Kindertransport -- Echoes of the Past

"The echoes of the past haunt many of my fellow Kinder and I whose fate similarly rested with members of the British Parliament."

"I feel it is incumbent on us to once again demonstrate our compassion and human kindness to provide sanctuary to those in need."

Sir Erich Reich, 1935 -- 2022

Jewish refugee children, part of a transport from Germany, soon after arriving in Harwich, U .K. on December 2, 1938   Holocaust Encyclopedia

 During the fateful years leading up to, within and after the Holocaust, Jewish agencies were desperately attempting to persuade the world that a dread occurrence of unimaginable dimensions was threatening the lives of Europe's Jews. Before the official initiation of the 'Final Solution', Nazi Germany was preparing its German population and eventually the countries it occupied for acceptance of the approaching extermination of children, old people, men and women who were Jewish by portraying the 'race' as sub-human with the status of pestilential insects, a pathogen on the world body ripe for removal.

Antisemitism was so pervasive demonstrating itself in what we now call the 'free world' of Western democracies, that there was little interest in those countries to burden themselves with the presence of unwanted people. Nazi Germany's antisemitic campaign of stripping the Jews of every vestige of their humanity was not needed in the countries that formed the Allied forces against the Axis nations during World War II; it was fully ensconced and resistance to rescuing Jews in general was widespread. Just as ordinary Germans claimed post-war that they knew nothing of the fate of Europe's Jews, so too did the world at large have no idea ...

Before the onset of the Second World War, fascist Germany opened its borders to Jews wishing to leave to escape the viral persecution, humiliation, belittlement, denial of dignity when Jewish professionals in law, medicine, science, the arts, teaching, news media, were pronounced unfit to hold jobs and Jewish children were forbidden from attending schools while Germans were told not to frequent Jewish businesses. Those that could managed to obtain visas to emigrate wherever they could find acceptance. 

 

Jews themselves found it impossible to believe that they, as good citizens priding themselves on love of country, became the 'enemy' to be hunted, incarcerated, worked to death or simply murdered. By the time they fully understood their plight, it was too late, the borders had closed in on them and concentration and slave labour and death camps were being established all over occupied Europe. Ships full of Jewish refugees desperate to find haven abroad, from Palestine to Cuba were turned back whence they came.

Erich Arieh Reich, born in Austria on April 30, 1935, was the youngest of three boys born to Schapse Reich and his wife Mina. Erich, at age three along with his family were part of a mass deportation of 5,000 Jewish families of Polish origin living in Austria, who were transported to Poland by train. When they arrived at the Polish border they were refused entry, the entire trainload of 5,000 left adrift with nowhere to turn for months.

 

Jewish refugee children, part of a transport from Vienna, Austria, arrive in Harwich, Great Britain on November 12, 1938   Holocaust Encyclopedia

 

After Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938, under pressure of public opinion, and the lobbying of Jewish charitable groups, the British government agreed to temporary visas for an unspecified number of Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Private individuals in the UK and Jewish groups had to guarantee a financial commitment in sponsoring the children, and to usher them out of the UK at a future date to be settled elsewhere. No adults, including the children's parents were permitted to accompany them. Among them were infants left in the care of the older children.

 

Among them was the three-year-old Erich Reich, whose two older brothers couldn't be accommodated at the same time he was given passage, but eventually arrived months later. Little Erich never did leave Britain; he was cared for and educated at the expense of the Jewish community; the British public did not help through government financial support of the children who in fact became orphans since their parents died in the Holocaust along with other family members. Erich found a career in the travel industry, eventually establishing his own company Classic Tours.

 

Reich next to Frank Meisler's Kindertransport sculpture (the smallest figure modelled on the young Erich), during a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the first Kindertransport in Hope Square, ‘dedicated to the Children of the Kindertransport who found hope and safety in Britain through the gateway of Liverpool Street Station’ (in the words of the plaque placed there by the Association of Jewish Refugees) Credit: A Images / Alamy

He was knighted in recognition of the millions he had raised for charity. As chairman of the Kindertransport group -- part of the Association for Jewish Refugees -- he organized the 70th anniversary celebration of the British Parliament's decision to permit Jewish children entry to Britain. In recent years he was a prominent figure campaigning to persuade politicians to give aid to other refugees abroad who were facing persecution and desperately hoping to find haven.  

The three brothers of the Reich family, Erich, Jacques and Ossie had no option but to leave their parents to find their way to the Baltic port of Gdynia. Erich was speedily given passage at age three, a waif whom fate had destined to never see his parents again and travel with other children to a distant destination where their future awaited. Months later Erich's brothers arrived, until the full complement of ten thousand children were brought to Britain. 

 

Ten thousand saved, an estimated one-and-a-half million Jewish children perished in the Holocaust.

Several days after Erich's brothers arrived at the Port of London on August 29, 1939, Britain declared war on Germany. Erich lived to age 87. He died on November 2, 2022.

The Kindertransport statue by Frank Meisler at Liverpool Street Station, featuring Sir Erich Reich (Credit: Frank Meisler)