This is the memorial on the concourse, the central area of the station. I was surprised it was so small. We had walked past it without noticing it, on an inconspicuous corner. When I started checking in Wikipedia I discovered that there is a second memorial outside the station. Other statues depicting the children are in Berlin and elsewhere.
Kinder is german for child. Transport is transport. The German language has more compound words than English.
As you can see from the plaque, the children arrived at Liverpool station. They had boarded trains in Europe, at Prague (Czech), and Vienna, Austria, to escape the Nazis. The children came from Germany as well. It was 1938. The lucky ones were just in time.
The word sponsors refers to the fact that the British government required £50 per child, a lot of money in those days, to cover costs. British people, Jews, such as the Rothschilds, and other benefactors, such as the Quakers, had to find enough money, which I thought was to cover the costs of schooling and other expenses for each child, but according to the Wikipedia article it was expected that the children would later need fare money to travel to rejoin their parents, which, alas, never happened.
Sir Nicholas Winton organised the children's escape and lived to a grand old age. Read about him in Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Winton
You can read more in the book: Into The Arms Of Strangers.
Photos copyright Angela Lansbury, 2016.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
No comments:
Post a Comment