The story of the 10,000 Jewish children — to whom Britain decided to give a home 85 years ago last month — has produced countless books, films and memorials. Etched into the national consciousness, the Kindertransport is widely seen as a heroic tale of escape, survival, and a noble British tradition of generosity and compassion towards those in need.

Many of the Kinder suffered multiple trauma, both before and after their arrival in the UK. They had experienced antisemitic persecution by the Nazis first-hand. “I shrink against the privet hedge, trying to be invisible,” one refugee, Edith Militon, recalled of her journey to and from school. Another, Beate Siegel, remembered seeing her father’s bloodied shirt after he had been attacked by stormtroopers, while Ruth Oppenheimer talked of the hours she and her sister spent “shivering of cold and panic” as they hid in the family car on Kristallnacht. Their rescue was near miraculous.

But, argues German-born academic Andrea Hammel in a new book, many Britons don’t grasp some of the most crucial – and perhaps less laudable – aspects of the Kindertransport.

Combining scholarly rigour with an array of stories about the children and their families, The Kindertransport: What Really Happened aims to correct the “rose-tinted view” that has long prevailed, says its author.

Hammel, the director of the University of Aberystwyth’s Centre for the Movement of People, doesn’t deny that Britain’s rescue of thousands of children from Nazi Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia was the biggest and most successful effort of any such scheme. And she is clear that any criticism of the limitations of the Kindertransport doesn’t detract from the key role played by the British public.

“It was actually the pressure from the general public on their own government … [after] the November Pogrom in 1938 which facilitated the sea change that people suddenly thought ... ‘we must do something’,” Hammel argues, “and this spurred the government to think of [a] scheme that would help the continental Jewish population.”

Thus, within days of the terrible reports of Kristallnacht hitting the front pages, the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, was talking to cabinet colleagues of the strong public mood to “alleviate the terrible fate” of German Jews. A week later, the government announced that unaccompanied minors would be able to come to the UK without visas.

However, the Kindertransport came laden with conditions and would be limited, Chamberlain argued, by “the capacity of the voluntary organisations dealing with the refugee problem to undertake the responsibility for selecting, receiving and maintaining” the children. In short, the government would play neither a financial nor organisational role – and, to underline the point, a £50 guarantee would be required to ensure the state didn’t end up picking up the tab. That guarantee – roughly equivalent to £3,500 today and actually made more restrictive in March 1939 – was “the main reason why it was not possible to get more children to the UK at the time,” according to Hammel.

There was, suggests Hammel, “a certain attitude ... that these sort of tasks can be left to non-governmental organisations, to charities and volunteers and that the government can excuse itself from this sort of duty”. Indeed, she notes, despite many differences, the underlying “privatisation of the rescue scheme” was evident in the government’s more recent approach to Syrian and Ukrainian refugees.

Two key aspects of the Kindertransport — the decision to admit only children and for the government to not play an active role — were, Hammel argues, to have a significant negative impact. The arrival of war in September 1939 brought its own challenges: mail stopped arriving from home; children were evacuated to the countryside where some found German speakers and Jews were treated with suspicion; around 1,000 Kinder were interned as “enemy aliens” in 1940, while others ended up on the notorious Dunera crossing to Australia. And, for many anxious months in the first stage of the war, there was “extreme anxiety” at the prospect of a German invasion. Many Kinder – the precise number will never be known, believes Hammel — would later learn of the deaths of their parents, siblings, or even their entire extended family.

In the light of this, Hammel’s belief that “deciding to admit children only, without allowing the rest of the family to flee to the UK, was at the heart of the trauma most Kindertransport refugees experienced” is striking. The children’s later accounts of leaving their parents are heartbreaking. Martha Immerdauer, for instance, recalled bursting into “hysterical sobs at the mere thought”. She felt as though “some force stronger than myself was dragging me into the abyss”. Moreover, little effort was made to keep siblings together when they arrived in the UK, with some placed hundreds of miles apart. Parents who got domestic service visas to come to Britain – one of the very few available options – rarely had the opportunity to keep their children with them.

Author Andrea Hammel

As Hammel points out, the government was fully aware at the time of the consequences of its decision: the home secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, acknowledging to parliament the “terrible dilemma” facing Jewish parents. Still, the decision – in part, motivated by fears that, at a time of high unemployment, adult refugees would compete with British workers for jobs – wasn’t seriously challenged.

The lack of government organisational and financial support – heaping responsibility on charities and well-meaning but untrained and inexperienced volunteers – had serious consequences. There was, Hammel suggests, “no overall policy” guiding the selection of Kinder. Children with additional needs — ranging from disabilities to bed-wetting — were frequently excluded. There were many more offers to place younger girls than older boys, despite the latter being more at risk of arrest by the Nazis.

Equally, there were no clear criteria for placing children with foster parents and little vetting. There was a “cattle market atmosphere” at some of the holiday camps and children’s homes the Kinder were initially sent to. Some children had multiple placements, others experienced neglect, exploitation or physical and sexual abuse. The children and those who agreed to look after them received little ongoing support, despite the huge challenges — including dealing with bereavement — many would face.

Nonetheless, in later years, some of the Kinder went on to have illustrious careers: the artist Frank Auerbach, eminent immunologist Leslie Baruch Brent, and entrepreneur and philanthropist Dame Steve Shirley, for example. Others had more ordinary jobs, becoming teachers, librarians and nurses. And some led stunted, tragic lives: Eva Mosbacher, whose parents were murdered at Belzyce, committed suicide in a hotel on the 25th anniversary of Kristallnacht. It is important, Hammel believes, not to let the resilience of many Kinder “overshadow the trauma” suffered by others. Both need to be acknowledged to “fully understand the complexity” of the story.

Few of the children – some of whom were married with children by 1945 – returned to Germany after the war; instead, most remained in Britain. But that wasn’t a given. Ministers doggedly refused to give the children an assurance they would be automatically naturalised after the war. When it finally gave way after the defeat of the Nazis, the government insisted on levying a £10 fee — including on the estimated 1,000 Kinder who served in the British forces during the war.

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The Kindertransport: What Really Happened by Andrea Hammel is published by Polity