The story of the ‘Kindertransporte’ (Kindertransports)

   With the onset of the Second World War, many children had to get used to new circumstances all over again: they were evacuated to the countryside just as many British children were. In the summer of 1940, the British Government decided that all refugees older than 16 who were (previously) German nationals, including over 1,000 participants of the Kindertransport, should be detained in internment camps as ‘enemy aliens’. Some were transported to camps in Canada or Australia. Most of them were able to leave the internment camps as ‘friendly enemy aliens’ after some months; many youths joined the army from the camps. For younger children, reaching their 14th birthday often marked the beginning of dramatic new experiences: at the end of compulsory education most of them had to leave their schools, look for a job and often also for accommodation. To all this was added the uncertainty about the fate of their relatives who had stayed in Germany or in one of the countries occupied by the Germans.
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