Exhibitions at ASI

Kindertransport — Rescuing Children on the Brink of War

Approximately 10,000 children were saved thanks to the organized rescue efforts of Kindertransport (German for “Children’s Transport"). This exhibition explores the difficult and often heartbreaking journeys of these children through original artifacts, personal stories and rare historical footage. On display in Osher Gallery, the exhibition tells the story of the Kindertransport, both chronologically and thematically, starting with an historical background about the events leading up to the transport of Jewish children from Nazi Germany in 1938 and 1939. "After Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938), conditions worsened daily and nearly all German and Austrian Jews realized there was no future in their native countries," wrote Steve Hunegs, Executive Director of JCRC, one of the local copresenters of the exhibition. Hunegs helps share the impetus and scale of what was happening in those years leading up to World War II. "Jews seeking refuge throughout the world — see the Evian Conference and the fate of the Wagner-Rogers 'Child Refugee' Bill — were often thwarted in their efforts. The admission of about 10,000 Kindertransport children into various countries, including Britain and Sweden, was a rare humanitarian governmental act in these desperate times. Ultimately, the Final Solution would consume more than a 1.5 million Jewish children." Parents were suddenly faced with a gut wrenching and difficult decision: Should they send their child to a foreign land in the hope of finding a better life, not knowing if they would ever see them again? Or should they keep the family together in their native country, with the threat of increasing repression and a dire future?

“We knew that we had to get out of Germany as fast as possible. What we did not know was that this was nearly impossible. Few countries wanted us. So we tried to save at least the children. It was heartbreaking to put that little one, crying, into the arms of strangers.” — Rosemarie L. Joseph

Unique to ASI, the exhibition continues to Level 2 of the Mansion with accounts from three local families of Kindertransport survivors. In the supplemental exhibition, The Story is Here, you will meet Siegfried Lindenbaum, Kurt Moses and Benno Black — each once a child saved from Nazi Germany. Their legacies live on today; their stories are here in Minnesota. Minneapolis local Beth Gendler shares her father Siegfried’s experience, “My dad was 9 years old when he and his 7-year-old brother, Manfred, traveled together from Poland to England. They arrived on August 29, 1939, only three days before the Nazi invasion of Poland. Sadly, the next boat

never arrived for their sister Ruth; she was later killed in Auschwitz.” It is important to tell these stories. Philip Greenberg, of blessed memory, and his family established the Greenberg Family Fund for Holocaust Awareness at Beth El Synagogue to ensure the future of Holocaust education in Minnesota. Greenberg believed, "With the survivors becoming fewer and fewer, we need to hear the stories and become witnesses. We have the responsibility of passing them on to future generations so history does not repeat itself." This exhibition and related programming are being collaboratively presented in Minnesota by the Greenberg Family Fund for Holocaust Awareness at Beth El Synagogue, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), and ASI. The exhibition was created and organized by Yeshiva University Museum and Leo Baeck Institute in New York and Berlin.

The exhibitions will run through October 31, 2021.

Thousands of blank Manilla tags, just like the ones that the children on the Kindertransport wore around their necks, represent the scale, anonymity, and eventual bittersweet success of the transport effort.

"I thought it was an adventure, and I was not afraid, it didn't occur to me that I might never see my parents again," — Kindertransport survivor Elsbeth Gaertner Lewin

The impact of the organized Kindertransport rescue has spanned time and place. Its ripple has reached every corner of the world, including right here in Minnesota. Explore these local stories and connections in the supplemental exhibition The Story is Here.

Siegfried Lindenbaum