Some additional relevant historical background: in 1938, and especially before Kristallnacht, it was not at all obvious how bad the Nazi persecution of Jews would subsequently become. The Wannsee Conference, where the Nazi leadership decided to implement the “final solution”, was still four years in the future. The pogroms of 19th-century Russia were still within living memory, and Western democracies still had colonial empires, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and similar abominations. Without accurate statistics, it would have been hard to tell whether the newspaper stories coming out of Germany were any worse.
It would be interesting to hear what gave the organisers of the Kindertransport the foresight to know that this problem was urgent.
Some additional relevant historical background: in 1938, and especially before Kristallnacht, it was not at all obvious how bad the Nazi persecution of Jews would subsequently become. The Wannsee Conference, where the Nazi leadership decided to implement the “final solution”, was still four years in the future. The pogroms of 19th-century Russia were still within living memory, and Western democracies still had colonial empires, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and similar abominations. Without accurate statistics, it would have been hard to tell whether the newspaper stories coming out of Germany were any worse.
It would be interesting to hear what gave the organisers of the Kindertransport the foresight to know that this problem was urgent.