ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author details an autobiographical memoir of his childhood in Vienna. On the evening of Thursday, 27 October 1938, exhausted by anxiety and hunger, the author went to bed early. Moments later, a policeman knocked at the door. He was there to arrest them as foreign or stateless nationals who had no right to be on German soil. The author's parents and he had neither passports nor visas, and these were almost impossible to get. They had little time left. Two weeks later, the Kristallnacht pogroms virtually put an end to German and Austrian Jewry. For them, Kristallnacht proved to be their salvation. Various groups in England, both Jewish and Christian, shocked by the pogroms, persuaded the British government, as a humanitarian gesture, to admit refugee children and youths, provided their maintenance was guaranteed, and the first Kindertransporte from Germany and Austria were organized.
