How the World Jewish Relief archive connects families with their Kindertransport lists

Written by Dr Amy Williams

During my recent fellowship at Yad Vashem, I gained access to the Kindertransports lists from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. I also accessed the Austrian collection at the National Library of Israel which has Kindertransport lists to Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, America, Australia, Belgium, and France as well as many other files from the era. Other lists to Switzerland are available at the United States Holocaust Memorial and the Danzig/ Gdansk lists are at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Furthermore, I found some of the Kitchener Camp and post-war Kindertransport lists of children who survived the concentration camps in the archives at Yad Vashem and the National Library of Israel.

I started to reconnect former Kindertransport refugees and their families with the Kindertransport lists which document their names, birthdates, addresses, Kindertransport numbers, destinations, and the names and addresses of the adult chaperones. Each list is accompanied by a letter which was sent by the Jewish community in Greater Germany to the Dutch Kinder Committee and Dutch border guards to explain where and when the transport would pass through the border. Some of the Austrian lists even indicate which concentration camp the Kinder’s father had been sent to after Kristallnacht. More recently thanks to Jeremy Frankel and Alan Mann the ferry information from 30^th June 1939 to the end of August 1939 has been discovered. From the Kindertransport lists I found out what time the children would arrive in the Hook of Holland. The new ferry information tells us the time the ferry arrived in Harwich, how many passengers were on board and, crucially, how many of them were refugees, how much cargo and mail were loaded, and the name of the ship itself. We can now reconnect most of the Kindertransport journeys to Britain and beyond.

The World Jewish Relief (WJR) archive is a vital resource for helping me locate Kindertransport lists. Not all the families know their relatives’ Kindertransport number or the exact date of their travel. This information is found within the WJR files. The Kindertransport lists are yet to be made digitally searchable, so everything at the moment is done by hand, so I have to manually search through the material. However, if I know the name of the Kindertransport refugee, their Kindertransport number, and their date of departure or arrival I can find their lists within minutes.

Some WJR files are more complete than others; they often have a registration card while others have the actual case file. Taking Peter Lutz Jonas’ WJR file as an example we can see that his Kindertransport number is 7068. This is essentially his Home Office number – the number which granted him a visa to come to the UK. He also has a Movement number which is 12256. This is the number which the refugee committee assigned him for their records. He has a case number, too, which is 43498. Peter’s file is very detailed; it even tells us his army number which is 14445829. As you can see from the file, he arrived into the UK on 30/06/1939. His home address is given as well as the addresses where he stayed while he was in Britain. Details are provided about Peter’s day-to-day life in his new host nation as well as when and where he was evacuated. Peter travelled on the SS Washington and we have his ship disembarkation list in Southampton. His Kindertransport list is 4 pages long and lists over 150 children’s names. His WJR file helped to locate his Kindertransport list but also to establish how he continued to journey around Britain.

Hanna Zack Miley’s Kindertransport list was the first list I found at Yad Vashem. I actually found Hanna’s list without the knowledge of her WJR file as she knew her Kindertransport number – 8814. However, when we contacted WJR she was able to access her file. In it was her registration card. While it did not shed any new light on how she came to Britain, what it did reveal was her parents’ names. This card is the final document which lists her small family unit of father, mother, and daughter. Hanna’s parents did not survive the Holocaust. They were murdered in a gas van in Chelmno. Seeing her WJR file after some 86 years brought Hanna healing as her parents saved her life by bravely sending her on the Kindertransport. The letter at the beginning of Hanna’s Kindertransport list states that there will be 2 German Kindertransports travelling through the Netherlands on Tuesday 25^th July 1939 via Zevenaar and Oldenzaal. The transport via Oldenzaal arrived at 4.51pm, carrying 115 children. Hanna’s transport via Zevenaar arrived at 6.18pm and consisted of 58 children. Both the transports arrived at the Hook of Holland at 21.37pm. Hanna’s ferry was called the “Vienna”. It had 197 passengers onboard of which 162 were refugees. There were 49 tons of cargo loaded as well as 2 cars and a trailer, and 170 letters or bags of mail. The ferry arrived into Harwich on 26^th July 1939 at 05.30am.