Since the Holocaust was first taught as part of the English National Curriculum in 1993, British school teachers have naturally asked questions about Britain’s role and response to the Holocaust. The Kindertransport has been a popular topic for school teachers for several reasons.

The Kindertransport is most often taught as part of the Holocaust. As the Kindertransport is a story of survival, it offers an “age-appropriate” entry point to teaching about the Holocaust, especially among younger learners aged between 10 and 13, whereby teachers can approach the issues of discrimination, exclusion and displacement in “safety”. This course attempts to complicate this approach by examining the lives and diverse experiences of children who were separated from their families.

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The memory of the Kindertransport resurfaced in Briitsh politics in 2015, when, in response to the refugee crisis then occurring as a result of the Syrian civil war, the late Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathon Sachs implored the nation “to remember simple humanitarian gestures like the Kindertransport, which rescued 10,000 children [and] lit a light in the darkest period of history.” Prime Minister David Cameron also made the case for child refugees from Syria to be allowed refuge in the UK, but not their parents, in direct echo of 1938. It is widely celebrated as a British story of rescue and altruism. By exploring national memory and the stories of a number of Kindertransportees, this course asks whether we should teach the Kindertransport as the story of Britain as a savior nation, or if there is a case for examining it as a global or transnational history? By digging deeper into children’s experiences, it asks what lessons should we learn about the Kindertransport, and whether there are dangers in romanticising a history which is characterised as much by hardship, loneliness and exploitation as it is by care, assistance and salvation? What can we learn about the Kindertransport by looking at it as part of a longer history of migration to Britain?