According to UNHCR statistics, 35 million of the approximately 82 million people worldwide who left their countries of origin in 2020 were children and adolescents aged under 18. The numbers who left their countries during the Nazi era can only be estimated. It appears that some 30,000 children and adolescents fled into exile from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1939. The actual number is probably higher.

If the children were unable to flee with their families, special rescue programmes and aid organisations often arranged for their departure and reception in the host country. These included, for example, the Kindertransporte (children’s transports) to the UK, among other places, the Youth Aliyah which sent children to Palestine, and aid organisations such as the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) in France. Before their flight, the children and adolescents often experienced exclusion and violence, sometimes the arrest or murder of a parent. Exile tore them away from their familiar culture and language and often led to permanent separation from their families. Many of them suffered for the rest of their lives from the consequences of these traumatic experiences.

The flight of children and adolescents was in many ways interwoven with the personal lives and work of artists. Many had children who had to accompany them into exile, for example Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel, Paul Dessau, George Grosz, Iwan Heilbut, Manfred Henninger, Alfred Kerr, Jo Mihaly, Leonhard Steckel and Anna Seghers. Some writers, including Irmgard Keun, Erika Mann, Hertha Pauli and Lisa Tetzner, tackled the subject of exiled children and adolescents in their works while they themselves were still in exile. Some of the children who experienced expulsion and flight went on to become artists and explored the topics of exclusion and persecution, homeland and exile, losing and switching languages in their works, sometimes decades after the end of the Nazi era; these included Judith Kerr, Helga Michie, Roberto Schopflocher, Silvia Tennenbaum and Stefanie Zweig.

Further literature:
Literary works:
Irmgard Keun: Kinder aller Länder (Child of All Nations, 1938)
Judith Kerr: When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (1971)
Lisa Tetzner: Erwin kommt nach Schweden [Erwin Comes to Sweden] (1944, first Swedish edition 1941)

Secondary literature:
Gesine Bey (Ed.): Kinder im Exil / Children in Exile. Berlin: Akademie der Künste 2018
Sylvia Asmus/Jessica Beebone (Eds.): Kinderemigration aus Frankfurt. Geschichten der Rettung, des Verlusts und der Erinnerung [Child emigration from Frankfurt. Stories of rescue, loss and remembrance]. Göttingen: Wallstein 2021.