Dutch woman greets
"kinder" at the border, a
moment from the documen-
tary "Into the Arms of
Strangers: Stories of the
Kinderstransport."

novels are all written from a 12-year-
old's perspective.
As research, Harris and Oppenheimer
read dozens of unpublished memoirs;
watched Melissa Hacker's 1995 docu-

mentary, My Knees Were _lumping•
Remembering the Kindertransports;
scoured the archives of Steven
Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah
Visual History Foundation; secured
the cooperation of the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum and the rarest of
vintage footage and artifacts.
Armed with a distribution deal from
Warner Brothers, where Oppenheimer's
sitcoms are a tremendous commercial
success, they set off to conduct 23
interviews with kinder, their foster par-
ents and rescuers. Sixteen appear in the
completed 117-minure documentary,
which features British actress Dame
Judi Dench as narrator. She was select-
ed by Oppenheimer for her "gentle,
caring voice, the voice of a mother."

I

n the film, one woman quietly
recalls how no one attended her
8th birthday parry in
Quakenbrueck, Germany, "the
first comprehending for a child that
you are ostracized."
A kind described being forced to
work as a maid by her English
guardians; a man recounted how he
could not relate to his birth parents
after the war; a Berlin Kindertransport
organizer
lamented losing b his own wife
b
and 3-year-old in Auschwitz.
The rescuer, who was gravely ill, died
just five weeks after the interview. "It
was as if once he had finished, he could
let go," says Oppenheimer, for whom
the film was an emotional journey.
While making the movie, she dis-
covered fragments of her mother's
story, which began at Hackney Hostel
in London and continued at Cockle) ,
Cley Hall, a 5,000-acre estate near
Norfolk. A kind who had shared a bed
with Oppenheimer's mother described
life in the gamekeeper's residence, a
fairy-tale-like thatched cottage with a
tiny window and a mattress stuffed
with twigs and leaves the girls had to
knead before they slept.
The woman mentioned the notched
candle they kept at bedside to ration
their reading; the pegs on the wall
where they hung their ribbons and
dresses; the harsh Jewish matron who
punished the girls by withholding let-
ters from their parents.
In summer 1999, Oppenheimer
attended the reunion at Cockle) , Cley,
where kinder walked her down corri-
dors, up back staircases, and into the
dormitory-style bedrooms where they

ersonal Stories

LocLil residents recall their
experiences in the Kindertransport.

DIANA LIEBERNIAN
Sttrillri7ter

A r the age of 16, Jeffrey Garton became the head of

"Ma his family.

Along with his 12-year-oId sister and 7-yr-old
brother, Garton left his parents behind in Germany
shortly after Kristallnaellt in 1938. The three siblings
traveled to England as part of a desperate effort to save
Jewish children from the Nazi Holocaust by finding
them a safe haven in Great Britain_
The documentary Into the A#711S off Str angers which
opens today at the Maple Art Theatre in Bloomfield
Township, tells the story of that effort, known as the
Kindertransport.
"The movie was 100 percent accurate,'' said Garton,
now a Southfield resident. He attended a special viewing
of the film Oct. 3 at the theater.
His little family was further torn apart when war came
to Great 13ritairt he said. Garton ser\-ed in the British
army beginning in 1943, and his younger siblings were
evacuated to Chelmsford outing the blitz of London.
Yet he was able ro maintain his position as head of a
Jewish household.
"When he became 12, I decided my brother had to
become a bar mitzvah," Garton recalled. The two younger
children had been living with a non-Jewish family. Being
the youngest, Garton 's brother knew next to nothing
about Judaism, and resisted having the ceremony.
"1 said, Tin sorry, You're Jewish. You have to be a bar
mitzvah boy," Garton remembered.
Amazingly enough, his parents smuggled themselves
into Belgium, and the family was reunited after the war,
"My13-rother spoke only English," Garton said. "It took
him a while to get accustomed to my parents again.
Two local brothers who owe their lives to the
Kindertransport are Jerry Orbach of Southfield and Cantor
Harold Orbach of Bloomfield Township, born Junther and
Helmuth in OberkasseJ, near DusseldorIT, Gertnany.
Although neither brother has yet seen the movie, each
has vivid memories of his experiences as a kind.

had silently cried themselves to sleep
at night.
The producer also made her way to
Chemnitz, an industrial town near
Dresden, where she visited her family's
hosiery factory and the "Jewish House"
where her grandparents had been con-
fined after their home was confiscated.
Across the street, she wandered the
padlocked, decaying old train terminal,
where Sylva had set off on the
Kindel- transport and her parents had
boarded cattle cars to the camps.
In another part of town, Oppenheimer
stood in her mother's childhood apart-
ment, by then a doctor's office with a

Jerry, the older by about 3 1/2 years. was the first sent
to England. Along with about eight or nine other boys,
he had been sponsored by a few British banking families_
His perseverance resulted in Harold's getting into
England as Vt'-el l.
"I begged the people who brought me over to brim ,
him over, too," Jerry Orbach said
The rwo boys ended up in the same home, a dorm with
similar youngsters and young adults ;A, -ho cared for them_

Cantor Orbach remembers being relieved that he could
play- outside safely and attend school in England_
The Kindertransport w'as so important because so
many children were fated in another direction." Cantor
Orbach said "Sometimes I hal-e guilt feelings because of
all the others who didn't escape."
At the time however, both brothers say their primary
feelings were of excitement at leayina home, combined
with the trauma of being separated from their parents.
Th e' Orbach brothers got to Eno-land mst before the
Germans marched into Poland and Great Britain declared
war, closing the Kindertransport forever.
\\.'e had practices and gas masks and sirens,' Jerry
Orbach remembered. "They were really scared in England."
,-\n-iazingly enough, the bo) ,s' parents had escaped from
Germany sep-arately, and the four left for the United
States just as this country entered the war.
The Kindertranspon saved about 10,000 Jewish chil-
dren; 1.5 irtillion perished in Europe.
The calamity of the Shoah was the millions AA° were
never born," said Jerry Orbach.
out :_leuerations

worn the foyer; while she found nary a
trace of her family's living quarters, she
comforted herself by looking out the
window at the view her Emily surely had
enjoyed.
She imagined her mother playing in
the garden and noted the same rhodo-
dendrons and geraniums that Sylva
had planted in the backyard in Valley
Stream. "I felt amazement that I was
retracing the path of my mother's life,
but true sadness that I was doing it
without her," Oppenheimer says.
The film, she explains, has been a

way to keep her mother present and to
achieve closure since her death.

"Ironically, I had to lose my mother to
learn her story," she says. D

See Related Story 'Behind The
Scenes' on page 89

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories
of the Kindertransport, rated PG,
opens today at the Maple Art
Theatre in Bloomfield
Township. There also is an
accompanying book of the same
title and a CD soundtrack from
Chapter III Records.

10M

81

