Sunday Salon: Into The Arms of Strangers (2000)

After reading Anne C. Voorhoeve's My Family for the War, I knew I had to find out more about kindertransport. I was quite happy to learn there was a documentary all about it, a documentary with interviews from many of the children who were transported safely--if not exactly happily--to England. (This film even won an Academy Award in 2001 for Best Documentary!!!)

A little bit more about kindertransport...

Great Britain agreed to permit Jewish children between the ages of 5 and 17 to come to the U.K. -- without their parents. Between December of 1938 and August of 1939, some 10,000 German children gained refuge in the U.K. Most were adopted by British families, and many of the older boys served in the British Army, fighting against the Nazis, but the majority were never to see their birth parents again.

Think about that. Really think about that. The choice of it all. To send your kids away to safety knowing that likely you'll not see them again because your own chances at survival are so very slim...or to keep your kids with you to the end and face death all together as a family. Not that there would be any guarantees that you'd be able to stay all together...as it turns out many families were separated in the camps. Husbands from wives. Parents from children. But still. It wasn't an easy choice for parents to make...or for children and teens to accept. The documentary talks about this a great deal.

Watch Into the Arms of Strangers

• If you are interested in learning more about Kindertransport
• If you are interested in learning more about the Nazi's treatment of Jews in the late 1930s and throughout the war, leading, of course, to the Holocaust
• If you are interested in World War II
• If you are looking for personal stories as a way to effectively share what this time period was really like (the Holocaust is about so much more than numbers)
• If you enjoy great documentaries

© 2012 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews