{"id":262223,"date":"2025-03-19T14:46:09","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T14:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/19\/as-children-they-fled-the-nazis-alone-newly-found-papers-tell-their-story\/"},"modified":"2025-03-19T14:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T14:46:09","slug":"as-children-they-fled-the-nazis-alone-newly-found-papers-tell-their-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/19\/as-children-they-fled-the-nazis-alone-newly-found-papers-tell-their-story\/","title":{"rendered":"As Children, They Fled the Nazis Alone. Newly Found Papers Tell Their Story."},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/17\/multimedia\/00xp-kindertransport1-clfm\/00xp-kindertransport1-clfm-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"As Children, They Fled the Nazis Alone. Newly Found Papers Tell Their Story.\" title=\"As Children, They Fled the Nazis Alone. Newly Found Papers Tell Their Story.\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When Hanna Zack Miley boarded a German train in July 1939, she did not know that the journey would permanently change her life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She was 7 at the time, about to travel to Britain without her parents. She remembers saying goodbye to them on the platform of the train station in Cologne, Germany. \u201cThey told me it was a nice trip and I believed it,\u201d Ms. Miley, an only child, said. \u201cI think they were trying to make it easy for me. I was the apple of their eye.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As her short legs took her up the steep steps of the train, she wanted to take one more look at her parents. \u201cI turned around and I saw that they were crying,\u201d Ms. Miley said. \u201cIt must have been awful for them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In that moment she realized that this was not, in fact, a nice trip.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She never saw her parents again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Miley, 93, now living in Phoenix, Ariz., is one of almost 10,000 Jewish children who were part of the Kindertransport, a rescue mission that helped minors flee Nazi Germany to Britain, via the Netherlands, between December 1938 and September 1939.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Over time, many details have been lost about this part of Holocaust history. But in the fall of 2024, Amy Williams, a researcher, unearthed a trove of information about the mission: lists of names and other identifying information about most of the children and chaperones who made the journey to Britain, tucked away in the vast archives at <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/07\/13\/world\/middleeast\/yad-vashem-israel-holocaust-memorial-biden.html\" title=\"\">Yad Vashem<\/a>, Israel\u2019s Holocaust memorial.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">For Ms. Miley and many descendants of people who were part of the Kindertransport, the emergence of the lists has helped shed light on a murky period in their family history and offered a sense of connection to others who were affected. For researchers, the findings provide a key puzzle piece, offering new information about the families and rescue organizations involved in the mission.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI was always told, from when I started my work, \u2018These lists don\u2019t exist, they were destroyed,\u2019\u201d said Dr. Williams, who was doing research for her third book about the Kindertransport when she discovered the documents. \u201cAnd they\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The lists she found were used by Dutch border guards to determine which children from other European countries should be let through to Britain and which should be sent elsewhere.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A majority of the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1999\/02\/21\/nyregion\/survivors-remember-the-rescue-trains.html\" title=\"\">children on the Kindertransport<\/a>, which was funded largely by Jewish communities in Germany and Britain, arrived by boat, traveling from Hook of Holland to Harwich, England. From there, they boarded trains to Liverpool Street Station in East London. Refugee organizations helped to match them with foster families.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Kindertransport has long been taught as a feel-good story, researchers said, but the mission itself was a complicated affair. The British government, for example, only allowed children to come into the country without their parents, deeply traumatizing many of them. The children had to be healthy, and they had to be from Nazi Germany (which included Austria and parts of the Czech Republic) rather than from other parts of Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Williams also found documents that helped reinforce the story of how the Kindertransport ended. While many have suggested that it was the start of World War II in September 1939 that ended the mission, the British refugee organizations operating the Kindertransport actually had decided that no more than 10,000 children could come to the country because of the difficulty of housing them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThe story is much more complex than the way we want to portray it,\u201d said Laura Hobson Faure, a professor at Panth\u00e9on-Sorbonne University-Paris 1 who wrote a book about Jewish children who fled to France during the Holocaust.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt\u2019s not a feel-good story,\u201d Dr. Hobson Faure said. \u201cIt\u2019s a story, though, that did save lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">While thousands of children were rescued from the Nazis, many of them were traumatized by the experience and never saw their family members again. At the same time, several children of Kindertransport survivors said that their parents always felt a deep loyalty to Britain for the role it played in their survival.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Miley had long known that thousands of other German children had also been on the Kindertransport, but she said that seeing her name in black and white on an official list gave her a sense of belonging. \u201cSuddenly, it wasn\u2019t me alone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Through Dr. Williams\u2019s research, Ms. Miley has connected with the descendants of other children on the Kindertransport. Among them is Richard Aronowitz, 55. His mother \u2014 Doris Aronowitz, who died in 1992 \u2014 was on the same train as Ms. Miley in July 1939.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-5\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">For Mr. Aronowitz and other descendants of the Kindertransport children, the lists of names, dates and numbers have led to complicated emotions. \u201cIt gave me much more of a profound context,\u201d Mr. Aronowitz said in an interview last month. But, he added, \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s ever any closure.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-6\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Some learned information about their parents or grandparents for the first time through the lists. For others, the documentation serves as a harrowing piece of evidence of the atrocities their parents survived, and an explanation of why so many of them grew up without grandparents or extended family.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt\u2019s that last, final parting document,\u201d Dr. Williams said. \u201cIt really sealed people\u2019s fates.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">For researchers, the discovery of the lists may provide new insight into how the Kindertransport was organized and how desperate parents came to their decisions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThe Kindertransport has never been investigated so much from the continental point of view,\u201d said Andrea Hammel, a professor at Aberystwyth University in Wales and the author of a book about the Kindertransport. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">For Bobby Lax, whose father came to Britain on the Kindertransport, the documentation helped fill gaps in his family\u2019s story. He found out that his father first went from Berlin to the Netherlands before being sent to Britain, leaving his brother and parents behind in Amsterdam, never to see them again, Mr. Lax said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWhile I had discovered most of my dad\u2019s story, it\u2019s absolutely overwhelming to see these original lists,\u201d Mr. Lax, a filmmaker living in Tel Aviv, said. \u201cThere\u2019s something incredibly empowering about that. It\u2019s the final piece of the puzzle to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-7\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">More than eight decades on, the lists have brought Ms. Miley a renewed sense of grief. \u201cOne of the big losses when you\u2019re taken away from your family so suddenly,\u201d she said, \u201cis that you don\u2019t know the personality of your parents.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On the other hand, she said, she feels gratitude. The discovery has helped give her \u201ca deeper thankfulness for the gift of life,\u201d Ms. Miley said. \u201cMy name and details on that list were the means of my escape.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/03\/19\/world\/europe\/kindertransport-holocaust-britain-rescue.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Hanna Zack Miley boarded a German train in July 1939, she did not know that the journey would permanently change her life. She was 7 at the time, about to travel to Britain without her parents. She remembers saying goodbye to them on the platform of the train station in Cologne, Germany. \u201cThey told [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/17\/multimedia\/00xp-kindertransport1-clfm\/00xp-kindertransport1-clfm-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[198390,1388,168174,1200,47637,4791,170054,202024,78215,16509,16205,12874,3889,170053,202023],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262223"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262225,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262223\/revisions\/262225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}