Five bronze children holding suitcases, school bags and a teddy bear stand on a station platform waiting for their train. The city of Gdansk has seen the unveiling of the third and last monument commemorating the Kindertransports – the exodus of Jewish children from continental Europe to Britain in the nine months preceding WW2.

Elzbieta Krajewska reports

The little group at the railway station in Gdansk are the same refugee children who have just left the train at London’s Liverpool Street Station. Gdansk is host to the third such monument, which closes the cycle begun three years ago by sculptor Frank Meisler – himself born in Gdansk and a Kindertransport refugee. The unveiling took place on the 70th anniversary of the transports this May, with the participation of seven Gdansk natives who thanks to this initiative survived the Holocaust; and in the presence of President of Gdańsk, Pawel Adamowicz.

The transports – also called the Refugee Childrens Movement, were initiated in the UK by a Jewish aid committee and orchestrated throughout Europe by local Jewish and charity organizations. The first transport left not long after Kristallnacht in Germany – the last on September 1, 1939. Within not quite a year more than 10 thousand Jewish children had been taken out of the major German cities or those occupied by Germany. Four transports were sent from Gdansk, a total of 120 or so children. Some of those children are still living: in USA, Canada, Israel, Australia as well as Britain.

Frank Meisler left Gdansk with the fourth and last Kindertransport. He says that his sculpture is also a way of paying tribute to the vanished Jewish population of Gdansk, that had been an integral part of the city’s rich history, economy and culture.

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