Free ... And the Policeman Smiled by Barry Turner Page B

understandable dithering of families trying to come to terms with an indefinite parting, delays and mistakes were inevitable.
    The Home Office signalled a willingness to cooperate, as far as circumstances would allow. On the credit side, the waiving of restrictions imposed on adult refugees enabled the Home Office to reduce the formalities of immigration to a relatively simple travel document. Not even passports were needed, though many did bring this last record of German citizenship. The hold-up came with the processing of the entry permits. The aliens department of the Home Office, the first stopping-off point for
Kindertransport
applications, was woefully understaffed. By the end of 1938 there were some 10,000 files waiting for attention, while those who were supposed to be clearing the backlog spent most of their time answering the telephone to callers pleading for immediate action to save friends and relatives. More civil servants were drafted in late January when the aliens department moved to larger offices, but this development barely kept pace with the increased demand for visas.
    Even when applications had cleared the aliens department, they had to go to records for the issue of permits and from thence to passport control office for stamping before being posted back to Germany.
    Colin Coote, a leader writer on
The Times
, who was soon to adopt a
Kindertransport
boy, wrote to Lord Winterton at the Foreign Office claiming that allegations of red tape were too numerous to overlook. Winterton replied unconvincingly that delays were all the fault of the Germans. But the refugee movement was not entirely free from blame. Reading between the lines of RCM reports suggests that Home Office tardiness was matched by RCM muddle.
    Volunteer workers were strong on enthusiasm but weak on experience. This would not have mattered quite so much if there had been strong leadership. But those at the top like Norman Bentwich and Wyndham Deedes did not see themselves as executive officers, while Mami Bentwich who took on the role of organising secretary was easily diverted by competing responsibilities. Through to the spring of 1939 the chief authority seems to have rested with a Major Langdon, whose military style, deriving from the ‘do as I tell you’ school of management, was ill-suited to what was essentially a cooperative venture. Later problems with authoritarian, even anti-Semitic, wardens of hostels and training camps can be traced back to appointments made at this time.
    A powerful compensating factor was the recruitment of two outstanding volunteer workers, both idiosyncratic personalities who were used to having things their own way. Lola Hahn-Warburg was the daughter of the Hamburg banker Max Warburg, wife to Berlin industrialist Rudo Hahn, and sister-in-law of the educationalist Kurt Hahn of Gordonstpun fame. With her husband and two children, she came to Britain in September 1938 after a tip-off that she was on a Nazi blacklist of outspoken Zionists. Two months later she was part of the Samuel delegation to the Home Office to urge government support for the
Kindertransporte
. It was not a role that she welcomed. Trying to make a home with what little her family had managed to bring out, and still struggling with a language which to her dying day she delivered with unmistakable Teutonic precision, she had much else to occupy her. But Norman Bentwich, who knew of her active participation in the emigration of young people from Germany, both on behalf of the
Reichsvertretung
and of
Youth Aliyah
, pressed her to go along as a first-hand witness to the suffering of Jewish children under Nazi rule. After that it was a short step to the cramped office at the RCM, where Lola Hahn-Warburg became the reigning expert on children who were at odds with their foster parents or teachers or employers, or simply with themselves. Bearing in mind that at least one in ten of those who came over on the
Kindertransporte
ended up with