• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Jewish Welcome Service Vienna

Sponsored by the City of Vienna

  • English
  • Deutsch
  • Home
  • Contact
  • Imprint
  • About us
    • Members of the Board
    • Patrons & Sponsors
    • Retrospective 1980-1993
    • Retrospective 1994-2012
    • Retrospective 2013-2016
    • Retrospective 2017-2019
    • Retrospective 2020-2022
  • News
    • Subscribe to our e-mail newsletter
    • Newsletter archive
  • Services
    • Downloads
    • Links
  • Press
  • Invitation Programme
  • Leon Zelman Prize
    • Leon Zelman OBM
  • Public Projects

Commemorative trip in remembrance of the “Kindertransports” in 1938/39

5. July 2019

In remembrance of the “Kindertransports” that took place to save Jewish children 80 years ago, the Jewish Welcome Service, together with the Kindertransport Association New York and other organizations, arranged a commemorative trip from Vienna to London at the start of July. Taking part in the trip were four of the “children” from 1938/39 as well as 13 descendants of refugees.

Gedenkreise zur Erinnerung an die "Kindertransporte" 1938/39, Besucher, Hauptbahnhof
Send-off at the Hauptbahnhof: 4th from left “child” from Vienna, Eva Yachnes, 3rd from right “children” Mark Burin, Ilse Melamid, 2nd row 2nd from right, Ralph Mollerick, in the middle: Melissa Hacker, president of the KTA © ÖBB

From December 1938 to August 1939, around 100 train journeys from Austria, Germany and former Czechoslovakia were organized to bring predominantly Jewish children to safety away from the Nazi regime. Twenty-three of these trains started their journey in Vienna. In total, approximately 10,000 children were able to escape; 2,500 of them came from Austria. They fled along a route that was recreated by this year’s commemorative trip:

After a three-day stay in Vienna at the invitation of the JWS, the group was bid farewell at Vienna Hauptbahnhof on July 4 in the presence of high-ranking ÖBB representatives. From here, they traveled on to Berlin, then to Amsterdam, then to the port at the Hook of Holland, taking the ferry across the North Sea to Harwich, and finally to London Liverpool Street Station.

Just one small suitcase

Shortly after the November Pogrom on the night of November 9-10, 1938, the British government loosened the country’s immigration rules and called upon British families to take in foster children. On the other side, the Israelite Community organized the Kindertransports from Vienna. Parents were told of the farewell date just briefly before departure, were only allowed to give the children, aged between two and 17 years, one suitcase, one piece of hand luggage and ten Reichsmark, and were not even able to accompany their children to the train platform. Most of the children back then never saw their parents again – and were often the only members of their family to survive the Holocaust. At the Urania community college, the exhibition “Für das Kind” pays homage to their fate. For one and a half million children who were murdered in the Holocaust, there was no escape.

  • The Kindertransport Association
  • The Association of Jewish Refugees
Gedenkreise zur Erinnerung an die "Kindertransporte" 1938/39, Besucher
The group in front of the sculpture “Für Das Kind” (For The Child) commemorating the rescue of Jewish children, Vienna Westbahnhof © JWS
Gedenkreise zur Erinnerung an die "Kindertransporte" 1938/39
© ÖBB
Gedenkreise zur Erinnerung an die "Kindertransporte" 1938/39, Besucher, Hauptbahnhof
© ÖBB
Gedenkreise zur Erinnerung an die "Kindertransporte" 1938/39, Besucher, Hauptbahnhof
© ÖBB

 

Primary Sidebar

Latest News

  • Film documentary on 40 years of the JWS
  • Kino and Kinder: A family’s journey in the shadow of the Holocaust
  • Holocaust victims’ relatives confront the past in Vienna
  • With Conflicting Emotions_EJewishPhilantrophy

Follow us

Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube

Footer

Quicklinks

  • Order our Newsletter
  • News
  • Invitation Programme
  • Leon Zelman Prize
  • Patrons & Sponsors
  • Members of the Board

Supporters

wienholding - a company of the City of Vienna Wien

All Patrons & Sponsors

Contact

Judenplatz 8 / 8
A-1010 Vienna

Tel. +43 1 535 04 31-1590
E-Mail: office@jewish-welcome.at

Privacy Policy
Accessibility

© 2023 · Jewish Welcome Service Vienna