through that library.

And that's how I learned to speak English, really.

And I-- through that I got a love of English literature.

But altogether,

it was a wonderful experience,

and the children were so friendly to us.

HAYMAN: I knew that I was going to a school

near Bournemouth in Dorset.

It was the headmistress of the school

who guaranteed to look after me.

And when I arrived at the school,

it was all these girls,

very polite and very nice, very kind.

I couldn't understand a word they said.

I was given my bed,

and the curtains could be drawn along, you know,

to give me some privacy.

I remember the first thing I did was putting a picture

of my parents on the bedside table

so that I could say goodnight to them.

And the first 3 months before war broke out,

we could still write home.

So I could share my experiences with my parents

and had very frequent letters,

so I didn't feel quite so isolated.

WOMAN: As you can well imagine,

you have been constantly in our thoughts.

We still see your face before us

in that window of the railway carriage.

MAN: My dearest little mouse,

hopefully this letter will reach you already in your new home,

where you surely will enjoy your stay.

Be a very good little girl.

Be obedient.

BOY: Dear parents...

how are you both?

Today I had my first English lesson.

Greetings and kisses.

SECOND WOMAN: I was very happy with your dear little letter,

only there shouldn't be so many spelling errors!

THIRD WOMAN: If only I could see you just for a tiny moment.

But as it is, I can only write letters full of longing.

YOUNG GIRL: Dear daddy,

thank you very much for the game of cards

and the broaches

and the bracelet.

I had a game with them.

FOURTH WOMAN: I keep running to the mailbox.

Every line from you overwhelms me.

Every day I thank God that you are in such good hands.

But please show your gratefulness.

SECOND YOUNG GIRL: My dear, good, darling parents,

I feel very safe here,

if only I was not so very scared about your safety.

TEENAGE GIRL: For my birthday, you wrote me

that I'll always have to be brave

because you can't be happy if I'm not.

And I can assure you that I always grit my teeth and smile.

MAN: Your letter of yesterday was again so sweet

and written with so much love

that tears came running down your mummy's face.

Your writing is so natural,

it makes me imagine that you're standing before me.

WOMAN: Your letters come to us like sunshine.

It's our future that gives us big worries.

We yearn to get away from here.

That's our fondest wish.

It'll be a difficult task for you to bring us over there,

but I have the feeling you'll manage it in time.

ALLARD: When I arrived in England,

I made it my priority to try and find homes for people

because I felt people didn't know

how desperate it was in Germany.

My biggest problem was to try and get my parents out,

and that was difficult

because it was either finding them a job,

and bearing in mind my father's age,

or getting this £100 guarantee,

which was just nowhere to be seen.

I proceeded to find large houses and knock at the door

to find out whether I could get them a job.

My mother as a cook, bottle washer,

my father as gardener,

anything just to get them out.

Sometimes I knocked at the door and I burst into tears.

Sometimes I knocked at the door and with my very poor English

could try to explain what it was all about,

who I was, what I wanted, what I needed.

Help.

Um, I did find someone,

and it--it was just...

like unbelievable dream come true.

HELLMAN: My father had a first cousin in London.

Every weekend I took the train into London

and bombarded him.

And I said, "Uncle Paul,

"you got to get my parents out of Germany."

He said, "I--I can't do it."

After me being so insistent, he finally said,

"I'll give him an affidavit if he has a working permit."

I went back to the Rothschild estate,

knocked on the door,

and the butler, who was about 10' 6",

came out and--and looked at me,

"What do you want?"

I said, "I want to speak to Baron Rothschild."

He said, "Wait here."

I waited.

A couple of minutes, and he says, "Follow me."

I said to him, "Baron Rothschild,

"my father's cousin will give him and my mother a visa

providing he has a working permit."

Without hesitation,

he said to me, "Would he work on a chicken farm?"

I said, "He'll do anything."

He went to a notary

and made out a working permit for my parents.

LEVERTON: The family that chose me

were the only people I could rely on

to give a visa for my little sister.

She was a beautiful little girl. They had no children.

I showed them the photograph of Inge,

and they seemed to like her very much.

I realized one thing, that Uncle Billy hated red hair.

Uncle Billy was paying maintenance

for a red-haired child, not his, by his first wife.

Well, say no more.

Inge was a bright redhead.

The question of color hair never arose

because I had brown hair.

One day, he said to me, quite idly,

"What color hair does your sister have?"

I said, "Oh, like mine."

No more was said.

And they gave permission for her to come,

and they would take her in.

SADAN: I went very happily to England.

It was an adventure, you know,

to go abroad, to go on the train.

My sister wrote fantastic letters.

Everything was wonderful,

and she was having a marvelous time,

and so was my brother.

And my brother said he had a dog.

And when I got there, actually, there was a dog and a cat.

The dog bit me, so I didn't think much of that.

LEVERTON: Inge arrived, her hair aflame,

titian red.

Uncle Billy was furious.

So he turned around and he called me a so-and-so liar,

and I said to him,

"Because Inge has red hair, I leave her at home in Germany?"

I said, "Now you send her away.

Don't mind. Thank you for asking her here."

And he calmed down in the end,

and he did accept her into the house.

SEGAL: I think I had a sense, for instance,

while I was playing, while I was laughing,

that was the moment in which I could have been,

and should have been,

doing something about this--this demand on me

that I should bring my parents out.

From Dovercourt camp,

I wrote a couple of letters to the refugee committee in London,

and I think they must have been moved by a letter from a child

asking to get her parents out of Vienna.

And they did get my parents a domestic service visa.

And my parents appeared miraculously in Liverpool

on my 11th birthday.

And I remember feeling that some terrific weight

that I had been carrying,

and hadn't known I had been carrying,

was taken off my back.

ALLARD: Everything was being done to get the papers

for my parents to come out, and war started.

And that was the end of that.

I just felt the world's come to an end.

Shattering, if I think about it,

because everything was built around this reunion

and my temporary stay in England.

[Bells chiming]

NEWSREEL COMMENTATOR: The fateful hour of 11:00 has struck,

and the state of war once more exists

between Great Britain and Germany.

Only 25 minutes after war had been declared

came the first air-raid warning.

[Air-raid alarms sounding]

ALLARD: Everything we'd ever talked about or written about...

and thought about-- it had all collapsed.

Everything had collapsed.

I think I cried for, not weeks, not months.

I cried for years.

NARRATOR: War ended all Kindertransports

and legal immigration from central Europe to England.

It also ended regular mail

between the children and their parents.

The only way they could now communicate

was by 25-word postcards

sent through the International Red Cross.

HAYMAN: The isolation came when the letters ceased.

That was accepted,

that you didn't talk about what hurt you.

I couldn't speak Czech with anybody.

I didn't want to tell my sister how unhappy I was

because I felt, you know, she was too young anyhow.

I wrote at that time in my diary.

"I never dreamt that one could be so lonely and go on living

"with this constant fear for our loved ones.

"The tears I shed at night do not ease my pain,

"yet I was told that one feels better after a good cry.

"All I have is a swollen face,

and my heart is as heavy as it was before."

My pillow often was very wet in the morning.

There was a gardener who didn't understand,

perhaps, what I was going through,

but he always said to me,

"Don't worry, it won't last long."

And whether I believed him or not,

it was good to hear him say that.

And he always gave me a flower.

NARRATOR: Within a few months of their arrival in England,

many of the refugees,

along with other English children,

were forced to evacuate to new families in the country,

to escape the expected bombing of the cities.

Good morning.

You kindly consented to take two children in?

Yes, I'll take two children.

Two little girls. Here they are.

They'll be very happy with you, I'm sure.

Thank you very much.

Two nice little girls, aren't they?

SEGAL: None of the foster parents with whom I stayed,

and there were 5 of them,

none of them could stand me for very long,

but all of them had the grace to take in a Jewish child.

They were not particularly warm.

They were not par-- they did not love me,

I did not love them.

Nevertheless, they did, as I say,

what most of us don't do,

which is to--to burden the household,

the kitchens and the bedroom and the living room,

with this little foreigner.

FUCHEL: Mariam was somewhat aloof.

It was her manner.

She was loving, but she didn't hug and kiss me,

whereas my mother was the exact opposite.

She used to, not just kiss me once, in fact,

but she sort of kissed me, you know,

rat-tat-tat, like a machine gun.

But Mariam was distant and nice,

and I think that's what I needed,

because I had trouble really feeling that I belonged there.

And to have sort of pushed me into it

would have, I think, been difficult.

He didn't cry, not at all, not at all.

Couldn't understand it.

RADIO COMMENTATOR: This is London calling...

COHEN: Just once.

They used to like to listen to some programs on the wireless.

And, you know, he used to come sit on my knee,

and there was something-- something in the news.

I just heard him once go [gasp],

you know, a little sob, and that was all.

FUCHEL: I tried really to please the Cohens

because, you know, I loved them and I felt very dependent.

One of my main worries was that I would be sent away.

And I know this happened to another boy, somewhat older,

who was taken in by some friends of the Cohens,

and he was arrogant and impossible,

and eventually they simply had to send him to,

you know, some other home.

And I'd heard other places where this happened.

So, I felt very much on edge.

SUGAR: Word came that my mother is no longer in London.

She went back to Vienna to get my father to move,

who was impassive.

So I really did make up my mind I would be as tough as nails.

I would--nothing would hurt me,

I would have no emotions.

And it carried me through for about 6 or 7 years.

[School bell rings]

SUGAR: I got a scholarship to a grammar school.

And people were saying to me, partly in jealousy,

said, "You know, they are snobs in these schools

and they are anti-Semites,

"And you've got to watch yourself, you know.

They're gonna take it out on you."

And I went to school.

I had a school tie, I guess, or a blazer,

I mean, I was just entering a new world.

It was...the sun was shining.

I went to school, and a fellow came up to me, and he said,

"Who are you?" and I just knocked him down.

[Children yelling]

FUCHEL: There was, no doubt,

a cost of trying to be good all the time

and keeping my anger in.

Only once did it slip.

One day John and I were having breakfast,

and there was some silly argument

over who got the marmalade first.

And Kurt threw a knife.

That was the only time he was naughty.

And John had a little wound here, which was near his eye.

It wasn't very nice.

And Dr. Rose, who was our great friend, lived a few doors down,

and he came in, and he was furious.

"You shouldn't have taken this child in,"

and da-da-da-da-da.

FUCHEL: It terrified the entire family, and me, too.

Since then I've been somewhat afraid

of my possibility of letting go to anger.

The other sign that I had a lot inside me

was that I always had some intestinal problems.

Until I went in the army,

and then I had the most terrible food and felt fine.

I have an analogy for this.

When...all of us have had the experience

of finding a bird with a broken wing.

And you pick up this bird and you hold it in your hand.

And you think it's going to sit there quietly, sweetly,

with its warm feathers, and be--and be darling.

It's not. What it does is immediately to use its muscles,

and it's a very uncomfortable thing to hold in your hand

because there's this fluttering. What he wants is to get away.

It may need you to hold it and to--to nurse it,

but what it wants is to get the heck out of there.

And I think that's what we were like.

Uh, certain that's what I was like.

I was--I was not nice to have around.

GORDON: So I got a new job in London,

and I was working there until June 28, 1940.

It was lunchtime, and I was sitting having a sandwich

when suddenly two guys appeared, two men.

C.I.D.

"What have I done?"

"Nothing. You are Abrascha Gorbulski?"

Et cetera, et cetera.

"You are now under arrest."

Under arrest. "For what?"

"You are an enemy alien, and please come with us."

NARRATOR: After Germany invaded western Europe,

the British began rounding up all refugees

from Germany and Austria who were over the age of 16.

Although the vast majority were refugees from Nazi persecution,

anyone with a foreign accent was viewed as a potential saboteur.

Within a few months, the government interned

approximately 30,000 men and women.

Plans were made to deport as many as possible.

The good thing about life is, you know, you remember

all the good things that happen to you,

and bad things, you forget about them,

and in fact, you have to make an effort

to really remember them.

The day came and we had to go to the ship.

Uh, soldiers were standing there

with bayonets mounted on their rifles.

And they pushed us along and said,

"Leave your luggage over there. You'll get it later on."

And they pushed us along the deck.

Before you knew it, we went down the stairs, another stairs.

I was on the third deck.

NARRATOR: Over 2,500 prisoners, twice the capacity of the ship,

were crammed onto the HMT Dunera,

supposedly bound for Canada.

Two days out of Liverpool,

the Dunera was spotted by a German U-boat.

GORDON: Suddenly something hits the ship.

The lights went out.

This was the end of it.

Everybody gravitated towards the stairway,

which led to the deck above.

And after about two minutes,

you couldn't get up there because there were so many--

the stairs-- because we were just choking.

And suddenly the lights went on again.

Everybody stopped in their...

steps and went back down.

The torpedo didn't explode,

but I was under the impression

that the torpedo hit us sideways

and it just bounced off.

Our luck.

Because if it would have hit,

all of us would have been finished.

We're travelling, going west for several days.

But suddenly our outlook said,

"Something's happening. We are not going west.

We are turning south."

We had no idea where we were going,

except it must have been Australia.

We were starving daily. They were treating us like pigs.

Being hungry every day, people were lining up on--

in the kitchen there to get an empty pot,

you know, where the jam was, and to--just to scrape it out,

and having one slice of bread.

The existence from one day to another

was worse than the day before,

and we were on the ship for almost completely two months!

What happened on the Dunera?

Uh...years later I'm looking at it.

This didn't happen to me. It must have been somebody else

because it was horrible, too horrible to describe.

[Instrumental music]

NEWSREEL COMMENTATOR: From an overseas liner

in Sydney Harbor, a strange contingent of new arrivals

is transshipped aboard a ferry--

enemy aliens who are being interned in Australia

for the duration of the war.

GORDON: Before we knew it, we were off the ship.

The first thing I remember is that each one of us

got a box of food.

That was the best meal I ever had in my life.

After starving for two months, I opened up.

There were two cheese sandwiches, thick like this,

and a banana and an apple and an orange,

and they're giving second helpings.

It was unbelievable.

[Indistinct chatter]

NARRATOR: As the war progressed,

reports of mass arrests and deportation

of central European Jews began to reach Britain.

[Dramatic music]

WOLLHEIM: In the spring of '43,

the city of Berlin was cleansed of the last Jews.

They came and took my family and myself along,

and we were taken to a collection point,

and after a couple of days we were deported to Auschwitz,

though we did not know when we got to the train,

which consisted of cattle cars, where we were going.

We landed in Auschwitz, and the moment we landed there,

we were commanded to leave the trains.

Women with children to the left and men to the right.

And that was then the last time that I saw my wife,

my then wife, and child.

[Dramatic music]

NARRATOR: Lory Cahn and her family

were deported to Theresienstadt,

the Czech ghetto the Nazis used to deceive the world

about how humanely they treated their prisoners.

In time, the population of Theresienstadt

exceeded its capacity.

CAHN: One day they came into our barrack,

and my name was called to report to the railroad station.

And I went to the railroad station.

And as they called your name,

you had to go and see this S.S. guy,

and he crossed you off the list, and then you went into the car.

I got there, and I repeated my name.

He said, "You're not going."

I had no idea, I didn't dare ask why or what,

but that was the end of it, and they sent me back.

And this went on for about maybe two weeks.

I'd been at the railroad station, I think, 4 times,

and I was a complete wreck.

To say good-bye to your parents, one time, a second time,

a third time, and a fourth time.

And once before when I was in the Kindertransport.

It was just absolutely devastating.

And every time I said good-bye,

I think I tore a little piece out of my mother

and out of my father,

and also a big piece out of myself.

The last time it happened, I said to the guy,

"Would you terribly mind, but I want to go."

"Are you sure of that?"

I said yes. Crossed my name off, and I went.

And little did I know that we were going to Auschwitz.

There was a long period

where I did not hear anything from my parents.

And I said, "Well, it's wartime."

And I found all kinds of reasons and excuses.

And then, finally, I received a letter from my father

in which he said, "Tomorrow I'm going to be deported

"to an unknown destination,

and it may be a very long time before you hear from me again."

And then I received a letter from my mother.

She says, "Tomorrow I'm going to be deported from here."

And she encourages me to be good and honest

and courageous and to hold my head high

and to never give up hope,

and this at a time when I think she knew

what might be happening to her.

[Train chugging]

And then there was one more communication from her,

a postcard dated September 4, 1942.

And it's written in real shaky handwriting,

and she's saying that she's travelling to the east

and is saying a very final goodbye to me.

But for many, many, many years,

I would see the postcard in front of me, and I would--

see, she's saying, "Travelling to the east,"

and yet, I would understand that she's saying

she's travelling in an easterly direction.

And then I would say to myself,

"Well, maybe she's going back to Kippenheim.

And maybe that's good."

And the final good-bye I didn't understand.

[Train approaching]

[Baby crying]

SADAN: I always felt I should be grateful

and that we had been saved

and that these people had taken us in

and I should be happier there.

But, you know, facts are facts,

and it wasn't a good place to be.

Uncle Billy, who was not a very courageous man,

every night, he would go into the country,

but he took us with.

We went and-- to escape to bombs--

until one day, the people where we were staying--

we slept in a--all in a room there, in a cottage--

and the people said they don't want the German children,

so we didn't go into the country anymore.

[Air-raid sirens sounding]

One day the sirens sounded,

and what was known as the Coventry Blitz started.

[Bombs exploding]

And when the bombs started to fall,

we stayed with Auntie Vera's mother,

who had a boarding house.

And the whole night long, the bombs rained down,

and Coventry was a very hot place to be.

We were in one house, and that was bombed.

And there was a big fire upstairs,

and everybody rushed out.

[Dramatic music]

In the morning, when Auntie Vera and Uncle Billy came back

and they saw one of the boarding houses without any house,

just a spiral of a bedstead,

they were very shocked and they thought we'd all been killed.

And they rushed over to the other house,

and there we were all drinking tea, as alive as anything.

And that was the only time I saw Auntie Vera cry,

I think relief, because I guess she had a heart after all.

COMMANDER: Halt!

Advance. End of line. March!

Jorgensky!

Here!

Tzufevich. Here!

Leventhal. Here!

Alba. Sir!

Rosenthal. Here!

Tozic. Here.

Tolina. Here.

Yes, they all have names like those.

This company, which I command,

is almost entirely composed

of German and Austrian anti-fascists.

It is one of the 15 alien companies in the pioneer corps.

NARRATOR: The Dunera scandal

and the harsh treatment of refugees

began to shift public opinion in England against internment.

The government started releasing internees

and allowed them to join the British Armed Forces.

GORDON: Those who want to go back to England,

they would send back under one condition.

They would join the army.

I was anxious to get into this.

First of all, I hated the Germans.

I hated their guts.

And I wanted to be part of it.

Besides, what was I going to do in Australia?

Sit in Australia throughout the whole war? God forbid.

[Instrumental music]

NEWSREEL WOMAN: Girls, this is urgent.

If you're over 17 1/2 and under 19,

you can volunteer for the ATS.

The sooner you come, the wider the choice of jobs available.

Come on, girls, it's urgent!

ALLARD: When I was 18,

I had to do either work of importance or join the forces,

and I decided to join the forces.

And I also felt I was saying thank you to England

for saving my life.

I think as a soldier,

I then felt suddenly I was in an environment

where I was the same as everybody else,

for the first time in my life, I think.

Because I think in Lincoln, I-- more or less, I think I existed

because I was waiting for tomorrow

and tomorrow and tomorrow.

I had lots of friends, and I did the things I hadn't done before.

I felt like everybody else.

The people on my left, the people on my right,

we were all the same.

And that, I think, was the first time in my life

I felt that I could do everything

the other people are doing.

HAYMAN: I wanted to do something to help to finish the war,

and I said I wanted to go nursing.

The first year, I nearly gave up.

I found it very difficult, but I was determined to stand it.

Second year was better, and then it grew on me.

We were so busy I didn't have time to think of myself anyhow.

[Engine revving]

SADAN: After about two years of not hearing from our parents,

life sort of stretched on endlessly,

but suddenly we heard that our parents had reached Spain.

Every night since I left my parents, I had prayed,

"Please, God, don't let it take longer than 5 years."

And 5 years almost to the day, we had the telegram.

SADAN: The telegram said, "Arriving Friday, 4:45."

That was all.

Unfortunately, 4:45 was the train

that my school friends were coming back on as well,

and I knew that since the whole village

also knew they were coming,

they would all be at the station

and my school friends would see me and my brother and sister

meeting our parents for the first time in 5 years,

and it was a tremendous ordeal.

And we went down to the station to wait,

and I couldn't cope with it.

So I went--I went back home and I said,

"I'm going. I'm going home. I'm going to put the kettle on.

They'll need a cup of tea." I mean, how English can you get?

I waited and I waited and I waited,

and it took ages.

And suddenly there's my brother and sister

with this middle-aged, elderly couple

with suitcases and bags coming up the path.

I remember rushing down to meet them,

and I knew they were my parents,

but it wasn't the same parents I'd left.

They were much older, and they were worn out.

And we, obviously, we weren't the same children

that they'd sent off.

And suddenly I realized I couldn't say anything

except their names, you know,

mommy and daddy, or mutti and papa.

And then we just stood there, looking at each other,

and...it was such a traumatic moment.

It was sad for Inge because she couldn't speak German anymore.

My brother spoke it with difficulty,

and I was the only one who could communicate with them.

But the barriers completely went,

and we became a family again.

[Bell chiming]

MAN IN NEWSREEL: The cease-fire began yesterday,

to be sounded along all the fronts.

The German war is, therefore, at an end.

[Upbeat music]

[Crowd cheering]

[Fireworks exploding]

ALLARD: I remember V.E. Day very clearly.

It was just wonderful, wonderful.

And we all danced in Piccadilly Circus.

And for me, I just thought, well, this is it.

Going to see my parents next week.

I went straight back and wrote to both of them.

I wrote separate letters because I had separate addresses

through the Red Cross messages in Theresienstadt.

The letters were returned to me about 3, 4 months later.

Took a long time.

All it said on the back, "Deported to Auschwitz,

October '44."

And war was finished in May '45.

That's how I found out.

ROSENFELD: As soon as war finished,

Hella and I went to the Red Cross committee

and asked for them to search.

Eventually, we got a letter from them to say

my mother had been killed in Minsk, in Russia,

where she was deported.

It's very hard to come to terms with,

when you've always had that hope.

And, of course, we've had no, no grave, really.

No parting, no end, no funeral.

It's that sort of vague feeling in the air, of hope,

and that hope suddenly fading.

[Baby crying]

HAYMAN: I remember nursing in the children's ward,

and I was always joking with the kids and laughing.

And I was called to the telephone,

and there was a telegram for me.

I asked her would she read it.

And so, she read over the telephone:

"Your parents were gravely ill. There was no hope.

Wait for further news."

And I probably didn't quite take it in,

so I went back to the ward and started--carried on making beds

until one of the little boys said to me,

"Why aren't you laughing this time?"

And that's when I burst into tears and ran out.

I remember going out into the garden and lying on the lawn.

I didn't want to be with anybody.

It was such a shock.

And suddenly the future which we always painted wasn't there.

There was no future. There was just an emptiness.

CAHN: At the time I was liberated,

a month later, I would have been 20.

And I weighed 58 pounds.

And that's after 8 concentration camps.

Many times I thought about it: what would have happened

if my father wouldn't have pulled me out?

I would have never, ever mentioned it to my father again.

You know, "Why did you do that?"

Because I think I would have done him very wrong.

And I can fully understand, being a mother,

what it would mean if this is what

I would have had to go through with my child, God forbid.

My main concern was always,

let me be strong, and let me try to make it.

I made it that far.

I want to make it to the end,

regardless of what the end was.

WOLLHEIM: Survival is an accident.

You cannot ask a soldier who comes out of battle,

"Why were your comrades left and right killed,

and you survived?"

You have no explanation for that.

It's an accident.

At the moment of liberation, we were very happy, certainly,

but, on the other hand, really very sad, because I realized

that I was one of the last who had survived,

that all the others who had gone with me to Auschwitz,

or who had been taken to Auschwitz, would never return.

[Instrumental music]

[Woman singing in German]

EPSTEIN: In July 1945,

I went back to Germany to work for the American government.

One of the reasons was to look for my parents.

The most sensible place to go to

would be to go back to Kippenheim.

But I didn't go back until August 1947.

I think on some level, I knew my parents didn't survive.

But as long as I didn't go back to Kippenheim,

I could still say, well, maybe they're back in Kippenheim,

which doesn't really make a lot of sense,

but I think it was just my survival mechanism.

I just wasn't ready yet to accept the fact

that I no longer had parents,

that I hadn't had parents for a long time.

[Instrumental music]

NARRATOR: Although the vast majority

of Kindertransport children

lost their mothers and fathers in the holocaust,

remarkably, a few parents survived

to be reunited with their children.

FUCHEL: My parents managed to get out of Austria

by going to Italy, and from Italy,

they got into France.

And they were hidden

by some extremely wonderful people there.

After the war ended, I was told that my parents were alive

and that someday I would probably have to go back

and live with them.

I think I was horrified by that idea.

Uncle Percy persuaded my parents to wait until I finished

the English-school certificate at age 16,

and also, they needed time to reestablish themselves.

Eventually, in 1947, they were ready for me.

I didn't want to, but the Cohens took me to Paris,

where I was to meet my parents.

And I remember standing outside the hotel.

And I saw in the distance my parents approach.

And I couldn't look at them directly,

so I looked at their reflection in a shop window

as they walked towards me,

and I felt a very, very strong emotion.

It was a sense of elation, of love.

I suddenly felt it and fought it.

But I felt, you know, I knew it was them.

We met. And Kurt's father,

who was more demonstrative than the mother,

put his hand through Kurt's curls.

And Kurt went like that and gave him a wallop.

And my husband says, "Don't you ever do that again, Kurt.

Your father is showing you, you know, his affection."

And that was that.

[Dramatic music]

FUCHEL: When it came to say goodbye to the Cohens,

I realized for the first time, I think, consciously,

that they had loved me, especially Percy,

because he was in tears.

And I'd never seen him cry before.

Never seen him cry before.

And then we had to leave him.

And I remember him looking back, you know.

It was very, very sad.

He didn't want to go. He didn't know them.

FUCHEL: My parents let go of a 7-year-old

and got back a 16-year-old.

And my mother, especially,

wanted to carry on where she'd left off.

And a 16-year-old doesn't like to be treated like a 7-year-old.

So, when we got back to France, things were very difficult.

Of course, I'm very lucky.

I mean, I realize this:

Whereas most of the kinder never saw their parents again,

I not only had mine back but another set of parents as well.

What more could one ask for?

[Dramatic music]

HAYMAN: I ceased to be a child

when I boarded the train in Prague.

It's strange that it's only 6 years out of a long life,

and those 6 years will affect the rest of your life.

ROSENFELD: I never belonged when I was a child.

I wanted somewhere to find roots.

I feel in the latter years of my life that I've been accepted.

And nobody's ever said to me,

"You weren't born in this country."

I was entirely accepted as everyone else.

And I gradually felt I had somewhere I belonged.

SADAN: To be a refugee is the most horrible feeling

because you lose your family, you lose your home.

You're also without an identity.

Suddenly, you're a nothing.

You are just reliant on other people's good nature

and help and understanding.

And that's why I think living in Israel,

I feel for the new immigrants.

I feel for the Russians and the Ethiopians

and anybody who's new,

especially if they've come without their families.

Then, you know, if I can do anything, I do it.

[Music continues]

SEGAL: I am dazzled from the point of view of a writer.

Who else has the unbelievable good fortune

to live with the Jewish manufacturer,

the English working class, union man, railroad stoker,

the milkman, the Anglo-Indian Victorian ladies.

Whoever has the sheer advantage

of not studying this

from the outside, but being a helpless member

from the inside of these families.

Seems to me it was a gift.

Didn't seem so at the time.

ALLARD: I now look at my 14-year-old grandson,

and I think this is the age when I lost parents, home, country.

A lot has been made up to me from where I lost out.

I have a second cousin here.

He says, "Anything you haven't had, you've got now."

Which is so true.

And I'm very grateful and very proud of the whole family.

SUGAR: The younger you were,

the more unforgiving you are of your parents.

You may say, oh, they were so brave and saved you,

but they really abandoned you.

We were 4 friends, very close friends.

We all agreed if it ever happens again,

we will not send away our children.

We will stay and die together.

That's what we said.

Later on, as we grew older, we mitigated it, we said,

if it ever happens, we promise

to take each other's children in.

We will not send them to strangers.

[Music continues]

EPSTEIN: I certainly do my share of remembering.

But remembering also has to have a present

and a future perspective.

You can't just stop at remembering.

I don't think I ever made a conscious decision

to devote myself to human rights

and social justice issues.

Someone helped me.

I can't pay back or thank some of the people who helped me,

but I can do something for other people.

[Big Ben chiming]

[Music continues]

GORDON: I've come to a conclusion about myself.

In 1938, I escaped the deportation of Poland.

I got out of Germany in the Kindertransport.

I was sent to Australia on a ship,

and the ship was torpedoed and nothing happened.

I got back to England and was in the army.

Why all these coincidences?

And I've come to one conclusion: I was meant to survive.

Not because of myself,

but the Jews would survive.

And I would bring up another generation,

and they would live.

And I look at my children and my grandchildren,

and I know there was a purpose to my life.

[Child singing]

[Theme music]