page_title: Kindertransport
section_title: Policy
hierarchical_section_title: Kindertransport / Policy
caption_attribution_description: English: 1939 visa issued to a Jewish woman who was accompanying a Kindertransport from Danzig to the UK.
context_page_description: The Kindertransport was an organised rescue effort that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Nazi-occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. The programme was supported, publicised and encouraged by the British government. Importantly the British government waived all those visa immigration requirements which were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government put no number limit on the programme – it was the start of World War II that brought the programme to an end, at which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the United Kingdom.
  The term "kindertransport" is also sometimes used for the rescue of mainly Jewish children, but without their parents, from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.
context_section_description: On 15 November 1938, five days after the devastation of "Kristallnacht", the "Night of Broken Glass", in Germany and Austria, a delegation of British, Jewish, and Quaker leaders appealed, in person, to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Neville Chamberlain. Among other measures, they requested that the British government permit the temporary admission of unaccompanied Jewish children, without their parents.
  The British Cabinet debated the issue the next day and subsequently prepared a bill to present to the United Kingdom's Parliament. That bill stated that the government would waive certain immigration requirements so as to allow the entry into Great Britain of unaccompanied children ranging from infants up to the age of 17, under conditions as outlined in the next paragraph.
  No limit upon the permitted number of refugees was ever publicly announced. Initially, the Jewish refugee agencies considered 5,000 as a realistic target goal. However, after the British Colonial Office turned down the Jewish agencies' separate request to allow the admission of 10,000 children to British-controlled Palestine, the Jewish agencies then increased their planned target number to 15,000 unaccompanied children to enter Great Britain in this way.
  During the morning of 21 November 1938, before a major House of Commons debate on refugees, Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare met a large delegation representing Jewish, as well as Quaker and other non-Jewish groups, working on behalf of refugees. The groups, though considering all refugees, were specifically allied under a non-denominational organisation called the "Movement for the Care of Children from Germany". This organisation was considering only the rescue of children, who would need to leave their parents behind in Germany.
  In that debate of Nov 21, 1938, Hoare paid particular attention to the plight of children. Very importantly, he reported that enquiries in Germany had determined that, most remarkably, nearly every parent asked had said that he would be willing to send his child off unaccompanied to the United Kingdom, leaving his parents behind. (Whilst this was somewhat of an exaggeration – it was traumatic for the parents to send their children away into the "unknown" and for an uncertain time; and traumatic for at least the younger children to be separated from their parents – the actual parting was managed well.)
  Home Secretary Hoare declared that he and the Home Office "shall put no obstacle in the way of children coming here," consequently "to show that we will be in the forefront among the nations of the world in giving relief to these suffering people." Hoare made it clear that the monetary and housing and other aid required had been promised by the Jewish and other Communities.
  The agencies promised to find homes for all the children. They also promised to fund the operation and to ensure that none of the refugees would become a financial burden on the public. Every child would have a guarantee of £50 sterling to finance his or her eventual re-emigration, as it was expected the children would stay in the country only temporarily.
caption: 1939 visa issued to a Jewish woman who was accompanying a Kindertransport from Danzig to the UK.
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