Review of

 INTO THE ARMS OF STRANGERS: Stories of the Kindertransport
 Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer
 Bloomsbury (2000)  304pp. $27.50
           
            To appear in SHOFAR
              slightly revised 

   To be a refugee is the most horrible feeling because you lose
   your family, you lose your home, you're also without an
   identity. Suddenly you are a nothing. You are just reliant on
   other people's good nature and help and understanding. (Inge
   Sadan, p.251)

   We were two years in England, then we emigrated to the United States.
   ..... I was tremendously sad to leave. ... Those years in England 
   were the happiest years of my youth.  (Jack Hellman, p.255)

   But England is me. England is my second mother; always I will
   regard it as such. (Alexander Gordon, p. 259).

These are reflections some 60 years later on formative experiences
in childhood and youth. The speakers, Jewish under Hitler's racial
laws, fled perilous conditions in Germany, Austria or
Czechoslovakia and travelled to Britain in the ten months between
the progrom of Kristallnacht and the outbreak of the European war.
They were admitted to Britain thanks to Neville Chamberlain's
government, and their journeys and receptions were organized by
Jewish and Quaker organizations. Their parents stayed behind in
often desperate circumstances in spite of huge pressures to force
their emigration because of the difficulty of finding a country
that allowed them entry . Many of the children lost their parents
in the final solution.

The trains (and a few boats) on which the children travelled are
called "Kindertransports", the children themselves are called
"Kinder", in the singular, "Kind". These expressions specialize
the usual German meaning of these words.  The book under review
consists mainly of interviews with Kinder. It also contains
interviews with several of their mothers and two men who helped to
arrange the Kindertransports. The book covers the childhood of the
Kinder in their home countries, but concentrates on their lives in
England. Their stories range from the harrowing to the uplifting.
The most surprising relate the efforts by some Kinder to obtain
coveted entry visas to England for their parents, and the
successes that were achieved. There is also the excellent terse
introduction by David Cesarani which gives the historical context.
The final section is a tribute by Deborah 0ppenheimer to her
mother, a Kind, which is one of the very moving parts of this book
written from the point of view of a member of the next generation.

The movie on which the book is based has most of this material,
and in addition has contemporary footage which evokes Britain at
war as well as anything I recall. It fully deserves its Oscar.

Contradictory as the quotations are at the head of this review,
they express some of the deeper effects of being uprooted:
unhappiness and attachment to the country that gave shelter, a not
infrequent combination in the same person. This, and much else, is
well documented in many variations in Harrison and Oppenheimer's
book.

Ethnic harassment, temporary or permanent separation from their
parents, and the challenges of living in a foreign country, these
are experiences common to almost all Kinder. There must be many
others who had to face one of these hazards but few who were
wwconfronted with all three at a comparable age. Obviously all had
some effect on the future characters and lives of the Kinder. But
one may ask: which of these factors is the most significant? I
believe one of the major factors that shaped them was the need to
assimilate to British society and find survival strategies in
often difficult circumstances.

My emphasis here is surely colored by my history which I shall now
summarize. My parents and I fled Vienna in June 1938 into
precarious illegal existence in Czechoslovakia and Poland. From
there I was sent to a Quaker school in Holland in the fall of
1938. Three weeks before the declaration of war by Britain, a
Kindertransport delivered me into the arms of my mother for my
parents had managed to reach Britain before me. I would tailor
Inge Sadan's remarks to my needs and apply them to the first part
of our exile: Suddenly your parents are nothing, playthings of
malignant or benign powers; dependent on charity, with no rights,
no status, no prospects and few resources. It was harder on them
than on me, much harder. And, beginning in August 1940 after a
second severe disruption caused by my father's internment, I could
apply the words of Jack Hellman and Alexander Gordon to a later
part of our refugee existence. My parents were somebody again;
they were striving to make new lives for themselves and I was
happy and successful at my Scottish school. I was one of the lucky
ones. Thank you parents, thank you school, thank you Scotland for
my second birth.

Perhaps I am more conscious of efforts at assimilation than most
Kinder because of the push of my Scottish school environment and
the pull of my home and the small Austrian refugee community in
Edinburgh. A past in a different country is a burden on a teenager
attempting to make a new life for himself or herself and it leads
to (I am tempted to say "requires") memory loss of ones previous
life. Silence, unless with others similarly placed, is needed by a
young outsider for fitting into a society as homogeneous as
Scotland - a silence which becomes deeply ingrained.

All of us young refugees were marked by our experiences; they made
us whatever we are. As pointed out by Cesarani (p.19): "The
uprooting had left [the Kinder] without a clear-cut sense of
belonging and a feeling that all attachments were precarious".
True, yet some effects were positive. The skills we learnt at that
time in order to survive, adapt and prosper stood us in good
stead, for this group did exceptionally well in later life. In
brief, there was PAIN and GAIN in greatly varying amounts for
different youngsters depending on circumstances and temperament. I
wonder how many of the Kinder would share my view of my personal
experience as a refugee in wartime Britain which is well expressed
by Lore Segal's summing up (p. 255). I have deliberately torn it
from its specific context:

  "Seems to me it was a gift. It didn't seem so at the time."

 Hans Schneider
   2 June 2001
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