In the nine months before WWII, close to 10,000 children were sent to Great Britain in what is now known as the Kindertransport Rescue Movement. The first Kindertransport arrived on December 2, 1938, carrying 196 Jewish children from Berlin. Most of the transports left by train from Vienna, Berlin, Prague and other cities (children from small towns traveled to meet the transports) and went on by ship to England. The transports ended with the outbreak of war in September 1939.
Smaller numbers of children were sent to the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Belgium, and the United States. None were accompanied by their parents; a few were babies carried by teenagers. Most of the Kindertransport children never saw their parents again.
256,000 Miles From Home follows four Kindertransport survivors, former unaccompanied child refugees, as they travel back to Europe, 80 years after they were sent from Nazi Germany to safety in the United Kingdom, leaving families, homes and everything they knew.
“I was eight years old and my sister Edith was seventeen when our parents put us on the train. The whole trip I asked 'where are our parents?' Edith said they would meet us in England in three months. We never saw our parents again.”
Kindertransport Survivor Ralph Mollerick
“Normally, I’m fine, and this is part of my past. But being here, I realize the fate planned for me, that people wanted to murder me. And I’m not at all ok.”
Kindertransport Survivor Eva Yachnes
“I wanted to try and imagine what it felt like as a three year old toddler to be taken from the arms of his parents and put onto a train. Maybe I was so traumatized…my mind blocked it out.”
Kindertransport Survivor Mark Burin
“We were children then, there are children like us now. We must act to help them.”
Kindertransport Survivor Ilse Melamid
