Germany to pay Kindertransport survivors

THE German government has agreed to make a one-off payment to survivors of the Kindertransport programme, which took Jewish children persecuted by the Nazis to safety in Britain.

About 10,000 young lives were saved from the horrors of Adolf Hitler’s regime by the relief action, which began in December 1938 and ended in May 1940.

Yesterday’s announcement, hailed as “historic” by negotiators representing Jewish victims, was made 80 years after the first Kindertransport.

A fund will be made available from Jan 1, 2019, with compensation amounting to €2,500 (£2,250) per person. The Claims Conference, an organisation that works with the German government to provide financial recompense to victims of the Holocaust, will process applications.

Martin Chaudhuri, a spokesman for the German finance ministry, said: “This one-time payment pays tribute to the special destiny of these children. They have had to leave their families in peacetime, in many cases, never to see each other again.”

Stuart Eizenstat, who represented the Claims Conference in the negotiations, said that “after having to endure a life forever severed from their parents and families, no one can ever profess to make them whole; they are receiving a small measure of justice.”

After the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) pogroms in Nazi Germany on November 9, 1938, a group of Protestant, Jewish and Quaker leaders appealed to Neville Chamberlain, the then UK prime minister, to allow Jewish children into Britain.

A rescue effort was swiftly mobilised and the first Kindertransport arrived at Harwich on Dec 2, 1938, carrying 196 children from a Berlin Jewish orphanage, which had been torched by the Nazis on Kristallnacht.

Over 18 months, 10,000 children fleeing persecution from the Nazis, were brought to safety in Britain.