Combat Trains_5of8_Precious Cargo
Transcript
00:00100 years of global war can only be understood by uncovering the story of these revolutionary
00:11machines.
00:14They carried terrifying weapons that made the beach at a loving hell and brought millions
00:26of men to the heart of the conflict.
00:30It was the first time in history that anyone had ever used a train in conjunction with
00:35moving troops to a battlefield.
00:39They saved many lives at great risk.
00:43Ambulance trains are vulnerable both in the station and on the rails.
00:46The bottom line is this is a train in a war zone.
00:52But they also inspired terrible cruelty.
00:56The Japanese wanted to build this railway regardless of the cost in human lives.
01:03My father looked out that little window and he announced to everyone that we're heading
01:08for Poland.
01:11The scale and extent of the Holocaust would not have been possible without an efficient
01:16and functioning railway.
01:20These metal monsters transformed the art of war.
01:25The locomotive's speed and power could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
01:55Most railway journeys are routine and uneventful, but some are never to be forgotten.
02:05These are four journeys that shaped modern history.
02:08If Lenin had not got back to Russia, the revolution wouldn't have happened.
02:13Without a second's hesitation, my grandfather jumped off the line and started taking charge,
02:18walking up and down, smoking his cigar.
02:21Some trains carried wartime plunder.
02:24The train was a very attractive target.
02:26It was rumoured to be full of Jewish wealth.
02:30Others carried a cargo more valuable than gold.
02:33To me and I think many other people, a train signifies escape.
02:39These are their remarkable stories.
02:47On the 15th of November, 1899, a young journalist got on a train in South Africa at the height
02:55of the Boer War.
02:57It was no ordinary train, and he was no ordinary journalist.
03:02The precious cargo on that train was Winston Churchill.
03:06Only 24, he'd already had an adventurous life as a cavalry officer, but politics was his
03:12true love.
03:14He resigned his commission and then fought an election in Oldham, which he didn't get.
03:19So he was rather disheartened, but found another opportunity when the Boer War started and
03:25he got signed up as a war correspondent by the Morning Post.
03:30And he set off for South Africa and was worried that the war would be over before he got there.
03:38The Boer War was essentially a guerrilla war.
03:40The Afrikaans-dominated states of Transvaal and Orange Free State wanted more control
03:50over their own affairs, perfectly reasonably.
03:53And the British who dominated Natal and the Cape resisted this.
03:59And the railway line, particularly between the coast and Johannesburg, became the center
04:06of much of the fighting.
04:13The British were confident of victory.
04:16The Boers were only farmers after all, but they proved to be formidable opponents.
04:22Just before Churchill arrived, they surrounded the British garrison in the railway town of
04:27Ladysmith.
04:28Ladysmith was absolutely key, and so the bulk of the British troops were trapped inside,
04:35because he always wanted to be at the center of the action.
04:37That's where he was heading.
04:41But he couldn't get beyond Escort, and he pitched his tent in the station yard there.
04:54One morning in his tent, Churchill woke to the sound of Boer guns close at hand.
05:00The garrison at Escort feared an imminent attack.
05:05It was decided a troop of soldiers should head north in an armoured train on a reconnaissance
05:11mission.
05:12Armoured trains are used in the Boer War.
05:15They had been used a little bit in previous conflicts, in the Franco-Prussian War and
05:21even in the American Civil War.
05:23But this time they really come into their own.
05:32The armoured train that Churchill rode in had seven-foot-high boilerplate walls, which
05:37meant that you had to actually shove the man over to get him inside it.
05:41It had slits on the sides.
05:43It was known as Wilson's Death Trap.
05:45It had a truck in front of it with a seven-pounder gun manned by four men of HMS Tata.
05:52They were sailors.
05:53Then came the armoured truck with Winston Churchill in it and three sections of the
05:57Dublin Fusiliers.
05:59Then came the locomotive.
06:02This is what my grandfather wrote about the armoured train about 30 years later.
06:07Nothing looks more formidable and impressive than an armoured train, but nothing is in
06:12fact more vulnerable and helpless.
06:15This situation did not seem to have occurred to our commander.
06:19The commander's name was Captain Elmer Haldane, an old army colleague of Churchill's.
06:25Haldane invited him to join the mission and Churchill didn't hesitate.
06:29I was eager for trouble, he wrote later.
06:33Perhaps forgetting he was now a journalist, Churchill took with him some ammunition and
06:38a Mauser pistol.
06:40It was a railway journey that would change his life.
06:45The armoured train left escort at first light on the 15th of November.
06:51The soldiers on board weren't used to this form of reconnaissance.
06:55There was no train guard as such.
06:58They were drawn from the garrison in the particular towns.
07:01And that ran a risk because sometimes the soldiers had never been up the railway line.
07:04And in this particular instance, that was the case with Captain Haldane.
07:08He had never been up the railway line before.
07:13With driver Charles Wagner at the controls, the train headed north, to the small town
07:19of Cheveley, watched from the surrounding hills by a force of boars.
07:27After a short stop, Wagner then reversed it back down towards escort.
07:33When the train came up to a corner, the boars started shooting.
07:38The train picked up speed, and round the corner they found some boulders on the line.
07:48And so the train was derailed.
07:50They'd chosen a very good place, the boars.
07:53And immediately everyone was thrown all over the place.
07:59Haldane was stunned, and so he wasn't able to take charge.
08:05So without a second's hesitation, my grandfather jumped off the line and started taking charge
08:10and directing operations, walking up and down, smoking his cigar.
08:15Then the engine driver was a bit of a problem.
08:17He was called Charles Wagner, and he'd been hit in the head, and he was bleeding.
08:23Realising that he was a vital cog in the wheel, Churchill went to him and said,
08:27no, you never get hit twice in one day.
08:30So he persuaded Wagner to get back into the locomotive, which he now started to move backwards
08:34and forwards, so they could try and uncouple the buckled coupling.
08:40For over an hour, under fierce Boer fire, Churchill and the soldiers managed to free
08:45the locomotive from the damaged trucks.
08:49Think about this.
08:50A young 25-year-old man coming under fire, helping to clear the line, displaying remarkable
08:56leadership qualities.
08:57Three of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers were killed, quite close to him, and yet he was able to
09:02help clear the line.
09:05Once the train driver, Charles Wagner, realised that the line was clear, he started to move
09:10along the railway line.
09:12Haldane ordered the soldiers that were wounded to be placed onto the locomotive and to cling
09:16to the cow catcher, while the men who were unwounded were to run alongside the locomotive.
09:21The Boers now realising that their quarry was about to escape, intensified their fire,
09:26and Charles Wagner opened up the taps.
09:33After a bit, my grandfather realised that the walking wounded were not walking fast
09:39enough, and some of them were getting left behind, so he decided he was going to jump
09:44down from the train and gather up the stragglers.
09:48I can't leave the poor beggars to their fate, Churchill told Wagner.
09:54What he didn't realise was that most of the stragglers had already been captured.
10:01As he approached the end of the cutting, two Boers appeared.
10:04They were Dolph de la Rey and Francois Chaguin, and they raised their rifles at him.
10:09He reached for his revolver and found his holster empty.
10:14He'd left the revolver in the train.
10:19Probably the luckiest moment of his life, because if he'd had it, he would have shot,
10:23and he'd have undoubtedly been shot by them.
10:26So there was nothing to do but to surrender.
10:31History could have been very different had Winston Churchill had that pistol on him.
10:35He could have been shot as a civilian.
10:39Churchill was lucky.
10:41On the tracks behind him were the bodies of three Dublin fusiliers, killed in the action.
10:47They were buried close by.
10:51Spent shell casings from their guns spell out a tribute on the grave.
10:59He was taken prisoner by the two Boer commandos and taken to join the other stragglers who
11:06had all been rounded up, so there was quite a group of them.
11:09There's an amazing picture of him where they're looking very disconsolate, where they'd all
11:13been herded together, but he's slightly out on a limb, looking not happy.
11:18He'd hardly seen action at all, and there he was, a prisoner of the Boers.
11:25As the armoured train headed back to escort, Churchill and the other men were taken to
11:29the nearby town of Colenso and put in a shed by the station.
11:35As he listened to the Boers defiantly singing hymns, Churchill realised that for him, they
11:41were the better men.
11:43The more he saw of them, the more he admired their resolve and how single-minded they were.
11:51He had a huge admiration for them and for the way they conducted themselves in combat.
11:59That was why, in World War II, he decided to form the commandos, which is the basis
12:06of the Special Forces.
12:12Full of shame that he'd been captured, Churchill started planning his escape.
12:17An opportunity didn't arise until they were taken north to Pretoria.
12:23They were put in this former school, and they weren't heavily guarded because there was
12:29nowhere to go.
12:32I met the daughter of one of the fellow prisoners who said that he and my grandfather used to
12:37walk along reciting poetry to each other.
12:42One night, having studied the routine of the Boer guards, Churchill took a chance to escape.
12:48So pandemonium ensued, and a reward was offered of £25 for his capture, dead or alive.
12:54I think my grandfather was rather insulted at the small size of the reward.
13:03News of Churchill's escape made headlines in Britain and America.
13:07His face even appeared on cigarette cards.
13:10From the moment, really, he jumped off the wall, that was the moment when he was on the
13:17international stage, and there he stayed for the rest of his life.
13:23It was undoubtedly the events that took place here that helped to catapult this young man
13:27into that remarkable career that he's become so famous for.
13:34Eighteen years after Churchill boarded that armoured train in search of glory, another
13:39future world leader boarded a train in the middle of a war.
13:43But he wasn't looking for a newspaper story, he was planning a revolution.
13:54April 1917.
13:57The First World War has been raging for almost three years.
14:03The German people are starving, and their army is fighting a war against Russia, Britain
14:08and France, who are also war-weary.
14:14America has just declared war on Germany.
14:18In February, a Russian revolution had overthrown the unpopular Tsar Nicholas II, and a provisional
14:24government installed.
14:27The provisional government was committed to carrying on the war.
14:32They didn't understand what a disaster that was going to be for Russia, and how that policy
14:37would lead, within a few months, to their own overthrow.
14:42A second revolution was coming, and it was coming by train.
14:51Impoverished and in his tenth year of exile in Switzerland, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, also
14:58known as Lenin, was the leader of a small extremist revolutionary party, the Bolsheviks.
15:05Lenin was a very divisive figure in Russia.
15:08When the revolution broke out in February 1917, most of the other revolutionists thought
15:12that he was already too extreme.
15:15Nevertheless, they thought that he ought to be allowed to come back.
15:20The provisional government agreed that Lenin and his associates, including Karl Raddick
15:25and Grigory Zinoviev, should be allowed to return home.
15:29But there was a problem.
15:32They would need to secure permission to cross Germany, which was still at war with Russia.
15:39Lenin, always a sceptic, didn't believe that permission could be obtained from either France
15:44or Germany.
15:45He was all for the idea of crossing Germany illegally, so he tried to get full Swedish
15:50passports for himself and Zinoviev.
15:53We explained to him that neither he nor Zinoviev could talk Swedish.
15:58Then, in desperation, he asked us to get two passports for men who were mute.
16:05It appeared doubtful to us that we could find two mute men from the Swedish party who resembled
16:10Lenin and Zinoviev.
16:14But unknown to Lenin, in Berlin, a plan was developing.
16:19We're talking about the period 1915-1916, vicious First World War fighting going on
16:26and on over.
16:27The German government, the German high command, thought that if they could send revolutionaries
16:33to Russia or foment dissatisfaction in Russia, this would very much help the German war effort.
16:45The prospect of revolution in Russia was incentive enough for the German leadership.
16:51And so a journey across Europe was planned that would give Lenin safe passage back home.
16:57This precious political cargo would start in Zurich and travel through Germany, and
17:03after a sea crossing to Sweden, head north through Finland, before arriving in Petrograd
17:09in Russia.
17:11Lenin had eight days to perfect his plan for revolution.
17:14There was a risk for the Germans, because the Germans knew that Lenin wanted world revolution,
17:20that they were prepared to take that risk, that the revolution might begin in Russia
17:25and then spread to Germany, and that's of course what Lenin wanted.
17:31After a while, we were informed that the German government had accepted our demands.
17:35It was clear to us that the Germans believed they could take a chance, believing that after
17:39our arrival in Russia, we would agitate for peace.
17:43These speculations didn't bother us very much.
17:46And we knew that if the revolution in Russia assumed a proletarian character, its influence
17:52would spread far beyond the Russian borders.
17:55So everything was prepared for the trip.
18:01The train set off from Zurich on the 9th of April 1917, with two German officers as escorts
18:09in their own carriage.
18:12Lenin was concerned that he and the other Bolsheviks would be seen as collaborators,
18:17so they were travelling on what was known as a sealed train.
18:21That meant that the German officers couldn't enter the Russians' carriages.
18:25A chalked line was even drawn on the floor to reinforce the point.
18:31Where the German officers were was German territory, but the rest of the carriage was
18:34international.
18:37And so they could always say that they never travelled on German territory.
18:42The passengers paid for their own tickets because they were very concerned not to appear
18:48to be German agents.
18:51And if the Germans had provided transport for free, then questions of corruption and
18:57agency would have arisen straight away.
19:01The passengers were very excited about returning to Russia, returning to the revolution.
19:06Their hopes at last had been fulfilled.
19:09When we stopped in Frankfurt, some German soldiers learned there were Russian revolutionaries
19:13on the train.
19:14So they broke their way through the cordon of spies on the platform and forced their
19:18way into our carriages, each with two glasses of beer in their hands.
19:23The beer was very poor.
19:25We could already see it was all over for German prosperity.
19:29The soldiers were honest, working men and only asked us when peace would arrive.
19:37Early indications of Lenin's leadership style began to emerge on the trip.
19:42Lenin didn't smoke.
19:44So he banned smoking in the whole carriage.
19:49So what do smokers do?
19:51They went off to smoke in the lavatory.
19:56Gradually a queue developed of people who didn't just want to smoke, but also wanted
20:00to use the lavatory.
20:02So Lenin, in a foretaste of Soviet economic planning, he invented a system of rationing
20:09where everyone was given bits of paper, which were actually made out of lavatory paper,
20:13which rationed out when people could use the lavatory and how long for.
20:20The system actually worked.
20:22People said after that, well, if Lenin can sort this out, then he can certainly lead
20:27the revolution and form a government.
20:31Meanwhile in Petrograd, people were eagerly anticipating Lenin's arrival, and the Petrograd
20:37Soviet, or Council, had prepared an elaborate welcome.
20:41At ten minutes past eleven on the evening of April the 16th, the train arrived.
20:48Lenin and his associates stared in amazement at the crowds.
20:53What I don't think the leaders of the Petrograd Soviet were anticipating is how many workers
20:59of soldiers of Petrograd would turn out, there were thousands and thousands of them, to greet
21:03him and listen to hear what he was going to say.
21:06Lenin shouted to the crowd on the platform, long live the worldwide socialist revolution.
21:12It was not long in coming.
21:16The revolution of October 1917 overthrew the provisional government.
21:22Just eight months after leaving Switzerland, Lenin was the leader of 160 million people.
21:31Lenin was always described, quite rightly, as ultimately the founder of the Soviet Union.
21:38His rail trip across Europe was a journey that changed world history.
21:43If Lenin had not got back to Russia, one can say without any doubt that the Bolshevik
21:47Revolution wouldn't have happened.
21:55A quarter of a century later, Russia and Germany would again be at war, and another vital train
22:02journey would be made.
22:05But this time, it was not for political ends.
22:09It was motivated by naked greed.
22:12Its precious cargo was stolen gold.
22:19In April 1944, the laws that had terrorized Jews in countries under Nazi control were
22:26introduced to Hungary.
22:28Hungary had been an ally of Germany, but by 1943 realized it had backed the wrong side.
22:36Germany invaded the following March, and the Hungarian leadership agreed to fully collaborate
22:41in the extermination of the Jewish population of Europe, known as the Final Solution.
22:47First, they robbed Hungarian Jews of everything they owned.
22:54In charge of the stolen assets was a Hungarian official named Árpád Toldi.
22:59Árpád Toldi had been a member of the Gendarmerie, which was a rural police force.
23:06During the war, he is a senior official in the government office that is responsible
23:11for asset stripping the Jews of Hungary.
23:15And the idea is to get the assets out of Budapest before the Red Army gets there.
23:25So Toldi commandeered a train to gather up the Jewish belongings and flee the Russians.
23:32As Toldi's train moves westward, he stops at various points.
23:39He collects the Jewish assets, loads up the train when he's smuggling the stuff westward,
23:45trying to escape the Russians.
23:50The train, loaded with the precious cargo of stolen Jewish gold and possessions, got
23:55as far as the coal mining town of Brennberg-Banje.
23:59There, Toldi started sorting and creating the plunder.
24:04It took three months.
24:07Then things began to go wrong for Toldi.
24:10The train does not have an engine.
24:13They have to find an engine that can pull the train.
24:17It was either 44 or 48 carriages long, and departs into Austria.
24:28But Toldi wasn't prepared to share his loot.
24:32And he had a plan.
24:34Six hours before the train was due to depart, he had the most valuable treasures, gold bullion
24:40and diamonds, loaded into trucks.
24:44Toldi led the convoy towards Switzerland.
24:47The train was now just a decoy.
24:51The train is told to go to Salzburg.
24:54That's on the western edge of Austria.
24:57And the valuables on the train were supposed to be the ticket that would buy the entry
25:02for the Hungarian fascist leadership to hide out with the last of the German SS soldiers
25:07and the German elite.
25:09That was the idea.
25:12Although Toldi was secretive about the contents of the train and the truck convoy, the commander
25:18of the train did manage to make an inventory.
25:22Ten boxes of gold, at the average of 45 kilograms per box, two crates of gold watches, average
25:29weight between 30 and 60 kilograms, approximately 3,000 Hungarian and Persian cartons, two crates
25:36of gold money, three crates of gold.
25:39We're talking about a very significant amount of valuables.
25:44The train moved towards Austria, traveling mostly at night to avoid being bombed by the
25:51Allies.
25:52At one point, going over a hill, the train actually breaks into two and some of the carriages
25:59roll back and they had to be retrieved.
26:03It was rumored to be full of Jewish wealth and so the train was frequently attacked.
26:09A journey which should have taken an afternoon ends up taking almost a month and a half.
26:17The Hungarian guards have to protect it from marauding German soldiers and it is at this
26:24point that the Hungarians actually decide to open up the carriages and see what they've
26:30got.
26:33And only then do they realize that the train had been a decoy.
26:36The really precious valuables, the fabulous wealth, had been on the truck convoy.
26:44Meanwhile, Toldi, leading the convoy containing the most valuable jewels and bullion, failed
26:50to get into Switzerland.
26:54He was forced to make a drastic decision.
26:57He had the crates buried in various Austrian villages with the intention of retrieving
27:03them once the war was over.
27:06Unbeknownst to them, two of the village farmers observed this.
27:11They decided to consult with the village elder, a man called Alfons Schwenninger.
27:18But Schwenninger didn't trust the two farming brothers and he decided to take his nine sons
27:24and have them remove the crates to yet another hiding spot.
27:30But of course, very quickly, the Schwenninger boys and their wives were sporting jewelry
27:35and gold watches and so on.
27:38At least six of the crates have never been found.
27:43But what of the gold train, with its cargo of less valuable plunder?
27:49And Hungary's Nazi hierarchy?
27:52In May 1945, as concentration camps were liberated by the Allies, occupants of the gold train
27:59would have been aware of camp survivors heading east.
28:02It was Hungarian Jews making their way by foot back towards Hungary.
28:10They walked eastwards towards their homes.
28:13Their property was on the train moving westward.
28:18The gold train came to a halt in a tunnel 50 miles south of Salzburg and the American
28:24occupying army took control of it.
28:28They sold some of the plundered possessions at a public auction two years later.
28:33The rest they sent back to Hungary.
28:36For this, they used another infamous wartime train.
28:45In order to attract the most attention possible, they actually, the first trainload of Hungarian
28:52goods going back to Hungary was Hitler's own personal train.
28:58This was designed to draw the attention of the Hungarian press, which it very effectively
29:02did, to the great annoyance of the Russians.
29:13The real value of the cargo was given to it by the people who originally owned the items.
29:22And once you murdered the people, the actual metallic weight of the silver or whatever
29:28was a pittance compared to the value which the owners, when alive, had held these items
29:37in.
29:50As the Nazi regime crumbled, several trains were used to steal Jewish possessions.
29:55But a few years earlier, just before the outbreak of war, trains had been used for a very different
30:02precious cargo, to help Jewish children escape imprisonment or even death.
30:09Well, we had a wonderful childhood.
30:15We were divided between Germany and Czechoslovakia until 1935.
30:24And my brother and I remember this very clearly.
30:27My brother and I were playing in a sandpit with about 16 other children, and then suddenly
30:34in the middle of a game, as though some kind of switch had been pressed or cued, the old
30:44children in the sandpit suddenly turned on my brother and me and started name-calling
30:50us and started calling us dirty Jews.
30:53They started spitting at us and kicking us and that just went on day after day after
31:00day.
31:02Jews in Germany and Nazi-occupied states found themselves considered an enemy within their
31:07own country.
31:08As far as Hitler was concerned, if you were one-sixteenth Jewish blood, you were Jewish.
31:15And, you know, that has connotations, really, that are quite meaningful.
31:22Stephanie Shirley's mother wasn't Jewish, but her father was, a judge forced to move
31:28from Berlin to Vienna in 1938.
31:32One of the things I remember is going to collect my sister from school.
31:39And the reason we always went to collect her was that she was beginning to meet anti-Semitism
31:44even as a nine-year-old in the school.
31:48When she left the schoolroom, the children would throw stones at her and call her dirty
31:54Jew and so on.
31:58One day, my father called my brother, Arthur, and me and he said, sit down boys, you're
32:03going on a long journey.
32:07You're going to a country called England.
32:10We can't come with you, but when the troubles are over, you can come back or maybe we can
32:17come to England.
32:18It'll all blow over, but at the moment you've got to go alone.
32:25My mother took a photograph of my father, my brother and me and our dog on the steps
32:32of our house in Czechoslovakia.
32:35She just took a photograph before taking us to the railway station.
32:41The two boys were headed, with hundreds of others, for a British evacuation scheme to
32:46help Jewish children flee persecution in Nazi-held countries.
32:52England would become known as the Kindertransport.
32:56Stephanie Shirley's parents had also heard about the scheme.
32:59My mother told me that it was made difficult, that you had to register between ten and twelve
33:06on Tuesday afternoon or Tuesday mornings there and then you had to go to another part.
33:11People did not make it very easy and although as a child I felt very rejected, in practice
33:18it is the most loving thing a parent can do, to send their children away to an unknown
33:23country, to an unknown family.
33:28My parents took my brother and me down to the local railway station and put us on a
33:34train and simply said goodbye.
33:38But as the train was about to leave, my mother took a wristwatch off and simply passed it
33:44through the window and simply said, this is for you to remember us.
33:51And so began a journey that would take John and his brother to a new country and a new
33:57life.
33:58But for their parents, there would be no chance of freedom.
34:05At the end of 1938, Nazi Germany agreed to a British request for a number of Jewish children
34:12to be allowed to leave those parts of Europe under Nazi control.
34:16Stephanie Shirley and John Fields End were part of that precious cargo.
34:22John or Heiner Feiger, as he was known then, together with his brother Arthur, had been
34:27taken to their local railway station, the first leg of a two-part journey to freedom.
34:33That train took us back into Germany, to Hanover, to a big Jewish school which was being used
34:41as a kind of dispersal centre.
34:44I remember losing my doll, a very important thing, because we had only what we could carry,
34:51a little suitcase, and I had my doll and she got lost.
34:58One day a teacher took my brother and me to a station and put us on, we joined a train.
35:05Now, only more recently have I learned that that train was actually one of Nicholas Winton's
35:13trains from Prague.
35:16Nicholas Winton was a 29-year-old stockbroker and sportsman who had abandoned plans for
35:21a skiing trip when he heard about the plight of Jews in Czechoslovakia.
35:25It was his friend who actually went to Prague, phoned Nicholas and said, look, I'm in Prague,
35:33there's a job to be done. Jewish people are getting out of Central Europe, but nobody
35:40is doing anything for the children.
35:44Winton started cutting red tape, organising transport and permission for hundreds of children
35:50to be taken to Britain.
35:51By the Kindertransport movement of children travelling alone, the total number was 10,000.
35:59Of those, Nicholas was responsible for 1,000.
36:06I remember being on the train because it was a two-and-a-half-day journey and, you know,
36:11from the sheer practicality, how did we sleep, what did we eat, how often did the guards
36:16come in and they were pretty, they were pretty brusque really with the children.
36:24The atmosphere was tense, frightening, because here were about, you know, 250, 300 unaccompanied
36:37children. There were just two adults on the train, two Jewish ladies who were allowed
36:42on the train, but in each carriage there were German soldiers whose brief was to make the
36:50journey as unhappy as possible, bully as far as the end.
36:57I slept on sheets of corrugated cardboard which was put on the floor. Other children
37:03were on the benches. Some children were even put in the overhead luggage racks. So it was
37:09pretty crowded. I mean, there was a train of 1,000 children aged 5 to 16.
37:17But the thing was just an unpleasant, tense, fearful journey and we were all scared until
37:27we got to Holland.
37:29In 1938, Holland had closed its borders to refugees, but the efforts of Nicholas Winton
37:36meant that John and the other children on his train were allowed to enter.
37:41We got on the Dutch platform and just as though a cork had been taken off a fizzy bottle,
37:50just a sense of utter, utter change from being totally frightened to being totally cared
37:57for. Just a sense of relief we were out of there. And it was sort of laughing and singing
38:04instead of sullen quietness.
38:08The sheer symbolism of that train, and to me and I think many other people, a train
38:16signifies escape.
38:21The next part of the journey was by North Sea Ferry, an entirely new experience for
38:26children born in landlocked European countries.
38:30I remember going onto the boat, which was at night, and I hadn't seen the sea before
38:35and I hadn't smelt the sea. And going onto, I presume, a ferry boat from the Hoek van
38:42Holland to Harwich, which is where most of us arrived.
38:49And exploring this huge, what seemed to us a huge liner. It was a North Sea Ferry, but
38:56to us we'd never seen a boat like this.
39:00And then a train journey to Liverpool Street Station.
39:16There was mayhem because, again, there were 300-odd children beyond the platform.
39:23We sort of stumbled off the train, basically wide-eyed and traumatised, I suppose.
39:31We'd all got a little bag and a label around our necks with our name and number, and moving
39:36around amongst us were English adults who couldn't speak to us because we had no common
39:44language.
39:45When these adults found the child they were looking for, they had to sign the child out
39:51in one of Nicholas Winton's ledgers and take the child home.
39:58The two brothers were taken in by a Yorkshire family, Les and Vera Kumpstee, and their son John.
40:05We went up to Sheffield by train because my foster father was in the coal mining industry
40:13in Sheffield. But I couldn't ask questions and I couldn't communicate, we had absolutely
40:18no common language.
40:21Stephanie and her sister were headed for the Midlands.
40:24Eventually my foster parents arrived and off we went with them, two complete strangers
40:31who, much against the pattern of their lives really, had decided to foster two Jewish children.
40:42Although it would take a few weeks, Stephanie Shirley and her sister were reunited with
40:47their parents.
40:49My father walked over the mountains from Vienna into neutral Switzerland and got out that
40:56way. My mother bribed her way across Europe, including the fur coat that she was wearing
41:02at one time, and so the whole family survived, got out and finished up in this country.
41:11We were able to send one or two letters and some photographs of ourselves settled into
41:18this family, which must have been a tremendous comfort to our parents.
41:26John and Arthur's parents were sent to the death camp at Auschwitz.
41:32Most of the rest of the family were also murdered.
41:35One day, just after the end of the war, the boys were surprised to receive a letter from
41:40their parents. It was written shortly before their death.
41:45My mother wrote, dear boys, when you receive this letter the war will be over, because
41:54our friendly messenger won't be able to send it earlier. We want to say farewell to you
42:00who were our dearest possession in the world, and only for a short time were we able to
42:06keep you. In December it will be our turn, and the time has therefore come for us to
42:14turn to you again and to ask you to become good men and think of the years we were happy
42:20together.
42:21We're going into the unknown, not a word is to be heard from those already taken.
42:27Thank the Kempsters, who've kept you from a similar fate. And father added, we too won't
42:34be spared, and we will go bravely into the unknown with the hope that we shall yet see
42:40you again when God wills. Don't forget us.
42:51I too thank all the good people who've accepted you so nobly.
42:59What letter?
43:06Few of the Kindertransport children ever saw their parents again. Some of the older boys
43:12would later return to Europe to fight the Nazis as members of the British Army.
43:18In all, a precious cargo of almost 10,000 children was brought to freedom and a new
43:25life, just as their parents had hoped.