Erection date: 2006
{On a plaque on a nearby wall:}
Hope Square, dedicated to the Children of the Kindertransport, who found hope and safety in Britain through the gateway of Liverpool Street Station.
Association of Jewish Refugees, Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief, 2006.
{On a plaque behind the statues:}
Children of the Kindertransport
In gratitude to the people of Britain for saving the lives of 10,000 unaccompied mainly Jewish children who fled from Nazi persecution in 1938 and 1939.
"Whosoever rescues a single soul is credited as thought they had saved the whole world." Talmud
{To the sides of the statues are 16 bronze blocks carry place-names:}
Cologne, Hanover, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Bremen, Munich, Danzig, Breslau, Prague, Hamburg, Mannheim, Leipzig, Berlin, Vienna
{On a plaque attached to the railway track behind the statues:}
Frank Meisler, Arie Ovadia, 2006
Such a sad and touching subject, these children can't fail but bring to mind the many thousands of children who did not survive. The sculptor, Meisler, was one of the children saved.
However, it seems all statues of children must fall into one of two camps: kitschy sweet, or creepy in a 'Village of the Damned' sort of way. And, to our eyes, these land squarely in the latter group.
2022: From Jewish News: "... the philanthropist and Holocaust survivor Sir Erich Reich, ... died suddenly on Wednesday {2/11/2022}, aged 87. Sir Erich was proud to be the smallest boy depicted in the famous Kindertransport statue by Frank Meisler at Liverpool Street Station, yet he had few memories of his own journey to the UK in 1939, at the age of four."
Site: Kindertransport - Meisler (1 memorial)
EC2, Liverpool Street , Hope Square, Liverpool Street Station
There are other related statue groups by the same sculptor at a number of other stations including: the main Railway Station in Gdansk, Poland; Dammtor Bahnhof Hamburg; Friedrichstrasse Railway Station Berlin; Ferry Port Rotterdam.
This site used to be occupied by another Kindertransport sculpture, by Flor Kent. That was removed before 2006, and then reinstalled in a different form, in the lower level of the station in 2011.
