Kindertransport - Transport Arrangements and The Ending of The Programme

Transport Arrangements and The Ending of The Programme

The Nazis had decreed that the evacuations must not block ports in Germany, so most Transport parties went by train to the Netherlands; then to a British port, generally Harwich, by cross-channel ferry from the Hook of Holland near Rotterdam. From the port, a train took the children to Liverpool Street Station in London, where they were met by their volunteer foster parents. Some children without prearranged foster families were sheltered at temporary holding centres located at summer holiday camps such as Dovercourt near Harwich and Pakefield.

The first Kindertransport left Berlin on 1 December 1938 and arrived in Harwich on 2 December with 196 children. Most were from a Berlin Jewish orphanage burned by the Nazis during the night of 9 November, and the others were from Hamburg. There was at least one Transport direct from Germany: the Transport of 13 June 1939 which left from Bremen, Germany on the ship Europa, arriving at Southampton.

The first train from Vienna left on 10 December 1938 with 600 children. This was the result of the work of Mrs. Gertruida_Wijsmuller-Meier, a Dutch organizer of Kindertransporte, who had been active in this field since 1937. She went to Vienna with the purpose of negotiating with Adolf Eichmann himself, but was turned away in the first instance. She persevered, and finally Eichmann would see her for five minutes. As Mrs. Wijsmuller wrote in her biography, Eichmann suddenly 'gave' her 600 children with the clear intent of overloading her and making a transport on short notice impossible. She managed. The main group of 500 went to Harwich and were accommodated at a holiday camp at Dovercourt Bay near Harwich, while 100 stayed temporarily in Holland.

Many Quaker representatives went with the parties from Germany to Holland, or met the parties at Liverpool Street Station in London ensured that there was someone there to receive and care for each child . Between 1939 and 1941, 160 children without foster families, were sent to the Whittingehame Farm School in East Lothian, Scotland. Whittingehame was the family estate and home of the late British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, author of the Balfour Declaration.

The RCM ran out of money at the end of August 1939 and decided it could not take more children. The last group of children left Germany on 1 September 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland, and two days later Britain, France and other countries declared war on Germany. A party left Prague on 3 September 1939 but was sent back. Because of the ourbreak of war, the border with Holland was closed for some time, although Holland remained neutral and was not invaded until the 10 May, 1940.

Separately, the last known boat transport left the Netherlands on 14 May 1940, the day the Dutch army surrendered to Germany after Rotterdam was bombed, on the last ship to leave the port of IJmuiden near Amsterdam, also the work of Mrs. Wijsmuller. (The same ship, the SS 'Bodegraven', carried the famous Dutch-Jewish art-dealer Jacques Goudstikker and his family; Goudstikker died on board as the result of an accident.) Many children were still in the Netherlands and Belgium when Germany occupied those countries, resulting ultimately in their murder at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators.