In 1938 and 1939, about one thousand Jewish children from the entire German Reich, including Austria and the annexed part of Czechoslovakia, were able to escape from the exclusion and persecution of National Socialist Germany: they were taken to safety in 17 Kindertransports to Belgium. However, this was only temporary safety, as became clear by May 1940 at the latest.
Even though the exclusion and the disenfranchisement of Jews in Germany began as early as 1933 and had continued from then onwards, most countries in Europe and overseas showed little willingness to take in Jewish refugees. In the wake of the November pogrom of 1938, Britain allowed 10,000 Jewish children and young people to enter the country. To a lesser extent, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland and Sweden also admitted children.
On 22 November 1938, the Minister of Justice, Joseph Pholien, enabled the entry into Belgium and temporary residence permits for 250 children and young people, and a further 750 children and young people in mid-January 1939. This authorisation was granted on condition that the organisation of the transport and, above all, the care of the children in Belgium was to be privately financed, which required commitment from many families, individuals and aid organisations. It was mainly the Comité d‘Assistance aux Enfants Juifs Réfugiés (Assistance Committee to Jewish Refugee Children, CAEJR) in Brussels and the Comité Voor Het Joodsche Kind van Duitschland (Committee for the Jewish Child from Germany) in Antwerp that made the organisation run smoothly.
The central organisation in the German Reich was the Abteilung Kinderauswanderung der Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland (the Children’s Emigration Department of the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany) in Berlin and the Abteilung Kinderauswanderung der Fürsorgezentrale der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Wien (Children’s Emigration Department of the Vienna Jewish Community’s Welfare Centre). The successful departure of almost 1,000 children was due to the commitment of social workers such as Käte Rosenheim in Berlin and Rosa Rachel Schwarz in Vienna, and many volunteers whose names have often been forgotten today. In the Rhineland, the Provinzialverband für jüdische Wohlfahrtspflege in der Rheinprovinz (Provincial Association for Jewish Welfare of the Rhine Province), based in Cologne, took on the tasks of central organisation.
The city of Cologne played a special part in what was to follow due to its geographical location and the size of the Jewish community there. Children from all regions of the then German Reich who had obtained transport permits travelled first to Cologne Central Station. There, they were looked after in the rooms of the welfare office of the Synagogue Community of Cologne in 33 Rubensstrasse. Jewish families in Cologne took in children who had another night to wait before their train to Belgium departed. Employees of the Provincial Association finally escorted the children to the train, which ran via Aachen and Herbesthal to Brussels or Antwerp.
Children arriving in Belgium were placed in children’s homes, or privately accommodated with Belgian Jewish and non-Jewish families. A considerable number of the children had relatives in the country who could take them in. The children were thus protected from German persecutors and could live in the safety of Belgium. This changed radically on 10 May 1940 with the German occupation of Belgium. Of the almost 1,000 children who reached Belgium with a Kindertransport, one third probably became victims of the Holocaust. AS, ÄW
