The Kindertransport (translation Children's Transport) refers to the bringing of children out of Nazi-occupied Europe to countries of safety in the months before the Second World War. Kindertransports went to countries including Denmark, France, Palestine and the UK. The largest and most well-known, and subject of this course, is the Kindertransport to the UK, which brought approximately 10,000 children. The children were admitted on temporary visas. At the start, the scheme intended that these children would return home when it was safe to do so or immigrate to another country. However, this was never insisted upon. Whilst the British government approved the waiver of visas, the Kindertransport was not paid for by the British government.

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At the start of the transports, in December 1938, Jewish agencies in Germany and Austria sent children they deemed most vulnerable—orphans and teenaged boys—to the UK without finding them foster families before they arrived. This put a logistical and financial burden on refugee organisations in Britain and by February 1939, the refugee committees in Britain and abroad prioritised those children who were ‘guaranteed’ - that is, they had a foster home to go to and a sponsor who agreed to post a £50 bond towards the child’s re-emigration. Parents and guardians in Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia applied to put their children on transports, while foster families in Britain made choices about the children they wished to sponsor. There was a preference for younger children and those who were healthy. Disabled children generally were not accepted on a Kindertransport. Some organisations also set up hostels for older children, and some groups of children arrived with schools evacuated from the German Reich or on Youth Aliyah programmes, which trained them for kibbutz life in Palestine.

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Trains, planes and ships departed from Germany, Australia, Czechoslovakia and Poland, heading to the UK. A small number of Kinder flew from Prague to the UK. The first Kindertransport from Germany departed from Berlin on 1 December 1938 and the first from Austria left from on 10 December 1938. Parents sent their children onto trains at the train stations, not knowing when or if they would see them again. The Kindertransport only admitted children 17 and younger, this meant families being separated as parents, and in some cases, older siblings were not eligible for visas. Many of the families left behind were murdered in the Holocaust.