A plaque is to be unveiled at the site of the Kitchener camp in Kent next week - at the same time as an exhibition will open at the Jewish Museum
August 25, 2019 16:16
A little-known operation that brought thousands of Jewish men from Germany and Austria to England in the final months before the Second World War will be commemorated next week by the unveiling of a plaque at the site of the camp they were first brought to.
Descendants of survivors of the Kitchener Camp rescue will unveil the plaque in a special ceremony next Monday just outside the town of Sandwich, in Kent.
Meanwhile, on Sunday an exhibition telling the story of the Kitchener Camp will open at the Jewish Museum in Camden.
In December 1938, as the first Kindertransport refugee children began to arrive in England, an organisation called the Council for German Jewry - now better known as World Jewish Relief - held a meeting of its executive council in London.
The meeting’s minutes noted: “In a very short space of time, the German government would take such steps as would lead to the practical extinction of Jews in Germany".
It was decided that all possible steps had to be taken to facilitate the transport of Jews from anywhere in the Reich (then Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia) out of Nazi territory.
Although the British government was unwilling to accept the establishment of a refugee camp in Britain, by January they had accepted the concept of a transit camp.
People with the chance of “migration [elsewhere] within a reasonable period” – 12 months to two years – were to be allowed to come to England, on the strict understanding that they could not work in the country and had no rights of British citizenship. And so the Kitchener Camp was born, with planned accommodation for 5,000 people.
Jews began to arrive in the camp in February. By the time war broke out seven months later, around 4,000 had reached the camp.
The exhibition at the Jewish Museum will tell the history of the camp, including documents, memorabilia and images, much of which has been collected by the Kitchener Camp project.
After the exhibition ends, the documents and will be donated to the Wiener Library in London, one of the world’s leading archives on the Holocaust and the Nazi era.
Claire Weissenberg, the exhibition’s curator, told the Observer, the story of the Kitchener camp is “not even well known in [UK] Jewish communities”.
Both the exhibition and the plaque are being sponsored by the AJR (Association of Jewish Refugees). Frank Harding, an AJR trustee, described the "great pleasure" the organisation had in being able to recognise “one of the lesser known acts of rescue of Britain’s Second World War history, the remarkable story of the Kitchener Camp through which 4,000 lives were saved. It is recognition too of all those who were involved in its conception and establishment and of those refugees who came here, many of whom went on to serve in the Pioneer Corps.
He said he believed the plaque would "help form a tangible link between key locations where refugees from the Holocaust were welcomed, those who made an everlasting contribution and the local community."
