Out of the 107 chaperones I’ve researched so far, some 71 survived. That means that over 66% of the adults, often Jewish adults, who accompanied the Kindertransport children to safety in the UK were saved as a result of this rescue scheme or further emigration or by surviving the concentration camps and death camps. History and popular culture though have often overlooked and even forgotten their stories. However, this all changed when I found the Kindertransport lists at Yad Vashem in 2024 because along with the lists of Jewish children escaping were the lists of the adults who aided them. Since then, I’ve had the honor to speak with the families of the chaperones. Many of those who survived passed away between the 1960s and 1990s, so they did not see the files I uncovered, and in many cases their actions were not publicly recognized.

The chaperones I’ve researched came from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Free City of Danzig, and what is now Ukraine. I’m sure that there were chaperones with Polish origins too. We also know that there were some British chaperones. Many of the Kindertransport chaperone lists actually state the addresses where they were living at the time. Going forward, we could potentially map where they lived, their journeys on the Kindertransports, and their later fates. Some chaperones had familiar ties to one another as they were husband and wife or sisters and brothers. Therefore, this was to a degree a family affair in that several members of one family were involved in the Kindertransports. Some of them even journeyed together on the transports. In fact, it was even a family rescue as one chaperone was able to obtain a place for her son to journey on the Kindertransport. She was not only helping other children find refuge as she also became her son’s rescuer.

Up until now I’ve researched 40 chaperones from Berlin, 6 from Danzig, 6 from Prague, 6 from Cologne, 12 from Frankfurt, 1 from Stuttgart, 1 from Karlsruhe, 8 from Hamburg, and over 50 from Vienna. All these chaperones travelled to the UK. Some of them also aided children to reach America during the war. I also have lists of chaperones who helped children to travel to other countries, but I’ve focused on those who came to the UK at the moment as they make up the largest group. Overall, both men and women were chaperoning the children, but it seems that we have the name of slightly more women than........

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