Into the Arms of Strangers – Stories of the Kindertransport

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Introduction

Summary and legacy statement of this book from the back dust cover of the book:

The documentary film, Into the Arms of Strangers, reminded the world of this chapter of Holocaust history.  The movie went on to win the Academy Award for best documentary feature.  This book, based on the film and written by the filmmakers, Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer, explores the rescue mission in more depth and detail, giving the witnesses – parents, foster parents, rescuers, and the child survivors themselves – more of an opportunity to tell their harrowing stories.  Their greatest legacy is the record they leave, not only of the evil endured, but of the courage, generosity, and redemptive power of love.

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I have read many books written about various aspects of the Holocaust, ranging from Holocaust chronicles and encyclopedias, which cover the broad scope of multiple subjects, events, and aspects of the Holocaust in chronological and subject form, to the more private recollections of life and endurance under the Nazi onslaught, as by Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi.

This book, “Into the Arms of Strangers”, created as a film documentary and book first published in 2000, is the first book I have read that presents the Kindertransport – the British organized rescue of more than 10,000 Jewish children from Europe just before WWII – through the eyes and words of those whose lives intersected with the transport –  the children in the transports, the surviving parents who fatefully and painfully sent them away, the organizers and workers with the transports, and the families and individuals who in Britain, took the children into their homes.

Within this book, through interviews and letters, one hears the voices of the good, the compliant, and the self-described difficult children, voices informing us of their fears, the pain and trauma of separation from their parents and home culture, and the difficulties in assimilating into English homes and a different way of life, most of the children hindered in this social grappling with limited English skills.  And the pathos and hopes of the parents who sent their children to England are heard, in the letters written to their children, and in the words of the parents who managed to survive.

The book thus reveals another aspect of those who suffered under and through the nascent murderous Nazi ideology that led ultimately to the “Final Solution”.  The stories of this book do not match the numbers of those who went to the gas chambers – whose stories we do not have for the vast majority, especially of the children disposed of in this manner – but here we have the stories of just over a dozen children – a few more than twelve – of the more than 10,000 children Britain mercifully accepted and provided support and homes for in what was really in my mind, one of the greatest acts of kindness extended specifically to children during the entire Nazi period.  But even with just twelve or so children interviewed and highlighted along with the surviving parents and still living hosts of these children, the book effectively puts voices and faces to this effort, this act of uncommon kindness during those years of war and Shoah.

In reading this book, I believe it is imperative to read every page of the book in order to fully understand the story.  This includes the Preface, and especially the Introduction which provides a detailed yet clear and succinct history of the Nazi emergence in Germany in 1933, and how it inexorably led to the critical and desperate need for the Kindertransport by 1938.

Near the end of the book is a chapter titled, “In Memory of Sylvia Avramovici Oppenheimer, 1928-1993”.  This chapter written by Deborah Oppenheimer, one of the authors of the book, developed from her desire to know more of her mother, a holocaust survivor.  This desire spurred on the author’s inquiries and investigations, which eventually led to the production of the documentary film and publication of this book.  This section can be profitably read right after the Introduction if desired.  

The book itself is well constructed, logically and chronologically arranged, and it is a compelling read.  Of course, part of my interest in this story is the fact that my mother’s story shares some similarities to the story of the children of the Kindertransport.  When she was thirteen, when WWII began, she was one of the children evacuated from London.  She was transported out of the capital on Sunday, September 3, the third day of WWII, and the day Britain declared war on Germany.  The air raid sirens blared for the first time of the war, as the buses pulled out from her school’s assembly place at Chiswick Town Hall in London. 

Neither she nor her parents knew where she was going, or who would take her in.  Nor did she know at that time, that she, along with her entire family, would all eventually be declared enemy aliens in less than a year in June 1940, when Italy declared war on Britain, as her father, handsome and urbane, had been born in Italy and was still an Italian citizen, and her mother, who, under British law, which stated that when an English woman married a foreigner she lost her British citizenship, was stateless.

These are just a few perhaps minor examples of the type of significant bureaucratic problems facing thousands, in fact millions of persons, as the war gained momentum, and the Holocaust began to spread in area, organization and efficiency, and brutal intensity over the face of Europe.  The 10,000 children of the Kindertransport mercifully, by the kindness and perseverance of others, escaped these nightmare dead end situations, but many, if not most, of their parents did not.

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