The story of the ‘Kindertransporte’ (Kindertransports)

   Parents, who realised that it was impossible for their whole family to emigrate, and registered their child for a Kindertransport, had to make very difficult decisions. They did not know whether they would ever see their children again but tried hard to make saying goodbye as easy as possible for their children. Most families wanted to at least bring their children to the station, although saying goodbye on the platform was prohibited.

   The majority of the Kindertransport trains came from Berlin and did not stop at every station where children wanted to get on. Therefore, some children from Wuppertal and Düsseldorf were brought to the main station in Cologne. Children from Bochum remember having to depart from Bielefeld. From here the train did not pass through the Ruhr to get to the Netherlands, but instead via Rheine and Bentheim. Lore and Werner Eichengrün from Gelsenkirchen travelled to London from Hamburg in February 1939. Later, their host parents enabled their parents to join them. In 1933, their father, Dr Paul Eichengrün, deputy chairman of FC Schalke 04, (the Football Club) had been thrown off the board of managers because Jews were no longer tolerated in the club.*

*Report by Laura Gabriel, in: Bertha Leverton, Shmuel Lowensohn (ed.), ‘I Came Alone: The Stories of the Kindertransport’, Lewes, Sussex, 1990; Stefan Goch, Jüdisches Leben. Verfolgung – Mord – Überleben. Ehemalige jüdische Bürgerinnen und Bürger Gelsenkirchens erinnern sich (‚Jewish life. Persecution - Murder - Survival. Recollections of former Jewish citizens of Gelsenkirchen’), Essen 2004
[return]    [forward]