United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland / London

Memorial to the »Kindertransporte« (Refugee Children's Movement) Liverpool Street

Kindertransport Memorial

About 10.000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria and Czechia arrived 1938/39 via the so called Kindertransporte in the British capital, many of them at the Liverpool Street Station. Since 2003 the sculpture »Für das Kind« (For the Child) on the forecourt of the station remembered the fate of the children and youths. In 2006 is was relocated and replaced by the Kindertransport Memorial by the Iraeli artist Frank Meisler.

History

Following their rise to power in 1933, National Socialists the started to systematically exclude Jews from society and to disenfranchise them. Jewish businesses were boycotted, discriminating laws excluded Jews from public offices and from marriage to non-Jews. Initially most of the well integrated German Jews decided to stay in their home country. The National Socialists tried to enforce Jewish emigration from Germany by their discriminatory politics, at the same time bureaucratic barriers and the enforced payments of large sums of money made it impossible for many Jews to leave the country. In November 1938 National Socialists set fire to Jewish businesses and synagogues all over Germany, Jews were attacked and assaulted. The Gestapo arrested thousands of Jewish men and held them captive at the Dachau concentration camp for a couple of weeks. From this time on Jewish children were excluded from attending state-run schools. Because of the scale of the pogroms, Jewish relief organisations could obtain – especially for Great Britain – an easing of restrictions on admission for Jewish refugees, particularly for children and youths. From November 1938 to September 1939 Jewish Agencies managed to bring approximately 10,000 children to Great Britain. Their parents were to follow later to emigrate with them to other countries.

London, 2007, Kindertransport memorial on the station forecourt, Terry Moran, www.flickr.com/photos/tezzer57/

London, 2007, Kindertransport memorial, Terry Moran, www.flickr.com/photos/tezzer57/

Victims

By means of the Kindertransporte approximately 10,000 Jewish children could be saved from the German Reich, including Vienna and Prague. After their arrival in Great Britain the children were placed in foster homes or reception camps. At the start of World War II it became almost impossible for the Jewish children to contact their parents in Germany. About nine of ten children never saw their parents again. For many their life-saving escape became a traumatic experience of isolation and separation.

Contemporary British identity is largely based on the history of the country during the Second World War. Great Britain (excluding the Channel Islands) was the only European opponent of the Third Reich not to be occupied by the Wehrmacht. As a victorious power, the UK played a decisive role in the post-war reconfiguration of Europe. Memory of the war continues to centre on military and moral self-assertion. This form of memory is symbolised by the conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965), who came into office in 1940. Churchill’s speeches succeeded in creating a spirit of optimism despite the severe losses suffered by the civilian population as a result of German bombing raids. The city of Coventry is representative of the destruction but also the post-war initiatives to achieve reconciliation with the Germans. A key feature of the British war effort was the joint deployment of various population groups on the »Home Front«. For example, the aristocracy opened their estates to city children and the royal family visited bombing victims. The »Labour Party« also appealed to community spirit in its post-war election campaign in 1945 and indeed succeeded in ousting Churchill from power. With its new education and welfare laws, Labour built the foundations of a phase of social peace following the principle of equal opportunities and equality. This attitude characterised a culture of memory unique in Europe in the early post-war years. As early as 1944, a survey concluded that projects to build monuments for the victims of the Second World War should »benefit or bring joy to the survivors«. Thus a swimming pool in Wales became an official memorial and in Eastbourne six houses were established for disabled servicemen and their families. Forms of memory have since changed in Great Britain. Following the severe economic crisis of the 1970s the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) adopted a radically different political course and also changed British attitudes to their past. »Efficiency« became a key term. Entrepreneurial spirit was to make itself felt, even in the area of culture, and history was to become a consumer product. Indeed the burgeoning »history industry« also concerned the Second World War, as demonstrated by the range of items in many museum shops. In subsequent years, memory of the war increased further through the commemoration of the Allied landings in Normandy in 1944 and victory in 1945, but also through many films and television series. This was coupled with increased memory of the Holocaust, which had been almost completely blocked out until the 1960s, even though many refugees had fled persecution to settle in Britain. In 2000 Queen Elizabeth II (1926–2022) opened a permanent exhibition on the murder of European Jews in the »Imperial War Museum«, the national war and military museum in London. This exhibition provides a detailed account of the crimes. On the initiative of the conservative government of David Cameron, a new UK Holocaust Memorial is to be built in London near the House of Parliament until the middle of the 2020s.

Remembrance

A memorial named »Für das Kind« (For the Child) designed by the artist Flor Kent was dedicated on the forecourt of Liverpool Street Station in 2003. It consisted of the bronze figure of a girl standing beside a big glass case resembling a stylised suitcase. Within the glass case were a number of authentic objects belonging to children saved by the Kindertransporte. In 2006 the memorial was relocated and altered. The suitcase and the objects disappeared, next to the figure of the girl is now the figure of a little boy. Since 2006 the sculpture is located in the station concourse. It was replaced in 2006 by a memorial by the Israeli artist Frank Meisler (1925–2018). It shows a group of bronze children who have just reached their English exile. On the base of the monuments are bronze milestones naming the cities from where the transports departed. The ten year old Frank Meisler himself came to England on one of the last transports from Gdańsk (German: Danzig) in August 1939. Meisler erected similar memorials along the route of the Kindertransporte: In his hometown Gdańsk, in the Hook of Holland harbour and in Berlin, on the forecourt of the Friedrichstraße station.

London, 2012, Memorial »Für das Kind« by Flor Kent in the station concourse, Stiftung Denkmal

Harwich, 1938, A policeman accompanies two children after their arrival in England, Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S69273

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times.

Contact

Liverpool St, Bishopsgate
EC2M 7PY London

London, 2007, Frank Meisler's memorial, Terry Moran, www.flickr.com/photos/tezzer57/

Bernburg

Bernburg Memorial

Between 1940 and 1943, the former Bernburg mental hospital functioned as one of several »euthanasia« killing centres in National Socialist Germany. The memorial to the victims of National Socialist »e...

Wittstock

The Death March Museum

The Death March Museum in the Below Forest is situated in the north of Brandenburg close to Wittstock. Its exhibition commemorates the death march of the prisoners from Sachsenhausen concentration cam...

Berlin

Plötzensee Memorial

Between 1933 and 1945, political opponents of the National Socialist regime were executed in the Berlin Plötzensee prison. The German Resistance Memorial Center commemorates victims of National Social...