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