German president salutes Kinder memorial

The president of the German federal parliament, the Bundestag, visited the Kindertransport monument at Liverpool Street Station to coincide with the 85th anniversary of the initiative that saved Jewish children from the Nazis, writes Adam Decker.

Bärbel Bas placed a stone beside the famous memorial statue, in the presence of Kinder and their families.

Also attending were representatives from the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) and World Jewish Relief, as well as Lord Eric Pickles, the UK government’s special envoy for post-Holocaust issues.

The Kindertransport rescue programme ran between November 1938 and September 1939 and saw some 10,000 mostly Jewish children carried from their homes and families in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Britain.

AJR, which delivers social, welfare and volunteer services to Jewish victims of Nazi oppression living in the UK, arranged for several Kinder including Kurt Marx BEM, Susie Barnett BEM, Rolf Penzias, Ingeborg Hamilton and Dame Stephanie Shirley, to attend the London tribute.

Bas said: “We must never lose sight of the past, that is my firm conviction. When we talk about the future, we must be conscious of history.

“That is why it was so important to me to come here during my visit to London in order to remember the persecution of the Jews by Nazi Germany, and thank the UK for saving more than 10,000 Jewish children from the prospect of being murdered.

“We remain indebted and immensely grateful to organisations such as the Association of Jewish Refugees and World Jewish

Relief for the important contribution they continue to make today.

“I am deeply moved to stand at the memorial with some of the children who were rescued to talk with them, and remember what happened to them.”

Kinder Kurt Marx who arrived by Kindertransport from Cologne in 1939, said: “It seems incredible that I’m standing here, alongside the president of the German Bundestag. In a climate of rising Holocaust distortion, it is so important the first generation stand alongside today’s German government to remember.”

AJR CEO Michael Newman said: “We are immensely grateful to president Bas for including this visit in her itinerary. It is an important symbol of reconciliation and helps strengthen links today between the AJR, the former refugees and Germany.”