The Surrender & Sanctuary Project has been working with local artist Angenita Hardy-Teekens and a group of local people on a textile art project based on the first 196 unaccompanied children who arrived on the first Kindertransport which came through Harwich and Dovercourt on 2nd December 1938.
The textile piece has been an ongoing project over the winter 2018/19 period, with local people creating their own square to contribute to a final complete piece. Each square represents a part of the Kindertransport story, and the range of experiences of the Kinder through oral histories and archive documentation.
Angenita on the project:
‘The act of taking in 10.000 child refugees from Germany before Britain declared war to Germany is an example of how humanity can be great. Harwich has played a part in this and should be proud of that. I was delighted to, with a group of local people, visualise the stories of these refugee children, using textile art. Over half of the world’s refugees are children. There are 68.5 million people in the world who are misplaced due to violence. The problem has not gone away. Anything we can do is important. Hopefully this work of Art will draw attention to both our local history and our attitudes today.’
The art work will be displayed at St Nicholas’s Church as a part of the upcoming Harwich Festival, and will be open for viewing at all Festival events held at St Nicholas’s and at other times when the Church is open to the public.
This project has been inspired by the Kindertransport Memory Quilt, created by the Kindertransport Association of America, which was created in 1999 and is on permanent display in the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Michigan. A digital tour is available here: https://www.holocaustcenter.org/exhibitions/exhibits/kindertransport-memory-quilt-exhibit/
We thank the Kindertransport Association for their help and support with this textile project.