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Wednesday 27 Jan 2021

Liverpool Street station lights the darkness for Holocaust Memorial Day

Region & Route:

Eastern: Anglia

The lights outside one of London Liverpool Street station’s main entrances have been turned purple today, Wednesday 27 January, to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

The theme for the day this year is “Be the light in the darkness” and the purple lights at the station are intended to encourage remembrance and send a message of solidarity.

By taking part in Holocaust Memorial Day, the team at Liverpool Street are also helping to commemorate the role of the station and the wider Anglia railway in the Kindertransport.

Kindertransport is the name given to the organised rescue mission which brought 10,000 mainly Jewish children to the UK from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and later Poland between December 1938 and September 1939.

It was not possible for the children to leave from German ports, so most travelled by train to the Netherlands from their home countries, where they boarded cross-channel ferries to the port at Harwich.

If they had foster homes or hostels to go to, the children would then go by train to Liverpool Street station, where they would be met by their new families, or the organisations that had arranged their accommodation.

Some children without prearranged foster families did not go immediately to London, but spent their first weeks at temporary holding centres.

Liverpool Street station has two permanent memorials recognising its role as the final stop on a long journey to safety for the Kindertransport children.

One of the memorials can be found on Hope Square, which is the main entrance on Liverpool Street itself. It is called The Arrival and is part of a series of five sculptures created by Frank Meisler, who himself came to Britain as a Kindertransport child. The five sculptures are installed across Europe along Meisler’s personal route to safety.

The other memorial, with the boy and the girl, is by the entrance to the tube on the main concourse. This was created by Flor Kent and is called Fur Das Kind (For the Child / Pro Dítê). There are two other sculptures in the series, which are located at stations in Vienna and Prague.

In September 2009, The Winton Train arrived at Liverpool Street station from Harwich as part of a commemorative train journey from the Czech Republic. This was organised as a tribute to Sir Nicholas Winton, who supervised the rescue of 669 children in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport.

Emma Watson, Network Rail station manager for Liverpool Street, said: “We have lit up in purple to tie in with the Holocaust Memorial Day theme of being a light in the darkness.

“Today we’re also taking an extra moment to think of the children who finally reached safety here at our station in 1938 and 1939, as well as the families left behind. The Kindertransport is an incredibly important part of our history and we are fortunate to have two poignant sculptures that remind us of this every day.”

Dawn Waterman, archives and heritage manager at the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: “It’s great to see Network Rail marking Holocaust Memorial Day at Liverpool Street station.

“My father was a Kindertransport child himself and travelled from Harwich to Liverpool Street at the age of eight. He was excited to be travelling on a train with so many other children but he had no idea then that he would never see his parents again. But at least he was safe, unlike millions of others. It’s absolutely crucial that we remember the horrors of the Holocaust, as well as those people who went above and beyond to help their fellow humans.”