Kindertransport * 1938-1940 * Was the formal name of a series of rescue efforts which brought thousands of refugee Jewish children to Great Britain from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940. * Following Kristallnacht, which was a violent pogrom staged by the Nazi authorities to destroy Jewish property November 9-10, 1938, the British government eased immigration restrictions for certain categories of Jewish refugees. * Spurred by British public opinion and the persistent efforts of refuge aid committees, like the Committee for the Jews of Germany and the Movement for the care of Children from Germany, British authorities agreed to permit a number of unspecified children under the age of 17 to enter Great Britain. * Organization and private citizens had guaranteed to pay for each child’s care, education and eventual emigration from Britain. * In return for the guarantee, the British government agreed to allow the unaccompanied refugee children to enter the country on temporary travel visas. At the time it was understood that after the “crisis was over” the children would return to their families. * Parent or guardians could not accompany their children. * Infants were tended by other children in the transport. * The first Kindertransport arrived in Harwich, Great Britain on December 2, 1938 bringing around 200 children from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin which was destroyed in the Kristallnacht pogrom. * Many transports left by train from Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and other major cities in central Europe. They traveled to ports in Belgium and the Netherlands, from where they sailed to Harwich. * One of the early transports left from the port of Hamburg, Germany. Some children from Czecholovakia were flown by plane directly to Great Britain. * Jewish organizations inside the greater German Reich-specifically the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany, as well as the Jewish Community Organization in Vienna- planned the transports. * These associations generally favored children whose emigration was urgent because their parents were in concentration camps or were no longer able to support them. Or they were homeless or orphans. * The last transport left from Germany left on September 1,1939, just as World War II began. The last transport from the Netherlands left for Britain on May 14, 1940. * In all the rescue operations brought about 9,000-10,000 children, some 7,500 Jewish from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to Great Britain. * After the children arrived in Harwich, the children with sponsors went to London went to meet with their foster families. * The children without sponsors were housed in a summer camp in Dovercourt Bay and in other facilities until individual families agreed to care for them or until hostel could care for larger groups of children. * About half the children lived with foster families. * The others stayed in hostels, schools or on farms throughout Britain. * In 1940, British authorities interned as enemy aliens about 1,000 childreen from the children’s transport program on the Isle of Man and in other interment camps in Canada and Australia. * Despite their classification as enemy aliens, some of the boys form the children’s transport program later joined the British army and fought in the war against Germany. * After the war, many children form the children’s transport program became citizens of Great Britain or emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, and Australia. * Most of the children would never again see their parents, who were murdered during the Holocaust.