The Last Goodbye: Separating to Save Their Children

They dressed their children—some just babies—in their best clothing, lovingly packed toys and family photos, and prepared to say goodbye—maybe forever. Eighty-five years ago, thousands of Jewish mothers and fathers saw the escalating violence and discrimination against Jews in Nazi Germany and made an almost inconceivable decision. Though they wanted to hold their children closer, they sent them away instead. Strangers in Great Britain took many of these children into their homes. About 10,000 were saved from the Nazi threat through a rescue mission known as the Kindertransport. Many of their parents were murdered in the Holocaust. Watch this program to learn more about how the Kindertransport saved these children’s lives. Guest Deborah Oppenheimer, Academy Award-winning producer of "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport" Host Dr. Rebecca Erbelding, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Learn all about the Kindertransport rescue effort that brought thousands of refugee children, most Jewish, to Great Britain from Nazi Germany: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kindertransport-1938-40 Read an essay by Holocaust survivor Esther Rosenfeld Starobin about how the family that took her in at age two through the Kindertransport program stayed in her life: https://www.ushmm.org/remember/holocaust-reflections-testimonies/echoes-of-memory/one-good-day To see other episodes in the Museum's Stay Connected Live series, go to https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWQC3P4psZP6Mh45xyYa2QepIMgkKD4BA For more personal stories, behind-the-scenes insights, and expert historians, subscribe to the Museum's YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@holocaustmuseum