Complicating narratives of the Kindertransport
Digital Exhibition
Born 12.2.23 in Vienna.
Anneliese, Hans and Marianne Goldschmidt; Hilde Bachmann
This family’s refugee story illustrates the themes of family separation, agency, gratitude and transmigration.
From left to right: Hilde Bachmann, age 16, Hans Goldschmidt age 9, Marianne Goldschmidt age 6
MS140 A2049 96/2; 96/8; and 94/6 (Special Collections, Hartley Library, University of Southampton)
Anneliese Goldschmidt nee Bachmann was a businesswoman who owned her own fabric and clothing shop in Eslohe, Germany. She had two children: Hans, born 15.9.29, and Marianne born 1.4.32. She was widowed in 1934, lost her business due to Nazi persecution in November 1938, and sent her children to a children’s home in Brussels, Belgium in early 1939 while she desperately sought a way to escape Germany.
Anneliese came to the UK on a domestic service visa in late March 1939. Her two children came on a Kindertransport at the end of May 1939, sponsored by the West London Synagogue (WLS). Once in the UK, Anneliese also managed to get the West London Synagogue to sponsor her sixteen her old sister Hilde Bachmann (born 15.8.22) on a Kindertransport and she arrived just before her seventeenth birthday in early August 1939. This family’s story reflects the utilising of the Kindertransport and domestic service visas as a multi-pronged strategy for escaping the German Reich and reuniting in the UK.
The West London Synagogue sent Hans and Marianne to boarding schools and when Hilde arrived, both she and Anneliese went to Hans’ school- Hilde as a student/aide and Anneliese as a housekeeper. For a few weeks they were together, but when Hilde was sexually harassed by the headmaster, the WLS removed all three as well as other children they had at the school, an event alluded to in Document 11. Hans was sent to live with his aunt Anna Bauer (who was also a refugee) in Wimbledon but was evacuated to the Oxford countryside in the fall of 1940 and remained there with foster families for a year before being transferred to a school in Somerset. Hans left school at the end of 1945 and came to London to begin working as a motor mechanic. Both Anneliese and Hilde went into private domestic service.
The entire family emigrated to the USA in mid-1946, joining other family members who had already emigrated there prior to the outbreak of war.
The documents in this collection demonstrate that Kinder and their parents did not have to be in different countries to endure family separation. Anneliese’s letters to the West London Synagogue (Documents 1,2,4,6,9-11) all show how painful it was for her to be apart from her children and only see them on school holidays. She felt trapped into staying in domestic service because it was the only way she could spend time with Hans and Marianne. These letters reflect Anneliese’s frustration with her situation- caught between gratitude for the WLS’s care of her children, dislike of her role as a domestic servant and anguish about being separated from her children. A significant number of Kinder had mothers in the UK doing domestic service and this is an illustrative case of the challenges and difficulties of such a situation. Document 12 reveals that though they were both in Great Britain, Anneliese and Hilde had also been separated for almost 10 years.
These documents paint a clear picture of the difficulties and limited agency of refugees’ lives. Documents 5, between the WLS and Bloomsbury House and 8, from Anneliese to Bloomsbury House show that Anneliese Goldschmidt desperately wanted to spend more time with her children and to have more of a say in their education and upbringing but was prevented from doing so by her work as a domestic and her dependence on the refugee organisations. Document 10 reveals that she even had to ask the WLS for permission to have her children at holidays. The correspondence from and about Anneliese is evidence of the paternalistic and sometimes patronising attitudes the refugee agencies took with refugee domestics (and others who depended on them), which suggests that the organisations did not view refugees as individuals with agency and the right to make decisions about their own families’ lives.
Included in the collection are also documents from Hans to both the WLS and his mother showing his own attempts at agency. In a letter to his mother (Document 3) Hans tried to get removed from a foster family with whom he was desperately unhappy. Anneliese appealed to the WLS on his behalf (Documents 4 and 6), but the refugee committee brushed off the Goldschmidt’s complaints (Document 5). Hans’ letters to the WLS (Documents 14 and 15) demonstrate both agency and gratitude, and a growing maturity and sense of himself as ‘the man of the family.’
The letters were written after the family’s re-emigration (Documents 12-14) provide valuable insights into the challenges faced by Kinder and their families when they left the UK, as well as the gratitude and close ties they often made with those in the voluntary organisations who had helped them when they were struggling refugees in wartime Britain.
The below documents are from the West London Synagogue Collection (MS 140) at the Special Collection, Hartley Library, University of Southampton and have all been used with permission of the University of Southampton Special Collections and the West London Synagogue.
Please navigate the thumbnails below to view the full-size documents. Each document is accompanied by a description and archive reference.
