The Kindertransport in its wider historical context
The clean-up of Kaliski and Co., Berlin after Kristallnacht, courtesy Wiener Library Collections.1938 was the year of the Anschluss, the incorporation of Austria into Greater Germany. It was also the year the Nazis organised a brutal pogrom against Jews, Kristallnacht, during which they killed and hurt Jews, burnt down synagogues, looted and destroyed Jewish property, and incarcerated thousands. Those events made Jews aware of the immediate danger they were in and many desperately tried to emigrate. Around 10,000 children were enabled to find refuge in Britain through the rescue action called the Kindertransport.
Black and white photograph of boys lining up on the playing fields at Dovercourt Bay Holiday Camp, near Harwich, Essex, 1939 [Jewish Museum London collection]
The Pears Institute produced a podcast of the talks. Listen to Mary Fulbrook, Professor of German History at University College London, Nicholas Stargardt, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Oxford, and Dr Jennifer Craig-Norton, a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southampton. Professor David Feldman, Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, chaired the event.
