This straightforward book by Andrea Hammel, a renowned scholar of refugees from Nazi Europe, directly counters pervasive and often self-congratulatory British narratives about the Kindertransport program, the removal of approximately 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi-controlled lands between 1938 and 1939. Through an in-depth analysis of a vast range of archival materials including Parliamentary transcripts, letters to and from the Home Office, records of charitable organizations, newspapers, and the personal papers and memoirs of refugees themselves, the author successfully retells the history of the Kindertransport as it “really happened.”

The book's chapters flow through elegantly simple titles: “Myths,” “Persecution,” “Escape,” “Organization,” “Placements,” “War,” “Death,” “Together/Apart,” “Life,” and “Memory.” It is in the first chapter, “Myths,” that Hammel explicitly states her main argument, that the Kindertransport program was in no way initiated, organized, or sponsored by the British government. It is also where she challenges the widely accepted notion that most Kindertransport children were overall happy and successful. Nothing is sugarcoated here. The first child we are introduced to is Eva Mosbacher, whose smiling photograph is placed alongside those of her parents in Germany. Mosbacher's arrival in the UK is carefully detailed, as is the desperate correspondences of her family, who were eventually killed by the Nazis. She went on to become a nurse, but on the anniversary of the Kristallnacht Pogrom in 1963, Eva Mosbacher died by suicide in a London hotel. Throughout the book, we continually learn of the brutal deaths of specific siblings and friends whose Kindertransport applications were rejected. We hear precisely how and where parents were murdered.

Subsequent chapters contextualize Kindertransport history and provide a rich overview of events surrounding its implementation and its long-term effects. What remains clear, is that the only thing the British Government did in 1938 and 1939 was to agree to 10,000 visa waivers to children deemed unthreatening to British society and the economy. The real work to save and support Jewish children was enacted by various charitable organizations (both Jewish and Quaker) within the UK and on the Continent. The early tragic experiences for most of the Kindertransport children began with persecution under the Nazis, abrupt family separation at European train stations or ports, and harrowing journeys to strange foster homes, camps, or boarding schools. Soon after, there was a real threat of a Nazi invasion and the dropping of German bombs across southern England with en masse evacuation out of London. By 1940, older children were interned for months in enemy alien camps, while others were sent into exile on ships like the Australia-bound Dunera and the ill-fated Arandora Star, torpedoed on its way to Canada. Stamped in Kindertransport documents were the terms “transit” and “temporary” indicating that they were not initially welcome to permanently settle in the UK. Ongoing support during and after the war was left to charitable refugee organizations, severely limited by a lack of funding and any institutional or governmental resources. Even those children who were reunited with family members after the war faced severe psychological repercussions. The further postwar trauma upon discovering the scope of the destruction of families and communities at the hands of the Nazis was not eased by the eventual ability to naturalize as UK citizens. While “saving” children by providing them with temporary stay in the UK, but not allowing them to work or raise funds for guarantors, they were further diminished in their ability to try and rescue their families. The guilt recalled by children and young adults who had survived through this program is astounding.

Hammel does provide a nice balance, including brief histories of change-makers like Eleanor Rathbone and Nicholas Winton who directly worked to save Jewish children from Nazi persecution. Likewise, Hammel demonstrates an understanding of the urge of some grown Kindertransport participants and their offspring to express whole-hearted appreciation and gratitude to Great Britain for their rescue. More recent 80th anniversary commemorations and memorialization of the program make this book particularly timely. What is most evident in the details Hammel provides is the stark inhumanity of family separation, a practice which is generally recognized as cruel today and is primarily avoided as an option.

The highlight of the book is in the last chapter where the author makes direct connections to twenty-first-century uses and misuses of Kindertransport history in UK politics. An exploration of these more recent romanticized recollections of the Kindertransport experience might have been even more impactful if placed earlier in the book. The only other minor suggestion would be to move some of the historiographical analysis of the first chapter directly into the footnotes, so as not to disrupt the flow of the author's argument nor distract the non-academic reader. Overall, however, this book offers a concise, comprehensive, and refreshingly frank account of the history of the Kindertransport program that serves as a corrective for more simplistic and saccharine versions of events often used for political purposes today.