Bracelet, Hand Towel, Pocket Watch: Objects of the Last Moment in Memory and Narration

One indicator of increased public awareness of the theme "Kindertransport" is the fact that this event gradually is making its way into literature. Aside from the few fictional accounts (Cynthia Ozick, The Messiah of Stockholm, 1987, and W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz, 2001) there are numerous autobiographical texts about the "Kindertransport." These describe—in the form of keepsakes and clothing—an important landscape of remembrance and relating that contains entire thematic complexes symbolically solidified within it. Objects make a child's experience concrete; they become links to parents and later they support remembrance; with greater distance, such items serve the function of bracketing an experience. As special "transitional objects" (Winnicott) they still have not found their place within the psychology of personal objects.