Imagine a row of German officials or Gestapo guards standing in front of a steam train to the left, little Jewish children with suitcases and teddies in hand in the middle, and then a railing holding back parents with outstretched hands to the right. The steam covers the children at the back of the image. The children we see just stand there looking at the viewer. One parent holds a tissue to their eyes. The caption asks if you would send your child away into the unknown.

You might think that you were looking at a photograph of the Kindertransport, but you would be wrong. It seems ironic that there are more and more forged photographs of the Kindertransport appearing when we have only just begun to name the children in the authentic historical photographs held in the archives.

Holocaust museums, institutes, and archives as well as scholars have commented upon the surge in AI (artificial intelligence) content, but this criticism has been focused upon false, inaccurate, and invented images of the concentration camps and scenes of liberation. Several Facebook groups though have posted distorted, fabricated, and alleged photographs of the Kindertransport. The fictionalization of the Kindertransport is not a new trend: it has been represented through more traditional genres such as novels, film, and art. Yet the photographs posted in these online forums/ groups are not artistic impressions, rather they are misleading images of a rescue scheme which we are still trying to fully portray in all its complexity.

AI photographs of the Holocaust create an illusion as they mask reality. They might be made up of fragments of historical facts, but they minimize and trivialize. For example, while there is a clear fascination with recreating imagery of the Kindertransport, the photographs which have been created dilute the historical facts. For example, there is a fake image of Sir Nicholas Winton as an older man looking at the children as they arrive or depart – the caption to the image does not state if he is at the beginning or the end of the journey. Winton was a young man when he was involved in the rescue of children from Czechoslovakia. In the photograph he is not pictured as an elderly man reflecting back on the Kindertransport in later years. Thus, this image ultimately gives the wrong impression. On the surface this may not seem significant as it does not change the fact that Winton was a rescuer. But it is misleading, because if the photograph presents departure, it was Trevor Chadwick who........

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