Customer Reviews

Into The Arms Of Strangers - Stories Of The Kindertransport

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I could watch this documentary over and over. For those who may not know of the Kindertransport, it was a major effort to get children out of Germany, Czechoslovakia and other countries and into Britain. Parents had to give up their children to strangers, hoping for the best.
Years later, the film-makers have interviewed actual participants in the Kindertransport and done an amazing job. This one stands out for several reasons. First, the accounts, told from the point of view those who were in the Kindertransport, are vivid and engrossing, revealing the sense of wonder, fear and courage the children experienced as they were given up by their parents. The score which accompanies the movie adds poignancy and depth without being manipulative or overly sentimental - not an easy task to pull off. If you still have doubts about purchasing this movie, rent it first (it just came out in a rental version). One viewing and I guarantee you'll want to own your own copy.

My mother left Vienna when she was 16, in the spring of 1939. Though she'd told my sister and me stories about traveling on a train and ending up with a family in England, neither of us had much of a sense of what had happened beyond her safe arrival in England, her being taken in by a loving family, and her eventual emigration to the US.
Into the Arms of Strangers helped me better understand the story of her life and that of thousands of others. The stories are gripping; the film is well-conceived and produced. The interviews are powerful.
The special power of this film is that it puts human faces on a moral outrage so enormous that we easily lose any sense of scale. Each interviewee tells a story which, though deeply personal, touched me as a fellow human being and as the child of a kindertransport child. This film helps us to understand the infinite worth of each individual-- those who were blessed with survival, and those who perished.
In a few months, my mother will turn 80. After viewing this film, I have the overwhelming desire to hear her tell the story of the kindertransport from her own experience. We must hear and pass on these stories before they are lost, and Into the Arms of Strangers is an excellent place to begin.

This is one of the more moving documentaries I have seen. It accomplishes something wonderful--takes the viewer into the lives and minds of a handful of children whose parents managed to get them onto Britain's World War II Kindertransport relief effort.

After the March 1938 Anschluss, Great Britain agreed to accept all Jewish children whose care could be guaranteed, and by November 9 and 10 1938, 431 children were placed. Kristallnacht opened the floodgates, and by September 1939 another 9,354 children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia streamed into Britain with help from 5 groups including B'nai Brith and the Refugee Children's Movement; 1,850 more came via Youth Aliya and agricultural groups. More than 11,000 children were thus saved from Nazi fires that extinguished the lives of 6 million Jewish people, including 1 million children.

The statistics pale, however, next to the human faces and stories that this film provides. Viewers meet perhaps a dozen aging survivors of the trauma that both preserved their lives and separated them from their parents--usually, forever.

Not all parents could stand the strain. One woman recounts how her father pulled her out of the train window as it left the station without her and all the horrors that befell her family afterwards. Each story is more painful and enduring than the last.

These children endured the direst imaginable circumstances, and yet learned afterwards that far worse had happened to their families. There are as many layers as people here, all of whom made something of their lives. Yet the film is accessible to everyone--and especially meaningful for children who were themselves adopted. Alyssa A. Lappen

I saw "Into the Arms of Strangers: stories of the Kindertransport " in New Orleans at the Jewish Film Festival. This documentary chronicles the Kindertransport, a massive releif effor sponsored by Britain in which Jewish children from Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Austria were welcome in Britain from November, 1938 to September , 1939. This is a moving documentary about the courage of parents giving up their children so they can live a better life. The real participants in the Kindertransport are interviewed. They recall in vivid detail their experiences and the feelings of fear and wonder at traveling and seeing the world for the first time. This documentary brings WWII to the human details. It challenges the viewer to reflect and think about what he would do when faced with such a difficult choice. This should be required viewing for all elementary school children. Look for Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport" at your local theatre. It will truly move you.

This was without a doubt the most heartwrenching movie I have ever seen. The interviews with the actual children were very touching. Some saw their parents murdered right in front of them while others were being tormented with the unknown of what happened to their parents once they said goodbye to the at the train station. What angered me was how the US refused to help sponsor these children because it "went against the law of God". As a parent, I could never imagine having to let my child go to another country and stay with strangers, but they knew if they didn't the children would probably die. This is a must see for anyone with a heart.

Dark, scary times create fear in the hearts of all. They also create moments of light, which shine out in the darkness, bright, illuminating, inspiring. "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport" is a film of such remarkable light, of inspiration, that it even overcomes the horror surrounding them, leaving us speakless, breathless, and without a dry eye.

Told from the point of view of children, "Kindertransport" weaves a narrative of parents, fearing Hitler's evil polciies, choosing to send their children away simply in order to save their lives. From 1938-1939, thousands of children were sent to Britian, in order to live. Survivors recount their trials, their ordeals, the reality of their lives as they left their parents, and is heartbreaking.

Amazingly, some of the people who took in the children were interviewed too. At first as an act of mercy, these people grew to love the children who were merely guests in their homes. One woman breaks down as she recalls the boy she took in leaving her is so incredibly moving, as it happened fifty years ago..

We will never forget what happened. Films such as these will help keep these stories alive for centuries to come. Watch this film, and remember.

The story of the Kindertransport may be unfamiliar to many, even those who consider themselves WWII buffs. What more human and moving of a story can one imagine than desperate Jews sending their children to a foreign country to be raised by non-Jews who didn't even speak their language.

The interviews are powerful in that they capture the frustration and the anxiety experienced on all sides in this true account. I especially enjoyed some of the extra features, including the personal account provided by Sir Richard Attenborough.

I would be interested in hearing further accounts of those sent to live in the English countryside during the Blitz, as suggested in the delightful film "Hope and Glory," or even hear accounts of those sent to Australia.

There is perhaps nothing more emotionally gripping than the accounts of children caught up in war.

During that relatively small window of time, prior to the beginning of Hitler's conquest of Europe, when exportation rather than extermination was still the prudent solution to the "Jewish Problem", a rescue plan called the Kindertransport was begun which provided for the relocation of Jewish children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia into Great Britain. INTO THE ARMS OF STRANGERS is a documentary that examines the Kindertransport program through the eyes of the participants. No broad social commentary here, just remembrances of parents that had to send their kids away to a foreign land and into the arms of strangers so that they might survive the Nazi barbarians. The difficulty of having to provide a whole life's worth of instruction to children just before those devastating last goodbyes. A little girl wondering why, just after Hitler annexed Austria, none of her long-time Austrian friends showed up for her eighth birthday party. Parents desperately trying to keep the harsh reality of Nazi occupation from the innocent little people oblivious to the evil of man. And once the children were safe in Britain, their desperate attempts to get sponsors for parents left behind and for those lucky enough to be re-united with family after the war, having to say goodbye once again, only this time to broken hearted foster parents. This documentary is made more effective by snap-shots of the children, archival footage of Nazi Germany during the late 1930's ( a veritable sewer of anti-Jewish destruction and propaganda), and in this context, the painfully frightening sound effects of broken glass, trains and the voices of children singing in German, which seem strangely perverted - an unfortunate consequence which Germans should never forgive the Nazi's.

This documentary is very powerful, informative, moving and very interesting. Many documentaries tend to be a bit stale while this movie's sound and music keep it far from being dry. The score is one of the most beautiful I've ever heard, while the sound keeps you surprised at every turn. The stories of the survivors are varied enough to not make you feel you are hearing the same story told over and over for 2 hours. Although the subject matter is heart-wrenching the stories are told in a way that allows you to watch the movie without sobbing throughout the show. The Holocaust is one of modern day's horror stories and to once again put those images of starved and abused figures in front of the viewer is not the filmmaker's intent...those images are rarely used in this film. This movie is a story of hope.

The first moments in the movie refer to a child who is about eight years old - the same age as my daughter as I watched the DVD. Perhaps that set a different tone for me because suddenly, this wasn't a documentary about some monumental thing that happened half a century ago, it was a documentary about the pain of a child who was the same age as my own daughter - and my imagination did the rest of the work for the mothers and the fathers.

This film speaks to the potential goodness in everyone and how the most trying times can create the most remarkable situations. I would highly recommend it to everyone.