In Remembrance of the rescue of 10.000 children from the Nazis
On Wednesday night (December 10, 2014), the museum and permanent exhibition “Für das Kind” (“For the child”) was solemnly opened at the Radetzkystraße 5 in the third district of Vienna. The museum and exhibition serves a reminder of more than 10.000 Jewish children that left their families, fleeing from the Nazis in Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland to the United Kingdom.

Among the guests were the Federal Minister for Arts and Culture, Constitution and Media, Josef Ostermayer, who opened the museum and exhibition, the Secretary General of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, Hannah M. Lessing, the President of the Jewish Religious Community, Oskar Deutsch, and City Council for Youth, Christian Oxonitsch, who mentioned: “It is hard to imagine what those children had to go through. A lot of them were too young to understand, why their parents sent them to England. When the war was over, most of their relatives had been murdered by the Nazis. This place is devoted to the remembrance of all those terrible fateful stories, but also represents exceptional commitment and civil courage. The people that accompanied those children to England risked their lives and also had to find a foster family for every single child.

Exhibition with framed printings and a sculpture
Each of the 23 different prints of the exhibition, designed by artists Rosie Potter and Patricia Ayre, displays a small suitcase with various belongings of the children. Every child was allowed to carry only one suitcase. There were strict instructions concerning the content of each suitcase. It was not allowed to carry any jewelry, money, musical instruments, cameras or other objects of value. Most of the time, the trains left in the middle of the night and parents were informed about the date of departure at short notice. Consequently, there was not much time for long goodbyes. More than two thirds of the saved children did not see their parents again.

In remembrance of the childrens’ rescue, sculptures were erected at Liverpool Street Station in London, where the trains arrived, at the Railway Station in Prague and at the Westbahnhof in Vienna, from where the children left. Part of the series, which was designed by the artist Flor Kent, is also the sculpture “das Mädchen Naomi” (“the girl Naomi”), which is located in the courtyard of Radetzkystraße 5 in Vienna.
The house is historically connected to this topic. It housed around 380 Jewish women and men in mass accommodation, before they were further deported to death camps. A stone of remembrance in front of the house reminds of their story.