The Kindertransport:

When the world failed to take in child refugees and Britain came to the rescue

Would you be able to give up your child to a foster family in another country if it gave them a chance to survive the Second World War?

Some Jewish parents were given that choice in 1938-1939 in Nazi Germany. A week after Kristallnacht, on November 15, 1938, a group of well-connected British Jews met with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to discuss a way to help the children of Jewish parents who were unable to leave Germany. The men offered to pay the expenses of transportation, housing, and welfare for Jewish refugee children if the government would allow them to enter the country and be put with a foster family for the duration of the war. 

The first three months of the transport focused mainly on Germany. But in 1938, as Hitler continued to roll across Europe, the program was able to spread to other countries under occupation thereby saving even more children. Many of these families had been trying to escape from Germany and had come under Nazi occupation again.  

Chamberlain hoped that in passing such legislation, the United States would open its doors to refugee children and place them in homes across America.  However, when a similar bill came before Congress in 1939, it was killed in committee. The Kindertransport saved around 10,000 children.