What Are The Effects Of The First Kindertransport

Pope John Paul II once said, “The evil of the twentieth century was of gigantic proportions, an evil that used state structures to carry out its dirty work; it was evil transformed into a system” (Down 97). This evil caused heroes to successfully rescue a fraction of Europe’s helpless youth, but it also led to the children’s misfortune as displaced persons, and the trauma left to fill the void of their losses.
As news of the transports spread, in a month's time, 1,950 children travelled from Germany and Austria to England (Fast). The first Kindertransport, organized by Norbert Wollheim, left Berlin on December 1, 1938. 196 children rode on the train, all from an orphanage demolished in the aftermath of Kristallnacht. Wollheim arranged about
Trauma came in the form of survivor guilt, as well as depression. Although they had no control over their survival, the children’s subconscious mind caused irrational thoughts to surface. They did not understand why they lived and their parents did not, or why their parents survived and their friends’ parents died. As a result, as the children grew up and had families of their own, they found communication difficult. Children of the Kindertransport refugees possessed complications when relating to the experiences of their parents. The refugees themselves lacked the knowledge and experience of talking with their children because communication between themselves and their own parents disappeared once they walked onto the trains to take them to England. To continue, children also mourned the loss of their childhood. Those with siblings forcibly matured quicker to raise and care for their younger brothers and sisters. The sense of betrayal by non-Jews also caused some of the adult “Kinder” to trust Jews only; therefore, intermarriage rarely transpired. Other “Kinder” adults felt more than grateful towards the Christian families that took them into their homes, and the country that saved them from the fate of their families. In the 1960s, a “Thank You Britain Fund” raised £90,000 for the field of human studies. Additionally,
The success of the transports made life possible in a time when life seemed to end quickly and tragically for those in Nazi-occupied Europe, even though displacement and trauma took the place of death. The transports gave those children a life they otherwise never would have received if they stayed in their home