About

Susan (Age 12)

The child known simply as Susan represents the plight of all Jewish children in the first days of Nazi Germany in the early 1930’s. The children were always in fear of being targeted by the Hitler Youth and by friends and neighbors. None felt safe.

At the time, 75% of Jewish children in Germany attended public schools. But a law enacted in 1933 limited Jewish children to 5% of the total student population. Jewish parents responded by creating their own schools, including boarding schools.

In 1935, the Nuremberg laws were passed denying Jews their German citizenship. By 1938, Susan’s fears increased greatly as Jews were required to wear a Star of David sewn onto their outer garments to identify them. They were no longer allowed in public places. After Kristallnacht in November 1938, German Jews were trapped with nowhere to go and became hunted like animals.

We do not know if Susan survived the Holocaust. However, in 1938, anonymous Susan could have been one of the relatively few children fortunate enough to be rescued from Nazi persecution and brought to the United Kingdom by the Kindertransport program.

Kindertransport (“children’s transport”) was a program created by the United Kingdom to rescue Jewish children, without their parents, from Germany and Nazi-occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. The program was developed in the aftermath of the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools and farms. Often they were the only members of their families to survive the Holocaust

The British waived all immigration requirements and set no limit as to the number of children allowed in. The last transport left on September 1, 1939. During it’s one-year operation, approximately 10,000 children were rescued and brought to the United Kingdom.

The British Kindertransport program was unique - no other country had anything similar. In the United States, the Wagner-Rogers Bill introduced in Congress in 1939 provided for the rescue of 20,000 children. It faced stony opposition and never got out of committee and therefore never reached the full Congress for a vote.