Kurt Marx: Kindertransport Travel Document • AJR Refugee Voices archive

This treasure is a Kindertransport Travel Document, issued to fourteen-year-old Kurt Marx in Cologne, allowing him to travel to the UK as part of the Kindertransport scheme. Unusually, Kurt travelled to the UK with his school, the Jewish Jawne Gymnasium, arriving in January 1939.

After the November pogrom (Kristallnacht) in 1938, the Jawne’s forward-thinking headteacher, Erich Klibansky, began arrangements to get Jawne students to Britain on a Kindertransport. Kurt remembers saying goodbye to his mother and father in the belief that they would soon meet in England when his parents got the necessary documentation. Very sadly this did not happen and Kurt did not see his parents again.

Kurt and his school moved into a hostel in Willesden, London, sponsored by the Walm Lane Synagogue. You can read more about Kurt’s experiences, and see more of his incredible photos, here.

The treasure comes from the AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, a video-based oral history archive containing interviews with – and documents, photos and other artefacts from – more than 250 refugees from Nazi Europe who rebuilt their lives in Britain. It contains many images relating to the Kindertransport including British-issued travel documents like this one. You can see a selection here.

Discover more Hidden Treasures

Hidden Treasures: Celebrating the documents, photos and artefacts in British archives that tell the story of Jews in Britain