Hansi Neumann flight

Last updated
Hansi Neumann flight
Nicholas Winton (1909-2015) in 1938 by the Associated Press.jpg
Nicholas Winton and Hansi on the apron, Václav Havel Airport, Prague (January 1939)
DateJanuary 1939
VenueVáclav Havel Airport, Prague, Czechoslovakia
LocationPrague
Also known asCzech kindertransport
Organised by
Filmed byUniversal News
OutcomeLanded at Croydon, England (12 January 1939)

The Hansi Neumann flight was the first flight to evacuate refugee children from Prague, Czechoslovakia, to Croydon, England, in January 1939, in the lead up to the Second World War. Part of the Czech kindertransport, it was completed in a Dutch Douglas aircraft of KLM, and organised by the Barbican Mission to Jewish People and the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC). Around 18 Jewish children were on the flight.

Contents

News of the flight was covered by journalists and photographers at the time. A two and a half minute video footage was made at departure, by Julius Jonak of Universal News. Images of the BCRC's Nicholas Winton and the child Hansi at the airport, inspired a memorial later placed at the main railway station, Prague.

Background

In the lead up to the Second World War, the Barbican Mission to Jewish People and the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC), organised flights to evacuate mostly Jewish children from Prague to England, part of the Czech kindertransport. [1] The first of these flights was one of two Dutch Douglas aircraft of KLM, made available in January 1939. [1] [lower-alpha 1]

The Barbican Mission was an organisation whose intention was to bring Jewish children from Prague to Britain and bring them up as Christians. [1] It declared that its mission was "to proclaim the Gospel of our lord Jesus Christ to the Jews". [1] [3] Key members were Reverends Isaac Emmanuel Davidson, the Barbican Mission's director, his wife Lucy, and William Edward Wallner, the representative in Prague. [1] The BCRC had been established in late October 1938 in response to the increase in requests for refuge abroad. [4] Its purpose was to make arrangements and allocate funds for Czech refugees who may travel to Britain. [4] One of its associates was Nicholas Winton, a 29 year old British stock-broker of German-Jewish origin. [5] In December 1938, Marie Schmolka, Hannah Steiner and Martin Blake, asked him to hold off his skiing holiday in the Alps and visit Prague instead. [5] The message he received began "600 children in Prague and elsewhere in Czechoslovakia urgently require emigration to England." [5] In Prague, he became acquainted with the BCRC's Doreen Warriner and other officers involved in rescuing refugees. [5] Winton remained there for around three weeks, helping with others, to organise the evacuation of mostly Jewish children refugees to England. [5] At the time, KLM had been well established, was popular and successful at Croydon, with Spry Leverton as the KLM's longstanding representative there, and with their main office at The Hague. [6]

Flight

Jewish children leave Prague for Britain by flight (January 1939)

On 9 January 1939, Davidson had given a press release from Hatton House, Lubbock Road, the residence of F. E. Fehr, regarding growing anti-semitism and need to evacuate at risk children in Prague. [7]

Departure from Prague

One of several flights organised by the Barbican Mission before 15 March 1939, the first flight of all Jewish children left Prague in January 1939. [1] [3] KLM made available two Dutch Douglas aircraft that day. [1] At the scene of departure, were the children, their parents, Winton, photographers and journalists. [1]

Winton's scrapbook, Saving the Children, Czechoslovakia 1939, notes that "the first party of children today left Prague. This was fixed up by the Barbican Mission to the Jews in London and transport was arranged by us. Being the first lot of kids to leave Czechoslovakia it aroused much attention and cinema men and journalists were very much in evidence". [1] The cameraman noted "today on the aerodrome of Ruzyn nearly 30 children of refugees took leave of their parents. Two Dutch Douglas airplanes brought them to Rotterdam and from there to London. This is the charitable work of the Barbican Mission of London, under the direction of Rev. Wallner. He intends to give 60 children altogether a new home in London where they will remain till their 18th year". [1]

Arrival at Croydon

Children from Prague arrive at Croydon 12 January 1939 Children from Prague arrive at Croydon 12 January 1939.webp
Children from Prague arrive at Croydon 12 January 1939

The flight landed at Croydon airport, South London, in the afternoon of 12 January 1939. [1] [9] The children received a formal reception upon arrival at the airport. [1] There, they would have been required to complete entry formalities and undergo medical inspections. [1] [lower-alpha 2] They were met by W. A. Leon, of the movement for the care of children from Germany. [9] Also meeting the children were the Davidsons, who took them by bus to Brockley. [1] [11] They were first housed at Christ Church Parish Hall, some later being transferred to Seven Trees, a large house acquired by the Barbican Mission, on Lubbock Road, Chiselhurst. [12] Most children were found homes in the Chislehurst area. [1]

Children

The number of children on the flight was reported as 18. [9] Their parents included lawyers, doctors and journalists. [13] Hansi Neumann, [1] [3] also referred to as Hansi Beck, was born on 28 August 1935. [11] [14] [15] He died in April 1940 from complications following an ear infection. [15] [16] An account in the Prism : An Interdisciplinary Journal for Holocaust Educators says that his father found his way to England to look for the boy, while the rest of his family will killed. [17] Other sources say both his parents died later in a concentration camp. [3] [11] Ilse Ryder was 10 years old at the time. [11] Two months later she was reunited with her mother, who arrived on a domestic permit. [11] Other children included Gert Verging, Eva Somers, Eva Heller Lewis, Renata Oren, and Ewald Heller. [18]

Swedish Airlines also contributed to subsequent airlifts. [3] On 8 March 1939, another group of 20 children left Prague by flight, and a further group left on 14 March. [1] By the onset of the war, two houses on Lubbock Road had been acquired, one for 52 boys and the other for 26 girls. No further children were moved. [19]

Media coverage and legacy

Winton's Prague memorial by Flor Kent, based on 1939 photograph with Hansi Wintons Prague memorial by Flor Kent - 1.jpg
Winton's Prague memorial by Flor Kent, based on 1939 photograph with Hansi

A two and a half minute video footage was made at departure. [1] The camera was operated by Julius Jonak, and the film was produced by Universal News. [18]

News of the flight was covered by journalists and photographers at the time and has since received widespread media attention, with Winton featured in photographs with Hansi. [3]

The artist Flor Kent, based a memorial at the main railway station, Prague, on an image of Winton and Hansi taken just prior to the departure. [17] A memorial plaque to the Davidsons was erected at Lubbock Road, Chislehurst. [1]

Notes

  1. ↑ Generally, only a very small percentage of the total refugee children in Europe were evacuated by flight. Most went by train and ship. [2]
  2. ↑ Medical inspections would have been by immigration. [10]

Related Research Articles

<i>Kindertransport</i> Organised rescue of Jewish children during the Holocaust

The Kindertransport was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place in 1938–1939 during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. The programme was supported, publicised, and encouraged by the British government, which waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government placed no numerical limit on the programme; it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, by which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alf Dubs, Baron Dubs</span> British politician, life peer and Labour MP 1979–1987

Alfred Dubs, Baron Dubs is a British Labour politician and former Member of Parliament.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Winton</span> British banker and humanitarian (1909–2015)

Sir Nicholas George Winton was a British stockbroker and humanitarian who helped to rescue Jewish children who were at risk of being murdered by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Born to German-Jewish parents who had emigrated to Britain at the beginning of the 20th century, Winton assisted in the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II. On a brief visit to Czechoslovakia, he helped compile a list of children needing rescue and, returning to Britain, he worked to fulfil the legal requirements of bringing the children to Britain and finding homes and sponsors for them. This operation was later known as the Czech Kindertransport.

<i>Austerlitz</i> (novel) 2001 novel by W. G. Sebald

Austerlitz is a 2001 novel by the German writer W. G. Sebald. It was Sebald's final novel. The book received the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2019, it was ranked 5th on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.

Josef Schlesinger, was a Canadian foreign correspondent, television journalist, and author.

<i>Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport</i> 2000 documentary film by Mark Jonathan Harris

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport is a 2000 documentary film about the British rescue operation known as the Kindertransport, which saved the lives of over 10,000 Jewish and other children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Danzig by transporting them via train, boat, and plane to Great Britain. These children, or Kinder in German, were taken into foster homes and hostels in Britain, expecting eventually to be reunited with their parents. The majority of them never saw their families again. Written and directed by Mark Jonathan Harris, produced by Deborah Oppenheimer, narrated by Judi Dench, and made with the cooperation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, it utilized rare and extensive footage, photographs, and artifacts, and is told in the words of the child survivors, rescuers, parents, and foster parents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winton Train</span> 2009 train journey commemorating and recreating the 1939 kindertransport from Prague to London

The Winton Train was a private passenger train that travelled from the Czech Republic to Great Britain in September 2009 in tribute to the wartime efforts of Sir Nicholas Winton, described as the 'British Schindler' for his part in saving refugee children from Czechoslovakia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Association of Jewish Refugees</span> British social welfare agency

TheAssociation of Jewish Refugees (AJR) is the specialist nationwide social and welfare services charity representing and supporting Jewish victims of Nazi oppression, and their dependants and descendants, living in Great Britain.

Benjamin Abeles was an Austrian-Czech physicist whose research in the 1960s in the US on germanium–silicon alloys led to the technology used to power space probes such as the Voyager spacecraft. He grew up in Austria and Czechoslovakia and arrived in the UK in 1939 on one of the Kindertransport missions. He completed his education after the war in Czechoslovakia and Israel, obtaining a doctorate in physics. He then lived and worked as a research physicist in the US and retired in 1995. His honours include the 1979 Stuart Ballantine Medal and his induction into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame (1991).

The Power of Good: Nicholas Winton is a 2002 documentary about Nicholas Winton, the man who organized the Kindertransport rescue mission of 669 children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War. Director Matej Mináč was inspired by meeting Winton while developing the film treatment for All My Loved Ones.

Gerda Kamilla Mayer was an English poet. Born to a Jewish family in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, she escaped to England from Prague in 1939, aged eleven, on a Kindertransport flight organised by Trevor Chadwick. Having composed her first poem, in German, at the age of four, she continued her education in Dorset and Surrey and began writing poetry in English. She has published several volumes of verse and her poems have appeared in many anthologies. She has been described by Carol Ann Duffy as a fine poet "who should be better known."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Mission to Jewish People</span> British Protestant Christian missionary organization

International Mission to Jewish People (IMJP) formerly Christian Witness to Israel (CWI) is a Protestant Christian organization dedicated to the evangelisation of Jewish people. It was founded in 1976 as a merger between the International Society for Evangelisation of the Jews and the Barbican Mission to the Jews.

SS <i>Prague</i> (1929)

TSS Prague was a passenger and freight vessel built for the London and North Eastern Railway in 1929. The first group of Kindertransport refugees to arrive in the UK did so aboard the Prague, in December 1938.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trevor Chadwick</span> British humanitarian (1907–1979)

Trevor Chadwick was a British humanitarian who was involved in the Kindertransport to rescue Jewish and other refugee children in Czechoslovakia in 1938–1939 before World War II. After the Munich Agreement Nazi Germany annexed Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in 1938 and occupied the whole Czech part of Czechoslovakia in 1939. The children were mostly resettled with families in Great Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doreen Warriner</span> English humanitarian and development economist

Doreen Agnes Rosemary Julia Warriner was an English development economist and humanitarian. In October 1938, she journeyed to Czechoslovakia to assist anti-Nazi refugees fleeing the Sudetenland, recently occupied by Germany. She became the head of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia in Prague which helped 15,000 German, Czech, and Jewish refugees escape Czechoslovakia while the country was being occupied and annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 and 1939. Told that she would be arrested by the Germans Warriner departed Czechoslovakia on 23 April 1939. "From 1947 to 1966 she was on the staff of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, where she was made a reader in 1960 and a professor in 1964". Britain awarded her an OBE in 1941. She was a posthumous recipient of the British Hero of the Holocaust award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beatrice Wellington</span> Canadian rescuer of children (1907–1971)

Beatrice Wellington was a Canadian woman who worked to evacuate children from Prague during the early stages of the German occupation in World War II overseeing the operation of the Kindertransport from Czechoslovakia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie Schmolka</span> Czech-Jewish humanitarian (1893–1940)

Marie Schmolka was a Czechoslovak Jewish activist and social worker who helped political refugees and Jewish adults and children escape the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the lead-up to World War II. She was a member of WIZO and WILPF. She had previously helped refugees from Germany who fled to Czechoslovakia after the Nazi rise to power. Schmolka headed the newly founded Czechoslovak Refugee Committee, and also chaired local HICEM. In July 1938, she represented Czechoslovakia at the Évian conference.

<i>One Life</i> (2023 film) British biographical film by James Hawes

One Life is a 2023 British biographical drama film directed by James Hawes. It is based on the true story of British humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton as he looks back on his past efforts to help groups of Jewish children in German-occupied Czechoslovakia to hide and flee in 1938–39, just before the beginning of World War II. The film stars Anthony Hopkins and Johnny Flynn as Sir Nicholas, with Lena Olin, Romola Garai, Alex Sharp, Jonathan Pryce, and Helena Bonham Carter in supporting roles.

Frank Emil Fehr CBE, (1874-1948), was a British underwriter and between 1937 and 1939 was chairman of the Baltic Exchange. On 9 January 1939, his home, Hatton House, Lubbock Road, Chislehurst, was used by the Barbican Mission to Jewish People to announce the desperation of refugees in Czechoslovakia and the urgency of evacuating them, a few days before the arrival of the first airlift of children from Prague.

The British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia was a voluntary organisation established in late October 1938, in lead towards the Second World War in response to the increase in demands for refuge abroad. Its purpose was to make arrangements and allocate funds for Czech refugees who may travel to Britain, and was primarily for the rescue of political refugees.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Grossman, Nurit (2019). "The emergence of the Kindertransport in Prague: the Barbican Mission to the Jews, a unique endeavour". Jewish Historical Studies. 51: 208–220. doi:10.14324/111.444.jhs.2020v51.014. ISSN   0962-9696. JSTOR   48733609. Creative Commons by small.svg  This article incorporates textfrom this source, which is available under the CC BY 4.0 license.
  2. ↑ Kushner, Tony (2012). "5. Constructing (another) ideal refugee journey: the Kinder". The battle of Britishness: Migrant journeys, 1685 to the present. Manchester University Press. p. 134. ISBN   978-0-7190-6641-2.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Chadwick, William (2010). "2. Nicholas Winton". The Rescue of the Prague Refugees 1938-39. Troubador Publishing Ltd. pp. 37–46. ISBN   978-1-84876-504-7.
  4. 1 2 London, Louise (2000). "6. Refugees from Czechoslovakia". Whitehall and the Jews, 1933-1948: British Immigration Policy, Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   0-521-53449-6.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Brade, Laura E.; Holmes, Rose (2017). "Troublesome Sainthood: Nicholas Winton and the Contested History of Child Rescue in Prague, 1938–1940". History and Memory. 29 (1): 3–40. doi:10.2979/histmemo.29.1.0003. ISSN   0935-560X. JSTOR   10.2979/histmemo.29.1.0003. S2CID   159631013.
  6. ↑ Cluett, Douglas; Nash, Joanna; Learmonth; Learmonth, Bob (1980). "4. Airlines, aircraft and the aviation industry: the national airlines". Croydon Airport: The Great Days, 1928-1939 (PDF). London: London Borough of Sutton Libraries and Arts Services. pp. 79–80. ISBN   0-9503224-8-2.
  7. ↑ "Chislehurst and refugees: first batch of children arrive". Bromley & West Kent Mercury. 13 January 1939. p. 3.
  8. ↑ "Hearts and the blind: refugee children". Edinburgh Evening News. 13 January 1939. p. 10.
  9. 1 2 3 "Eighteen child refugees coming to England by air". Belfast Telegraph. 12 January 1939. p. 11.
  10. ↑ Draper, John Robert (7 January 1939). "Medical Supervision at Croydon Aerodrome". British Medical Journal. 1 (4070): S1–S3. doi:10.1136/bmj.1.4070.S1. JSTOR   20302025. S2CID   219995166.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 "BBC - Radio 4 - Home Truths - Ilse's Story". www.bbc.co.uk. Archived from the original on 27 January 2024. Retrieved 27 January 2024.
  12. ↑ "Council give consent to use of house as home". Bromley & West Kent Mercury. 20 January 1939. p. 3.
  13. ↑ "More refugee children leave". Daily News. London. 13 January 1939. p. 13.
  14. ↑ 1939 England and Wales Register: Chislehurst. The National Archives, Kew, London. 1939.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  15. 1 2 Rieden, Juliet (2019). "12. Not in our backyard". The Writing On The Wall. Macmillan Publishers Australia. pp. 229–232. ISBN   978-1-76055-948-9.
  16. ↑ England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007: Deaths registered in April, May, June 1940. London, England: General Register Office. 1940. p. 47.
  17. 1 2 Rosenberg, Pnina (2013). "When Private Became Public: The Für das Kind Memorial Series" (PDF). Prism. 5: 72–73. ISSN   1949-2707.
  18. 1 2 "Jewish children leave Prague". collections.ushmm.org. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 1 February 2024. Retrieved 31 January 2024.
  19. ↑ "Refugee children to remain at Chiselhurst: no further additions anticipated in the near future". Bromley & West Kent Mercury. 1 September 1939. p. 7.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.