This film is part of the conversation following the in-person screening of The Mind of a Child on Wednesday, November 2.

Co-sponsored by: Victoria Shoah Project

The critical film recounts the fate of four Jewish survivors who were sent as children on their own by their parents to Sweden during the Third Reich, with the “Kindertransports”, to save them from the Nazi terror. They experienced a trauma which exists even today. Most of them never saw their parents again.

For the rescued children in Sweden a new life began in a foreign county with a new language, unknown faces, uncertainty, fear and loneliness. They were saved, but unable to comprehend why their parents sent them abroad. Later they do begin to understand, learn about the Holocaust and live with an even greater loss: only one ever her parents alive again.

The film at how they could not handle the emotional chaos that the escape had caused. This trauma was attributed to their uprooting, the loss of community and culture, the loss of identity and the lack of security. Their stories reflect the tragic fate of a winner and at the same time loser of their own salvation.