The story of the ‘Kindertransporte’ (Kindertransports)

Internment

   In the summer of 1940, all refugees from Germany in Britain who were older than 16 were threatened with detention as ‘enemy aliens’. Only those who were not of German nationality such as those who were stateless or who had a Polish passport were unaffected. Many of the young people that had been rescued by the Kindertransport were taken to the Isle of Man, some of them even to Canada or Australia.

    Alfred Weinberg from Erkelenz had come to Liverpool with a Yavneh Kindertransport in May 1939. He was taken to Australia on board the troop ship HMT Dunera. From there he emigrated to Palestine in 1943. His 18-year-old brother Alexander, who was helped to come to England by a British teacher at the Yavneh Grammar School a few weeks later, was interned on the Isle of Man in July 1940 as an ‘enemy alien’. A few months later he decided to join the British army.*

    Werner Michels from Wuppertal was also on board the Dunera. He had attended the Yavneh Grammar School in Cologne along with the Weinberg brothers; Werner Michels joined the army in Australia and was one of the few emigrants to return to Germany after 1945.**

*Hubert Ruetten, Lebensspuren-Spurensuche. Jüdisches Leben im ehemaligen Landkreis Erkelenz, Erkelenz 2008. (‘Traces of life – a search for clues. Jewish life in the former district of Erkelenz’), Erkelenz 2008, p. 72, 233-236

**Anna Ruhland, Die Kindertransporte 1938/39: von Wuppertal nach England, (‚The Kindertransports 1938/39: from Wuppertal to England‘) unpublished MA thesis, University of Cologne 2005


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