Kindertransport (NHB Modern Plays)

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The play tells the story of how nine-year-old Eva, a German Jewish girl, is sent by her parents on the Kindertransport to start a new life with a foster family in Britain just before the outbreak of World War Two.

Kindertransport won the 1992 Verity Bargate Award and was subsequently staged by the Soho Theatre Company at the Cockpit Theatre in London in 1993. Kindertransport depicts the agony of separating a child from her parents and wrestles with the consequences of that choice, an act of sacrifice that also wreaks devastating results.All of this takes place in the attic of Evelyn's house, which supposedly represents Evelyn's psyche. Eva is at a Manchester train station waiting for her parents, who promised they would secure their visas and reunite with Eva in England, when a station guard approaches her. Through flashbacks, the play presents the hardships faced by Eva, a nine-year-old child sent on a Kindertransport and taken in by a British family. The play jumps back and forth between three time periods: 1) Pre-war - in which Helga tries to prepare Eva to leave her home and parents; 2) War - in which Eva is living in England with Lil, adjusting to a new country, and desperately trying to get her parents out of Germany; and 3) Post-war, in which Eva (who has now changed her name to Evelyn) is an adult, has a daughter named Faith, and has intentionally wiped most of her past and her Jewishness out of existence.

One day Helga arrives when Eva is in her late teens and Eva tells Helga that Lil and Jack have adopted her and she has been naturalised as English, and her name is now Evelyn.

Since it was first staged by the Soho Theatre Company in London in 1993, Diane Samuels’ Kindertransport has enjoyed huge success around the world, has been revived numerous times, and is widely studied in schools and colleges. Renowned theatre company Shared Experience also revived the play to great acclaim for a regional tour in 2007. Eva Schlesinger, daughter of Helga and Werner, is sent away to live with a foster carer in Manchester, England, temporarily until her parents find work and move to England too. At the same time in the present, Evelyn's daughter Faith is uncovering her mother's secret past and they have an argument, which eventually comes to rest. It was developed by staff, scholars, artists and volunteers overseen by Arnold Mittelman, founding NJTF President/Project Director, and by Dr.

When Evelyn was nine, her mother Helga sent her to live in England to keep her safe from Nazi persecution. Teresa Eyring Executive Director Theatre Communications Group (TCG) AHO Conference, Miami, FL TCG is a national organization for theatre, based in New York.Eva’s imagination transforms the official (and most other authority figures) into the Ratcatcher, a mythical villain from a children’s book Helga used to read to Eva. Lil allows Eva to smoke when she meets her which shows how Lil is not a proper guardian for Eva at first.

Spared the horrors of the death camps, the Jewish "Kinder" were uprooted, separated from their parents and transported to a different culture where they faced, not the unmitigated horror of the death camps, but a very human mixture of kindness, indifference, occasional exploitation, and the selflessness of ordinary people faced with needy children. Eva and Lil fall out as Eva skips her English lessons to go and ask round rich houses if they will give her parents jobs; Lil thinks this makes her seem desperate. Kindertransport is based on the experiences of children who were allowed to leave Nazi Germany for England in 1938/39 and who were separated from their families, many of whom perished during the Holocaust.

In this author’s guide to the play, Diane Samuels investigates the historical background, drawing on the personal testimony of those whose lives were transformed by the Kindertransport. He interrogates her in English and is visibly annoyed when Eva responds in German, the only language she understands. This play is also available as an A4 Edition, offering spiral binding, a larger print size and additional space for notes. Brutally separated from her German Jewish parents at the age of nine, Eva is brought to England with the promise of a new life.