Current Issue - Thunderbird Magazine - Thunderbird School of ...

eyondthekindertransport
was forever changed.
When people read the Biblical story of Moses,
they often gloss over the pain his mother
surely felt when she placed her baby in a basket
and sent him away to live with strangers.
This is just one detail in the narrative: “And
when she could no longer hide him, she took
for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it
with slime and with pitch; and she put the
child therein, and laid it in the flags by the
river’s brink.”
My mother and thousands of other desperate
parents and grandparents experienced
similar pain firsthand during World War II.
The children of the Kindertransport also perienced the pain of separation. We struggleto
reconcile feelings of anger, betrayal,
ex-
guilt, sadness, confusion, gratitude, relief and
even joy.
The Quaker practices of tolerance, social
engagement, ement, pragmatism, community spirit
and love helped in my healing process. The
only thing I could not identify with was my
foster parents’ absolute pacifism.
All Quakers were conscientious objectors
to the war and, as such, freed from military
service. With my childhood experiences from
the pogroms in Danzig, not being prepared to
fight evil seemed like a sacrilege. My feelings
have softened since then, but those were my
emotions at the time.
Shortly after reaching adulthood, while in
the United Kingdom, I enlisted in the U.S.
Army. My unit landed in Le Havre, France,
in November 1944. When the war in Europe
ended in May 1945, I was serving with the
3rd U.S. Army in southern Germany. I
stayed for another year in the army
of occupation before receiving an
honorable discharge at the rank
of sergeant.
The great wartime leader
Winston Churchill helped
shape my sentiments after
the war. On Sept.
19, 1946, he spoke
EUROPE, CIRCA 1939
Fred Koppl ’52 traveled from Prague through Poland
to the port of Gdynia. Then he traveled by freighter
across the Baltic and North Seas to Harwich in the
United Kingdom.
GDYNIA
DANZIG
HARWICH
BODENBACH/PODMOKLY
PRAGUE
thunderbird magazine 39