The Kindertransport was a rescue effort organized to get children away from the danger of the Nazis before the breakout of World War II. Nearly 10,000 children, mostly Jewish, were sent to England with the hopes that they would shortly be reunited with their families. In many cases, this was a hollow hope.
This particular book tells the story from the perspective of children, parents, and organizers through the duration of the war. It has a nice mix of boys and girls that took the trains and children from different backgrounds. Some children were from Germany, and others were from Czechoslovakia and Austria. The last chapter is final thoughts from everyone and a kind of "where are they now" from some of them.
The main issue I have with this book is the organization. I hate it. I hate it with a burning passion. It's in chronological order, but once I started the book, I noticed they kept adding more people. I grabbed a notebook and started keeping little notes of who was who. Then I had to number them because there were too many. By the end, I had 18 people I was keeping track of, and there were 19 total people whose stories were told. Now imagine taking 18 people and breaking their story into 10 parts, and that's what I was reading. The stories were disjointed, their pictures were sprinkled throughout the entire book here and there, and all I could wonder was, "Why didn't they just tell each person's story?"
The chronological approach might have worked better with three of four people, but with this many, it just doesn't. One of the sections at the end of the book has a short summary of each person and references each page they appear on. If the authors thought this was necessary, why not just keep the stories together? I like to be immersed in people's stories, but I was constantly brought out of that. A few times the same person had multiple contributions in the same chapter. WHY?!
This was one of the most frustrating books I've ever read. It was also a great book. I'm so torn on it because of this. I hated it so much because I knew I was in for a slog once I picked it up. I'd have to get out my pen and notebook and refresh my memory on who I was reading about.
0 stars for organization. 5 stars for content. I can't blame the contributors for what the authors did to their stories, so I'll give it a 4 overall. Had I known how it was set up ahead of time, I would've found another book on the topic. I realize I didn't have to spend all that time taking notes, but what was the point of reading it if I didn't want to keep track of each person's journey?
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