Kindertransport: History and Memory

The author presents an overview of the Kindertransport and examines how this experience is handled in childhood recollections of the Kindertransportees. One reason why the first Kindertransport reunions did not occur until the 1980s might be that the Kindertransportees had to step out of the shadow of the Auschwitz survivors. When asked today about their memories of exile, child refugees show various patterns as to what they remember and how they remember it: i.e., those who stayed in Britain after the war often show a more difficult access to their own biography than those who re-emigrated to the U.S. and Israel.