How do we remember the Kindertransport, and why? How does British memory of this event compare with memory in other English-speaking host nations who took in German Jewish refugees?

In this online event Amy Williams and Professor Bill Niven will explore how the Kindertransport has been remembered in Britain, and compare British memory of this event with memory in the other  English-speaking host nations which took in the refugee children (Kinder), namely America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

They will also compare memory of the Kindertransport in Britain with that in Germany and Austria. ‘Kindertransport’ is understood here as referring not just to the actual rescue of children with mainly Jewish origins from Nazism that took place between 1938 and 1940, but also the effects it had, such as transplantation to strange environments. Any comparison of the various home and host countries must consider the degree to which memory of the Kindertransport is not uniform, and the extent to which it is shaped by factors such as the role of these countries in the Second World War, and – above all – nationally conditioned memory discourses.

Increasingly, according to memory scholars, Holocaust memory operates in a transnational, even global network. The webinar will assess this expectation against the empirical evidence. Is it more the case that the home and host nations remember the Kindertransport in essentially national terms, even where they are aware of its transnational history? Our talk will address this question.