In the UK the Kindertransport – the flight of around 10,000 underage refugees from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland between December 1938 and September 1939 – is a treasured national story. The Kindertransport is celebrated as a successful rescue mission by politicians, fêted as a humanitarian example in the media, and is the subject of a never-ending series of memorials, school projects, plays, books and films. The role of the UK is remembered as that of the rescuer, and often this role is personified by the figure of Nicholas Winton (1909-2015), who, as a young man, assisted with the flight of 669 children from Czechoslovakia. Winton was honoured with a knighthood in the UK, a stamp in the Czech Republic, and internationally in 2020 with a Google doodle. Furthermore, the Labour Peer Lord Alf Dubs who arrived in the UK on a Kindertransport aged six uses a celebratory narrative of his early life to support his lobbying work for contemporary child refugees, keeping the story in the public eye.

In this talk I will be tackling the myths that have grown up around the Kindertransport. I will tell the history of the Kindertransport from new angles by using hitherto unexplored archival sources to tell the stories of some of the people involved in and rescued by the process. It will question the dominant celebratory and simplistic narratives that have surrounded the history of the Kindertransport and its influence on more recent debates regarding Britain’s refugee policy.

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