Reflections On The Kindertransport: Rescuing Children From Pre-War Europe

In 1989 Eddy Behrendt, a Kindertransport survivor, founded and became the first President of the KTA. He saw the Kindertransport as a part of Holocaust history that had truly never been fully explored. With the help of the Simon Wiesenthal Center the KTA began searching for the Kindertransport children who had come to the United States after the war. According to Bebrendt “It took every waking hour, many letters, money, and dedication but within a year these children, now on their way to being seniors, met in the Catskills for a Reunion of emotional proportions. Bertha Leverton, also a Kindertransport survivor, was the official in charge of the reunion, which attracted 500 Kindertransport survivors.

Eddy Berendt wrote, “At these meetings I met many people with similar background stories and even some that came to England on the same train as I. It was time to remember, the past reunite once more, and to help others”

Two stories were shared at the event, each by a daughter of Kindertransport survivors. The first, Margaret Kittel Canale, spoke about her mother, Vera (Posener) Kittel, who  left her home in Breslau, Germany to go on a Kindertransport on July 25, 1939 at the age of 15. She has been living in Toronto since 1950,. is currently 97 years old and in good health.

Vera’s older sister Steffi was already living in England and working as a domestic, when Vera left home to join her. By then, brutal acts of violence and antisemitism were rampant throughout Germany and Jews faced increasingly harsh restrictions regarding their legal and human rights

Upon arrival, Vera went to Bournemouth on the Southern coast of England, as Steffi’s employer was there at a seaside resort and stayed in a hostel with other refugee children. However, as German Jews were seen as enemy aliens, as were all Germans, both Steffi and Vera were relocated away from the seashore.  Vera was sent to Cambridge. She was required to hand over any earnings from an apple picking job to the Jewish Committee in order to pay for room and board and was required to report to the police if she moved or changed jobs due to her enemy alien status.

Steffi returned to London.  She was over 18 and therefore of age to be incarcerated for being an enemy alien. She was put in prison for a month and later was held at an internment camp on the Isle of Man for a year and a half. She was finally released when England decided German Jews were not a threat to the country.

Along with other Jewish refugee girls of her age, Vera had to train to be a domestic and worked as one in Cambridge. When she was finally able to move to London, she had to work in a war factory  and volunteered assisting air raid wardens during the blitz.

After liberation in 1945, a friend of Vera and Steffi’s parents got word to the girls that their parents had been executed in a gas chamber in Auschwitz in March of 1943. One can only imagine the anguish that they experienced at learning of this terrible tragedy. Vera married in London in 1945 and gave birth to her daughter Margaret in 1947. Vera, her husband and daughter came to Canada in 1950.