Israeli President Herzog hosts 85th anniversary event of Kindertransport

Israeli President Isaac Herzog hosted an official 85th anniversary of the Kindertransport, the organized rescue effort during the Holocaust when hundreds of Jewish children were transported to Great Britain from then-Nazi-controlled territories of Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland prior to World War II.

The parents of Jewish children sent their beloved offspring overseas in order to save their lives, without knowing if they would ever be reunited again.

Herzog emphasized the emotional significance of the historical event amid the ongoing war in Gaza between Israel and the Hamas terror organization.

“This is a truly moving event. It is moving to see survivors after 85 years, to hear the personal stories of each and every one of you, and the Zionist story of each and every one of you, but it is especially moving because of the period in which we find ourselves,” the Israeli president said.

Germany's Ambassador to Israel Steffen Seibert attended the event, signaling a new era of close ties between Germany and the Jewish state. Several of the rescued Jewish children eventually moved to Israel after it was established in 1948. Today those children are the most-elderly members of Israel's population –between 80 and 100 years old.

Walter Bingham, a charismatic Jerusalem resident who recently turned 100, attended the event. He is officially the oldest active journalist in the entire world.

Eighty-eight-year-old Mirjam Szpiro, who fled Nazi Germany as a child in 1938, was recently evacuated from her home for a second time, when Hamas terrorists attacked Kibbutz Zikim on Oct. 7.

“We had been told we had to evacuate and suddenly I had déjà vu," the Holocaust survivor said. "I was standing there, an 88-year-old woman outside her home, and I suddenly remembered the 3-year-old girl I was. I didn’t remember these things before, the emotions, but suddenly I was back there. And this is the second time I leave my house.”

“I hope we can return soon. The house was not damaged, and even the tree I planted in the yard two weeks before the war survived,” Szpiro added.

The late Sir Nicholas Winton, a British businessman, was instrumental in rescuing children from Czechoslovakia.

While a separate mission from the rescue operation from Germany and Austria, the efforts to transport children from Czechoslovakia also came to be referred to as part of the ‘Kindertransport.’

Winton, born in London to German Jewish parents, could easily identify with Jewish refugee children in continental Europe. He later earned the nickname as the “British Schindler,” due to his considerable efforts to save Jewish children from the Nazis.

Tamar Taylor, a British-born Holocaust expert at Haifa University, described Winton as not only modest but a true hero who preferred to keep a low profile.

“He was an absolute hero. And many of the children spoke afterwards, after the TV program, and basically said that they had spent years trying to find the person who had helped to rescue them, without success, until this program came,” Taylor said.

Approximately six million European Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, roughly one-third of the world’s total Jewish population.

In a November interview with BBC, Herzog noted that Israeli forces had found an Arabic translation of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf in northern Gaza.

“This book was found a few days ago in northern Gaza. In a child's room, which became a base used for terrorist activities by the terrorist organization Hamas. The terrorist wrote notes, marked the sections, and studied again and again, the ideology of Adolf Hitler to hate the Jews, to kill the Jews, to burn and slaughter Jews wherever they are. This is the real war we are facing,” Herzog said.