Saving Some Children from the Holocaust Would you let your kids travel to safety in another country without you, knowing you may never see them again? This is the step thousands of families chose to take when the opportunity came to ride the Kindertransport in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria. On December 1, 1938, less than a month after Kristallnacht, the first Kindertransport left from Germany to Harwich, England, carrying 196 children from a Jewish orphanage burned by the Nazis. World War II Kindertransports saved children’s lives by getting people to help, sending the kids to Britain, and giving them new lives to live. Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany in 1933, aiming to cleanse the country by using Jews as scapegoats. …show more content…
It was authorized by the British government, and planned to take children out of Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Austria and relocate them to the United Kingdom. People of all religions including Christianity, Quakers and the Jewish, needed to help run the trains, to make the rescue operation work. It took many leaders, including Lola Hahn-Warburg, a Jewish woman part of a Jewish German banking family, who made framework for the rescues. Wilfrid Israel, a Jewish German businessman, who used his personal connections to secure a passageway for Jews. Stanley Baldwin, the former British prime minister and founder of Lord Baldwin Fund for refugees, got British people to donate and support the fund through a BBC broadcast. With all the people willing to help, the Kindertransport raised 500,000 pounds within the few months. People not only helped kid on the Kindertransports but in other ways such as, saving 1,000 orthodox Jewish children which Viscount Walter Horace Samuel, Sir Wyndham Deedes, Rebecca Sieff and Rabbi Solomon Schoenfeld did. Nicholas Winston, Trevor Chadwick, Doreen Warriner, and Bill Barazetti, were also responsible for saving 669 Czechoslovak children. People all around were helping but it was almost impossible to