Through this exhibition, we have talked about various refugee and non-refugee organisations who supported the Kindertransport. Read below to find out more about these organisations and their missions.

The West London Synagogue Hospitality Committee

Elsa Goldschmidt, c. 1940s

Image courtesy of the the Goldschmidt family.

Many of the records in this exhibition come from the archives of the West London Synagogue of British Jews and concern the activities of its Hospitality Committee, which guaranteed about 120 children who came to Britain on Kindertransports in 1938-9.

The synagogue, founded in 1840, was the first reform synagogue in Britain. Its membership was from the elite of London Jewry and its form of worship modern with much English introduced into its services. Its membership in the 1930s included many wealthy and well-connected families and it had a record of philanthropy-especially concerning refugees- that continues to this day.

The Hospitality Committee of the West London Synagogue was formed in 1933 to “provide entertainment and hope to refugees in the United Kingdom.” It was one of the first such efforts by any Jewish community in the nation and in its first few years, the synagogue hosted receptions and social events for adult refugees, and Chanukah parties and other events for children.

Beginning in late 1938, the WLS Hospitality Committee turned its efforts almost entirely towards bringing endangered children to Britain and supporting them once they arrived. The committee placed a great deal of emphasis upon education and the majority of their Kinder were sent to private boarding schools, the cost of which was covered by donations made to the Hospitality Committee.

From its inception, the Hospitality Committee of the West London Synagogue was led by Elsa Goldschmidt. Born in 1879 into the prosperous D’Avigdor family, she worked on behalf of refugees throughout the war. She was joined in this effort by her sister, Berenice D’Avigdor, rabbis Cashdan and Reinhart and a staff that included secretary Anna Spiegel and volunteers Maizie Marks and Miss Margaret Sylvester-Samuel.

The West London Synagogue archives contain hundreds of letters addressed to “Dear Mrs Goldschmidt” from other refugee organisations, parents, relatives, foster parents, headmasters and mistresses, community members and refugee children themselves.

The Polish Jewish Refugee Fund

On 28 October 1938, German police and military authorities swept through towns and cities throughout the Reich arresting and detaining up to 20,000 Polish Jews, putting them on trains and sending them to the Polish border where the confused and terrified families were ordered to walk into Poland. This expulsion, the first coordinated mass deportation of Jews within the Reich, became known as the Polenaktion and it served as the catalyst for Kristallnacht. Among the deported was the family of Herschel Grynszpan, a fugitive refugee in Paris, who shot the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in retaliation for his family’s mistreatment. Vom Rath’s death was the putative justification for the Reich-wide pogrom on 9 November 1938 and it was this act of violence against German and Austrian Jews that led directly to the Kindertransport.

Meanwhile, the expelled Jews languished in Poland, more than half in the border town of Zbąszyń, where a makeshift refugee camp was quickly established. The Polenaktion had activated the British Jewish community, many of whom has Polish roots, and in the following days a new refugee committee, the Polish Jewish Refugee Fund (PJRF or Fund), was established to send aid and help to the refugees in Zbąszyń. When the British Government agreed to waive visa for unaccompanied Jewish children, the PJRF turned its attention to bringing deported German-born children to Britain as part of the wider Kindertransport programme. Between February and August 1939, the Fund was able to bring about 170 children to the UK, and it is from the case files of some these children that part of the exhibition is derived.

Several men representing orthodox Anglo-Jews of Polish heritage ran the PJRF and were responsible for most of the correspondence that appears in the children’s files. At the head was Elsley Zeitlyn (1878-1959), a retired King’s Counsellor who spent the late 1930 and early 1940s travelling the globe on behalf of endangered Jews and Jewish refugees. The two Assistant General Secretaries, Arnold M Kaizer (1896-1967) and Moise Gorowitz (1896-1951) a naturalized Polish immigrant were responsible for the majority of the correspondence in the children’s files. For a time, Sidney Gerrard served in the Fund’s Children’s Department and his warmth and concern for their welfare made him a favourite correspondent for a number of Kindertransportees. Another important member of the organisation was Rabbi Dr Litvin, the Fund’s home visitor, who was himself a refugee from Latvia. His candid and colourful reports illuminate a number of issues that Kinder faced in foster homes and hostels.

The Refugee Children’s Movement

The Refugee Children’s Movement (RCM, originally named the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany), was formed in the early days of the Kindertransport at the instigation of the well-established Central British Fund for German Jewry (CBF) and the Jewish Refugees Committee (JRC), associated British Jewish voluntary agencies that had been organised in 1933 to care for German Jewish refugees in Great Britain.

These refugee organisations underwent a dizzying array of name changes over the 1930s and 40s, and as the number of refugees in Great Britain grew, the umbrella agencies, originally headquartered at Woburn House, created over a dozen sub-committees that dealt with all aspects of refugee life including housing, employment and re-emigration. Eventually, a Central Office for Refugees was established at Bloomsbury House, which housed seventeen Case Working Committees including the Refugee Children’s Movement, and the Jewish Refugees Committee.

Although it had emerged from an British Jewish organisation, the RCM positioned itself as a non-denominational entity and much of its leadership was non-Jewish. For most of its existence, the Chairman was Lord Gorell and the General Secretary was Dorothy Hardisty, who were both non-Jewish. The Executive Board included both Jewish and Christian leaders, but Jewish orthodox leaders were generally absent, partly because of their objections to the placing of Jewish children in non-Jewish settings.

When war came, the RCM decentralised its operations in recognition of the evacuation of thousands of school aged refugee children to the countryside and the challenges of wartime travel. Allying themselves with various independent provincial and local refugee committees, the RCM established twelve regional centres and devolved many of the direct aftercare decisions and activities to these organisations including home visits, educational and training arrangements, housing, clothing and other welfare needs. Some of the documents in this exhibition include correspondence from these regional committees including the Birmingham Council for Refugees (Sonja and Estera Baranska), the Oxford Regional Committee (Klaus and Renate Laband) as well as other independent refugee committees such as the Worthing Refugee Committee (Bruno Nussbaum).

Non-Refugee Jewish Organisations

The correspondence in this exhibition includes letters written to and by other British Jewish organisations that had been established before the twentieth century and existed to care for the British Jewish community. As guardians and representatives of Anglo-Jewry, these organisations necessarily became involved with Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 40s, working in conjunction with the dedicated British Jewish refugee organisations that had formed in direct response to the Jewish refugee crisis brought about by the Nazi regime.

The most prominent of these organisations was The Board of Deputies of British Jews, established in the eighteenth century to safeguard the interests of British Jews. The Board supported refugee organisations’ efforts and encouraged Anglo-Jews to give generously to refugee causes. As the war progressed and accounts of the conversion of Jewish refugee children to Christianity began to proliferate, the Board appointed representatives to investigate specific cases and at the end of the war, commissioned a committee to investigate and report on the religious issues of refugee children.

Another important organisation was The Board of Guardians for the Relief of the Jewish Poor, more commonly known as the Jewish Board of Guardians. It was established in the middle of the nineteenth century to provide charity to impoverished Jewish immigrants, mainly in the East End of London. By the time of the Second World War, government social care had supplanted much of the Board of Guardians’ work, but the organisation worked closely with various refugee committees to place older girls and boys in employment and to monitor their welfare while living in London. There is correspondence in the exhibition materials from the Jewish Board of Guardians in the case of Bruno Nussbaum.