42 | NOVEMBER 7 • 2019
JONATHAN MARK NEW YORK JEWISH WEEK | AND STACY GITTLEMAN JN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
A
s Churchill would later say, it was
not the beginning of the end, but
it was the end of the beginning.
The first five years of Hitler were horrific
enough, yet, in 1938, the screw turned all
the tighter. Germany’
s 1938 annexation of
Austria and the Sudetenland almost dou-
bled the Jews under the Nazi flag, to more
than 400,000.
Before long, Jews in Vienna were on
their knees, scrubbing sidewalks with
toothbrushes. There was international
hand wringing over Hitler’
s mistreat-
ment of Jews, but when Germany, in July,
offered German Jews to any country that
would have them, 32 nations, meeting at
the French spa of Evian, politely declined.
In November came Kristallnacht, with
winter closing in.
Well, if the German Jews were being
abandoned, was there mercy, somewhere,
for the children?
Committees and organizations, mostly
Jewish but not only Jewish, in various
international capitals offered plans that
culminated in what became known
as the Kindertransport. England (pri-
marily), Holland, Belgium, France and
Switzerland agreed to lift visa require-
ments for children younger than 17, if the
Kindertransport exhibit highlights parents’
greatest sacrifi
ce.
Ticket to Safety
Arts&Life
exhibit
PHOTOS BY ANTHONY LANZILOTE