by Debora Singer
I have grown up with the images of children being put on trains by their tearful parents. My mother, Hanna Cohn, was one of them. In July 1939, at the age of ten, she travelled with her twin brother by train from Germany to Liverpool Street Station in London. This was through a formal arrangement called the Kindertransport.
One Life is about a separate arrangement to save Jewish children from Czechoslovakia as the Nazi invasion threatened. The film corrects a popular misconception by making it clear that this evacuation was not the work of just one man, Nicholas Winton (played by Johnny Flynn as a young man and by Anthony Hopkins in later life), but included the involvement of colleagues and family. Having travelled to Prague to meet a friend, Winton discovers the dire situation of refugees displaced from elsewhere in Czechoslovakia. He ropes in a couple of refugee workers to help him, setting up a Children’s Section of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia.
Winton also involves his mother. An émigré herself, superbly played by Helena Bonham Carter, is one of those assertive women who ‘won’t take no for an answer’. Her fight to get the UK government to provide visas for the children and for funding from the public demonstrates how little the government actually did for the children. Meanwhile, the albums we see of small black and white photographs of the children being paired with families offering to foster them crudely demonstrate that the effort to save lives was treated as a beauty contest.
The book reaches its emotional climax with the recreation of the well-known episode (in fact two episodes) of That’s Life, where Nicholas Winton –unbeknownst to him – is surrounded by many of the children, now grown up, whose lives he saved. However often I see this, it makes me well up.
That Nicholas Winton was a very modest man is clear from the book. Intriguingly it was fifty years before he spoke of his involvement in the rescue, even to his wife. What is not so clear is his motivation for getting involved in such a complex rescue operation. He tells his mother she has always encouraged him to help others, but the book does not explore whether there was anything else that triggered his altruism.
While set in 1938-9 and fifty years later, the film still resonates today. The Winton scheme provided safe and legal routes for refugee children. Of course, I would not advocate routes like this that only save children, thus separating them from their parents. However, the UK could expand safe routes to bring children to join their refugee parents already in the UK. And we could set up safe routes to enable adults to travel along with their children.
Safe and legal pathways for those seeking asylum and refuge prevent the risks associated with hazardous journeys, including human trafficking and exploitation.
While some safe routes exist, such as resettlement programmes and community sponsor initiatives, these could be expanded. But our next government could also put into place new initiatives such as ‘refugee visas’ and widen the scope of the family reunion scheme to include children joining extended family members in safety.
Safe routes also seek to ensure that refugees can access asylum in a dignified and secure manner, in line with international humanitarian principles and human rights standards. Rather than depending on individuals and organisations, including Nicholas Winton, I would prefer to see the UK government step up and take responsibility.
On this year’s 85th anniversary of the Kindertransport, I see it as essential that the UK government shows compassion and makes the lives of those fleeing persecution and seeking protection in the UK easier.
