USA KINDERTRANSPORT ASSOCIATIONS
THE KINDERTRANSPORT ASSOCIATION (KTA)
Why We Exist
We are a not-for-profit organization that unites these child Holocaust refugees and their descendants.
The KTA shares their stories, honors those who made the Kindertransport possible
and supports charitable work that aids children in need.
ONE THOUSAND CHILDREN (OTC)
Why We Exist
The OTC organization is composed of the OTC ‘children,’ - now senior citizens -who came as refugees from Europe directly to the United States to flee Hitler's threat of annihilation. In contrast to most refugee families, we OTC'ers were forced to leave parents behind and tragically many of those parents were never reunited, but were murdered by Nazis. This group of individuals, on occasion, has been characterized as not necessarily Holocaust survivors, since these events occurred prior to the establishment of extermination camps. However, extermination probabilities were certainly present in their situation had they not been rescued.
Letter From OTC President Henry Frankel - October 27, 2013
Dear OTC Member:
I regret to inform you that this will be my final correspondence with you as president of One Thousand Children (OTC). Due to the limited number of our members and our advancing ages, it has become impossible to maintain a formal organization. Accordingly, our executive board has elected to transfer our records and website to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. This transfer has been on-going for some time, but it will be officially commemorated at the YIVO headquarters at 15 West 16th Street in New York City on Sunday, October 27, 2013. All members and their guests are invited to attend this event at no charge.
I believe that in the relatively short span of its existence, OTC has accomplished many of its goals. Of course, we, the members, have come to realize that we, individually, were not the only children to escape to the United States from Nazi-occupied Europe without our parents. There were perhaps 1200 or more like us and we have gotten to know some of these children, now in their 70’s 80’s and 90’s. In addition, Iris Posner co-edited the book Don’t Wave Goodbye which describes our flight from Nazi persecution to American freedom. As an organization, we have also performed the following:
- Placed a portion of our archives in the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia where some of our artifacts are on display
- Participated in a Harvard study of unattended children fleeing to the United States
- Have given talks to Jewish groups on the OTC experience
- Supported federal legislation for legal support to unattended immigrant children
- Have held programs and meetings in the metropolitan New York area
We feel that it is very important to maintain and update our archives at YIVO and invite you and your children and grandchildren to help us in this effort. We are particularly interested in making a guide to the OTC documents housed in other locations such as Atlanta and Baltimore. Lastly, we would like to have documents, and photos concerning those (such as host families and social workers) who were involved in supporting and nurturing us when we came to this country.
Future contact with me or our website can be made via henryfrankel@optimum.net or 732 572-0036.. I
I would like to wish you and your loved ones good health and happiness for many years to come!
Sincerely,
Henry Frankel
The Kindertransport Quilts
The Kindertransport Association has created a series of exhibition panels that trace the epic journey of the Kindertransport from 1938 into the 21st century for the Kindertransport Journey Museum Quality Traveling Exhibit. Take a Virtual Tour
These panels are designed for exhibition in Holocaust Museums and Study Centers, Universities, and Jewish Community Centers. The full set of exhibition panels consists of 17 full color panels (16 are 30” x 40”; 1 is 20” x 30”), laminated and framed, sealed in non-glare plexiglass.
The Kindertransport Quilts are a form of folk art that allows multiple artists, each with their own artistic expression, to produce a work with a unifying theme. Each square expresses its creator’s view of the Kindertransport experience: pictures of the past, fears and nightmares, memorials to lost family. They express traumatic childhood experiences, as recalled with the perspective of maturity. The panels of the quilts show a great variety of expressions.
The quilts include children’s drawings of trains, one captioned, “Thank You for Saving Grandma’s Life.” Some panels picture the all-important travel documents. Most poignant, perhaps, is a child’s drawing of her mother behind barbed wire waving good-bye, and a photo taken on the station platform, labeled “The Last Time I Saw My Parents.” Were I to have the skill to design a panel, I would show myself, a lonely child, reaching out to my Austrian birth parents with one hand, and my English foster-parents with the other. I was one of the very lucky ones; not only was I reunited with my parents after the war, but I gained loving English foster-parents, and an English brother. However, remnants of the separation trauma linger on.
We are all grateful to Kirsten Grosz for having produced these quilts, touching and artistic reminders of the Holocaust.
Kurt Fuchel
Past-President Kindertransport Association of North America
Four quilts have been produced by Kindertransport Association members. The Kindertransport Memory Quilts have been loaned on a permanent basis to the Holocaust Memorial Center, Zekelman Family Campus, Michigan, by Kirsten Grosz and her family, in memory of Hanus Grosz, the Kinder and their brave parents
In 1988, Anita Grosz, the daughter of Kindertransport survivor Hanus Grosz, conceived of the idea of preserving the memories of the Kindertransport experience through the art of quilting. The "Kinder", now adults, created the squares that grew into the quilts in this exhibit. Sharing their experiences in this form opened an avenue for releasing what often were long-repressed memories too difficult to verbalize. The quilts also serve as a vital link in the recorded history of the Holocaust.
The exhibit is made possible through the financial support of the community and the Kindertransport Association. The audio presentation represents the individual Kindertransport memories that accompanied each quilt square. Some of the voices you hear are those of the actual "Kinder" who created these quilts.
The Kindertransport Memory Quilts have been loaned on a permanent basis to the Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus, by Kirsten Grosz and her family, in memory of Hanus Grosz, the Kinder and their brave parents
