KINDERTRANSPORT Touring

Between 1938 and the outbreak of World War 2, 10,000 Jewish children, aged between 5 and 17 arrived in Britain from Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia, refugees from Nazi persecution, seeking asylum. Most of them never saw their parents again. No adults were allowed to travel with them. Of the children, who failed to escape, 1.5 million were killed in the holocaust. Diane Samuels traces what happens to a 9-year-old girl, who rejects her Jewish faith and culture and becomes a British citizen. The characters are fictional but most of what happens on stage happened in real life. The play’s themes are the pain parent and child share when separated and the feelings of guilt at surviving when so many others have died. The best thing to do, then, must surely be to put the past behind one and to start afresh? But best for whom? The child? The parent? Or the foster-parent who adopts the child? Past and present are inextricably linked. The story, deeply moving, might work even better as the basis for a television film.