Thoughts on the occasion of the unveiling of the Kindertransport statue in the Hook of Holland

Isaw old men weep. I saw bewildered faces full of the agony of memory. I saw brave smiles at the Dutch children offering white roses. I saw younger people putting their arms around their parents, who were now in need of comfort. Seventy-two years ago they had left behind them part of their childhood. They were torn out of the secure web of family, friends and neighbours. They were prised out of the warmth of their mother’s embrace and the reassuring sounds and sights of the family home. They were cut off from the routine of the familiar day, from everything that had made their lives safe and enjoyable. They were forced to go without their friends to an unknown place. Some saw it as an adventure; others felt they had been cast out, unable to understand why their loving parents could do such a cruel thing to them. Some were too young to comprehend, just feeling the loneliness of the abandoned child. Here they stood, feeling the cold wind as they might have done then, looking over the dark sea they had crossed so long ago for the first time in their lives. This had been for them the beginning of the need to grow up before their time. Their childhood was cut short, part of their memory was lost because there was nobody with them who could later retell the story. Many arrived into families where their mother tongue, and with it the stories and songs of their parents, were unknown. They forgot their mother tongue and, with it, much of what that language had carried. Thus they became strangers to their own past. Some felt, and still feel, guilty for not having been able to save their parents, guilty for having been spared. These children surely had a right to happiness in a secure childhood. Their mothers and fathers wanted no more for them than any other German, Austrian or Czech parent. Neither they nor their relatives had done anything wrong. They had been good and loyal citizens, who had played their full part in society. Their countries and culture had become richer through the efforts of their forefathers. They had been proud to be citizens of a civilised country. And then this country began to turn against them, to single them out as different, then as inferior and then as a threat. Germans had rediscovered something most Jews had thought was part of the Dark Ages. We don’t need to look at the Shoah to see the inhumanity, the injustice and the brutality of a state which excludes and persecutes innocent citizens. Jurgen Schwiening