‘Children of the Kindertransport’ statue, Liverpool Street Station. Photo: Pigalle / flickr CC.
Kindness and Kindertransport
Bootham School hosted a presentation about the role Quakers played in Kindertransport
The role the Quakers played in helping Jewish people in the second world war escape from Nazi Germany to Britain was the subject of a presentation at Bootham School in York on 31 January.
Peter Kurer, who was brought to England in 1938 from Vienna by Quakers, gave a talk entitled ‘Kindertransport and the Quakers’ and discussed his life and experience as an immigrant in Britain.
According to Peter Kurer, who has spent years researching the subject, Friends rescued an estimated 27,000 Jews in the second world war and enabled around 7,000 Jews to enter the UK.
His research also suggests that the 20,000-strong Quaker movement paid £350,000 (the equivalent of £17.5 million at today’s rates) in Home Office costs as a guarantee to the British government to accept the refugees.
Quakers also brought in a further 6,000 Jews as domestic workers.
Peter Kurer described how his father came to Britain in 1936 seeking contacts to help his family and met Horatio and Mary Goodwin, a Quaker couple in Whalley Range, south Manchester.
Peter Kurer’s research led the Religious Society of Friends being added to the Yad Vashem (the World Holocaust Centre in Jerusalem) archive.
Quaker Kurt Strauss also shared his experiences of leaving Germany in 1939 to start a new life in a Quaker hostel.
