When I was five, my mother left to work in the United States of America (U.S.A). I remember waking up late and finding out that my father had already brought her to the airport. Without thinking, I ran outside hoping that the car was still there. I searched the house. They were gone. My mother left me.
My experience was not as traumatic as it could have been. My mother found a job in the U.S.A, and my father and her thought it was in the family's best interest for her to go. Just imagine a child leaving his or her parents to travel alone to a foreign country or parents sending away their children in order to save them, while knowing the risk of losing them forever.
Seton Hill University's (SHU) theater will be performing Diane Samuel's play Kindertransport in Reeves theater from November 11 to November 19 (for showtimes contact: 724- 830- 1417).
In 1938 the Nazi pogrom known as Kristallnacht, in which outward violence toward the Jews were first seen in public, spurred the Jews to take aggressive actions in safeguarding their children.
With adamant lobbying to the government, the Jews living in England persuaded Parliament to take action. Between 1938 and 1939, nearly 10,000 unaccompanied children ranging from ages 4 to 16 emigrated to Britain. Their passports were altered. Boys and girls were renamed Jacobs and Sarahs.
Wilda Kaylor coordinator of the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education commiserated with the hardships of both children and the parents. "It's difficult for the children to get used to new family and being on their own...it's a huge sacrifice for the parents," she said. "It takes a lot of trust in this situation."
Samuels examined the cost of survival and the trauma experienced by Eva Schlesinger, representing children in Kindertransport. In the author's note of the hard copy version of the play, Samuels said, "The rerunning of what happened many years ago is not there to explain how things are now, but is a part of the inner life of the present."
The tone [of Kindertranport] according to senior Sarah Rosenberg was very serious. "[The play] examines the life of Eva in relations with her foster mother and birth mother," she said. "The play gives hope."
"Eva is a composite of survivor stories," said Kaylor.
Through newsletter, conferences, speakers etc, the Kindertransport Association (KTA) with its sister organizations RoK in the United Kingdom and Israel are recovering the Kindertransport story.
Educating the public about this part of the Holocaust history, Samuels, KTA, and others are keeping the stories alive for the next generation.
Posted by Michael Diezmos at October 14, 2005 8:35 AM