Nazi Germany and Jewish Children

Context;
Kinder transport is the name given to the rescue mission that took place nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The mission was to send of children, most of them Jewish, from Germany to Britain. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria and Poland. When the Jews lost their parents in the war they didn’t know where they were going and what was going to happen to their parents. Britain was the country to give free transfer to the Jewish children to come to Britain and stay away from the War. A war was caused because Hitler’s policies were to remove the Jews from Germany. Hitler wanted a country of only German people. He wrote a book called Mein Kampf and he was explaining the reason why he wanted to remove the Jews. The reason why Hitler wrote the book was to explain how selfish the Jews were. He believed that they were being greedy with money and Jews were not employing Germans. When Hitler came to power he promised he would make Germany strong again, he started with getting rid of the Jews by making the Nuremberg laws (which meant Jews and Germans couldn’t do normal things together).

The Plot;
The play is set in Germany in 1938 after a night of violence against Jews across Germany. The British responded by making a program called Kindertransport, which enabled Jewish children to have a safe passage to the UK.

Kindertransport is a play about a little girl Eva who’s nine. At the beginning of the play, her parents made the difficult decision of sending her away to Manchester to get away from the war. The play jumps from when she was still adjusting to life in the UK to when she was older and had a family of her own. After her daughter Faith found out about her mother’s past she confronts her. Eva, now Evelyn, completely denies her heritage and refuses to accept her past.

Key Characters;
Evelyn;
Evelyn is the older self of Eva, she has changed her name to Evelyn, (this is more English). She changed it when she found out that her father died and her mother would not be coming to Britain, she was baptised. Therefore, she changes everything about her, denying her roots. Soon, Faith, Eva’s daughter, finds out about her mother’s real heritage and is also shaken, because her sense of identity and reality, she finds is changed.

Helga;
Helga is Eva’s mother and she has to make a very difficult decision to send of her daughter to England for her own safety. This must have been the most difficult thing about the war for a lot of parents. Imagine how this must have felt for them? In return, we see that her daughter is someone else when Helga finally comes to take her to America.. Eva now Evelyn refuses to go with her, denying her mother.

Lil;
Lil is the adoptive mother of Eva/Evelyn. She took in Eva when she was nine years old, after the German children were brought to England. When Eva first met Lil, Eva could not speak English, so found it difficult to communicate with Lil. However, she learns English and along with acquiring this language, she acquires a new character. Lil also struggles to hide Eva’s identity and gives it away to Faith at the end.

Faith;
Faith is Evelyn’s only daughter, she is in her early twenties in the book. She is about to move out of the house in the beginning, but changes her mind near the end of the play. A significant moment in the play in when, at the end she confronts her mother when she finds pictures and documents in the attic revealing her mother’s German past. Even after faith confronts Evelyn, Evelyn still refuses to accept her past. Faith is shaken by this revelation because of obviously, it would mean that your whole life has been built on a lie, and she ends up not knowing who she really is.

Ratcatcher;
The Ratcatcher is a mythical creature in the German children’s storybook called ‘Rattenfanger’. The ‘Ratcatcher’ story is about the town of Hamlyn where the rats were led away and every day the people of Hamlyn counted their blessings (see hyperlink to read this). The Ratcatcher appears in Kindertransport when Eva/Evelyn feel threatened. The technique where a text makes reference to another text inside it is called intersexuality.

Themes and issues;

Nazism
Anti-Semitism
Jewish ritual e.g Seder night and the Haggandah
Jewish beliefs e.g The 10 plagues of Egypt/Moses
Kindertransport
Adoption
21st century responses to immigration in the UK /The Rise of the BNP
Asylum seekers
Identity/ what makes us who we are?
The importance of family origins
Intergenerational relationships
The Pied Piper- The Ratcatcher
Leaving home
The immigrant experience/learning a language/language contact (when a speaker of two languages from the second into a first language
The importance of Parents reading to their children

Form and Structure;
Parallel narratives
Interweaving/Relationship of narratives throughout the play
Subtlety of switches between narratives
Dramatic contrasts
Structure and sequencing of time slips
Juxtaposition of characters speaking separately though unaware of each other.
Symbolism of The Ratcatcher/ effect of a book character coming to life
Props/Links( the watch, mouth organ, jewellery) with Judaism
Significance of Eva not being able to hold her jewellery or watch
Dramatic irony
Stage Directions
Use of props/setting
Dramatic significance of key moments in the text eg the departure of Eva on the Kindertransport or Evelyn and Lil’s tearing up of Eva’s letters
Stichomythia
Language: the significance of German in the play/ evocation of the past through German words/ Use of non-standard word order for dramatic effect
The denouement
Significance of unnamed characters eg: Nazi Border Official, the English Organiser, the Postman, the Station Guard.
Importance of sound effects eg jangling keys in Act 1 Scene 1 or the mouth organ being played
Use of letters to underpin the development/denouement of relationships
Ambiguity of roles eg the role of Lil

Setting;
Significance of storage room in Evelyn’s house
Wartime Germany/Late 20th Century Outer London, UK
Evocation of setting through script eg Faith’s poem to suggest the Railway of Kindertransport
Use of stagecraft to delineate the contrasting worlds of Eva and Evelyn

Language;
Linguistic interaction of characters from different eras
Changes in Eva/Evelyn’s use of English as she becomes increasingly acculturated in her new home.
Germanic pronunciation/ word order/contrast English and German
Use of rhyme to evoke era
Dramatic irony
Use of questions
The reading of letters