Kindertransport | Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust

In response to the brutality of Kristallnacht, several organizations worked together to bring Jewish children under Nazi occupation to safety in the United Kingdom (UK). Roughly 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria, parts of Czechoslovakia, and parts of modern-day Poland were sent to the UK on Kindertransports (children’s transports). Additional, smaller groups of children were brought to safety on Kindertransports to Sweden and Switzerland. The first train carrying refugee children left Berlin on December 1, 1939, and trains were halted when borders were closed due to the outbreak of World War II. The vast majority of the rescued children never saw their families again.

As part of a temporary exhibition curated by the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, the artifacts that form this group were loaned from 10 children who escaped Europe on a Kindertransport. A number of these artifacts were on short term loan to the museum, and have since been returned, therefore they are only available digitally.