How were the children in the Kindertransport treated?

Question

during the holocaust
kindertransport is the children with out parents who were sent to Great Britan for resettlement

Answer 1

This is the moving story told by some of the 10,000 mostly Jewish children who were forced to flee from Nazi persecution and certain death shortly before war was declared. They came from Germany. Austria and Czechoslovakia.


Their traumatic rescue and forced separation from their parents, became known as The Kindertransport. These were the largest number of children to escape from Nazi occupied territory.



Through interviews we discover what happened to the families of these fleeing children and how they themselves survived in their strange new world, where they couldn't speak the language and had no idea who was going to care for them.






Older children lived in hostels, others were lucky enough to have caring loving foster families whilst some tell of abuse, beatings and of being so hungry they were forced to eat dog biscuits.


In 1933 when the Nazis came to power in Germany they gradually bought in their notorious anti Jewish laws, which prevented Jews from moving around freely. Their businesses were closed, their homes were taken away. Jewish doctors and teachers were not allowed to practise. Men were harassed and arrested, deported and put into concentration camps. Jewish children and students were bullied and beaten and finally banned from schools and universities.

In 1938 a Polish Jew assassinated a German Embassy Official in Paris. This triggered off an orgy of smashing, looting and burning of Jewish homes and businesses. School, synogogues and religious artefacts were burnt. Thousands were arrested. The violence was called 'Kistallnacht', the night of broken glass. Aware of the imminent danger thousands of Jews who were able to fled Germany.






After Kristallnacht the Central British Fund for German Jewry in Britain realised that lives had to be saved. Within four weeks they lobbied the British government, raised funds to get the children out of Germany and ran the first train. This rescue became known as the Kindertransport.
You will find more information about Kristallnacht here.

Answer 2

Without parents? I thought they were taken from their parents.

Someone in my class did a formal report on this. I think that they were treated like no more than burdensome property.