KINDERTRANSPORT
In Europe at the outbreak of war in 1939 Britain became the last refuge for many people fleeing Nazi Germany. Many German and Austrian refugees came to Britain in the years preceding the war, particularly after Kristallnacht. Among the people who had arrived were 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland.
The Kindertransport programme was organised by private citizens. Forced to leave their families behind on the continent most of them never saw their parents again. They were some of the lucky ones who survived.
Ernest J. Goodman (born – Ernst Guttmann)
Ernest Goodman came to Britain with the Kindertransport. One of 10,000 children, alone and unaccompanied that were to be admitted to the United Kingdom without the usually required entry visa. On 23 August 1939, he arrived at Liverpool Street Station, on the Kindertransport, fourteen years of age, with special entry permit in his hand and by courtesy of the YMCA went to a hostel in Derbyshire and within forty-eight hours he was working on a farm. Four weeks later he was placed on a farm permanently, lodging with the cowman and his family in their cottage. Work was hard and, in the summer, sixteen-hour days were not unusual. Ernest learned English fast but in those early war years being a foreigner, particularly a German, was not cool. He dreaded being asked, ‘Are you a German?’
At the Imperial War Museum’s event, Refugees from Nazism, in September 2007, Ernest Goodman commented - “ I never miss the opportunity of thanking the British people for saving me when the knife was at the throat of the Jewish people of Germany, and chicanery and sheer brutality were a daily occurrence”.
From the day the war began Ernest Goodman coveted the British military uniform. He wanted to hit back at the criminal and corrupt gangsters who were ruling Germany. That shameful regime soon overran much of Europe and his heart was with the British people, who now had the knife at their throats, who were bombed without mercy and threatened with invasion. Ernest was avid in his belief that Britain’s decision to give thousands of German and Austrians shelter was the noblest episode in those terrible years and the desire to fight shoulder to shoulder with the British people was his ardent desire. He prayed for the time to pass until he was eighteen. That occurred in 1943 when his friend, Adolf Neuberger and himself enlisted.
Ernest Goodman did his basic and infantry training first in Glasgow, then with the Northamptonshire Regiment. At that time the Company Commander gave Ernest Goodman his present name! He had something far more exotic in mind but he thought that Ernest Goodman was ‘A jolly good name, what?’ and who, at the tender age of nineteen, would argue with the Company Commander?
Next came the greatest thrill of his life when he was picked, together with his friend, who was now Archie Newman, to transfer to the Guards. “Both of us became Coldstreamers”, thrilled as never before, going over all the drill and all the infantry exercises, now in Guards style, where they were trained to do things they never dreamed they could accomplish. The uniform helped greatly in the construction of a new identity and to legitimize his integration into British society. Then followed Normandy and Belgium and he was now a member of the Allied Liberation Army that had the task of beating Germany, thus to remove the terribly dark blot from decent and peaceful civilizations.
Ernest Goodman was happy to have spent several years of his life in the Coldstream Guards, a glorious organization where he learned lessons of and for life. In 1946 he took a British bride and in December of 1947 became a British subject. They have lived in the United States since 1953.
Nicholas Winton
Reference:
- “The Kings Most Loyal Enemy Aliens” by Helen Fry, published by The History Press. The story of German and Austrian refugee’s who fought for Britain.
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