The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 13

5TA THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 2001 A13 Whose Thomas the Tank Engine is it, anyway? Children in Nazi Germany escape into arms of strangers BOC Richard R. Roberts Letters to the editor Mail to Letters to the Editor, The Indianapolis Star, P.O. Box 145, Indianapolis, IN 46206-0145. Fax to (317) 444-6800. E-mail to stareditor stamews.com Include your name, address and telephone number.

Rod Smith Mi trapped in Germany when hostilities began, recalls Berlin in wartime. His parents were sent to Auschwitz and never seen again. Finally, the Nazis sent him, his wife and 3-year-old son to Auschwitz. The Nazis took his wife and son away. He never saw them again.

Gordon reached England but was arrested as an enemy alien and sent on an overloaded, foul ship to Australia. Immature teen-age girls worried about what to pack which had to be very little for the trip to England. When they arrived, they had difficulties with the language and class system. The authors trace their chosen few Kindertransport children through the years to today and sketch their lives, fates, memories and words, weaving inspiring accounts of hardy, resilient personalities that refused to bow to the forces of hatred, war and disorder. Many of them lived to advanced years, adding stories of their lives to the incredibly vast saga of a turbulent and terrifying era.

The book is rich in photographs of the fresh-faced youngsters who were caught up In the human storm; this adds further dimension to the stories. As for the authors, Harris has won two Academy Awards, the latest for the feature-length documentary, The Long Way Home. He is the writer and director of the film version of Into the Arms of Strangers. Oppenheimer, whose mother was a Kindertransport child, is Now my son's into Thomas the Tank Engine so little wooden trains, tracks and Thomas books are everywhere. The escapades of the little blue engine from the Island of Sodor are a really welcome break and a thorough delight after Barney the cavorting dinosaur and his weird crew accosted our home a few months ago.

But running a kid's railroad has its own challenges, and at 2, my son can hardly be blamed for being uncoordinated. He's too little and therefore unable to build the train track to its full potential. on the other hand, am superbly coordinated when it comes to Thomas. My hands are sufficiently large, and, unlike my son, I can "see" the whole thing. I don't go around grabbing the nearest piece and yanking it from its spot like he does.

He picks up poor Clarabel the Coach and hurls her into the air when his frustrations with Cranky Crane and Edward the Engine get the better of him. In building the track and playing over "here" (see me pointing), he has absolutely no appreciation of the impact his efforts have over "there." His reach destroys what I have already built. His little tummy and elbows annihilate what I spent hours perfecting. Do these father-son train crashes result in an outbreak of domestic discord? Not usually. I find myself being uncharacteristically patient.

I stand back and tell myself, "He'll be asleep soon and I can have the whole thing to myself." who have only thumbs when it comes to things mechanical, built a table for Thomas. I went to the hardware store and stood in line with people who were building themselves houses and whole blocks of apartments and, when it came my turn, I told a very nice man that I needed a flat surface with a little edge for Thomas. Also profiled are parents Miriam Cohen, Franzi Grossman and Charlotte Levy, and rescuers Nicholas Winton and Norbert Woll-heim. The book threads its way deftly among young lives stunned by the inhuman violence of Kristallnacht and worsening horrors in a Germany they had loved. Segal: "1 remember the sense of everything being turned upside down, everything wrong, no one where they were supposed to be, including me." Hellman: "My bar mitzvah was a month after Kristallnacht.

It was held in an attic, with other young boys who were below the age of 16 and old men who were beyond the age of 65. My father was not there. He was in a concentration camp, as was my mother. I felt terrible I felt that the sooner we could get out of Germany, the better The house mother of my school wrote to Baron James de Rothschild (in England). Would he take 26 of her boys, her husband, herself and her two daughters? He wrote back in January that he would.

On 16 March we went with the Kinder-transport to England." Wollheim, who had organized the escape of the children but was A fascinating but little known human drama of the World War II era is the poignant story of more than 10,000 children separated from their parents and sent to a foreign land to escape the violence of rampaging Nazi storm troopers and mobs. Mark J. Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer tell their stories in Into the Arms of Strangers. They explain that the youngsters came from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Ninety percent were Jewish.

Their danger became sear-ingly evident during Kristallnacht, the wave of Nazi-inspired beatings, killings and pillaging of Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses on Nov. 9, 1938. More and more victims were being hauled off to concentration camps and would die there. It was clear that war was fast approaching. Plans to transport as many children as possible to safety abroad were hindered by war tensions, shortages of money and other resources caused by the worldwide depression.

The United States was among the countries that refused to take part in the program, which became known as the Kindertran-sport children's transport. Welcome came from only one nation: Britain. So the rush began, packing a few personal possessions, getting transport to the Netherlands and sailing by ferryboat to England. Most of the children did not know how to speak English; they were assigned to homes of volunteers, in strange surroundings, un- sure whether they would ever see their families again. 1 Many never did.

Brothers, sisters, mother 4 and fathers would be killed or disappear in concentra- The hardware man, after figuring out who Thomas was (doesn't everybody know Thomas?) and why he needed a surface at all, spoke very slowly to me as he showed which little nails to buy, what hammer to use after finding me the exact piece of wood I needed. I hauled everything home and got banging away. In no time at all, my son, Thomas and I had a perfect place to play. I have had to come to terms with a few things: It is his track, his learning, it's the fun he has that is really important. If I keep getting in the way, he'll learn more than I would prefer frorn.his train set.

He might even resent my knowledge, regard my involvement as interference and quite possibly not want to play with the track at all. In fact, I have the potential to remove all the fun from his experience so, Just when I am getting on my high horse about how things should be when it comes to laying Thomas track, I cannot help but remember how little of my own "big picture" I have been able to see. I realize how many train tracks have been carefully laid out for me that I proceeded to yank out of position to send my life careening in exactly the manner I see Clarabel the Coach doing right now across our family room floor. Smith is executive director of Open Hand Inc. His column appears Saturdays.

Contact him at rodopenhandinc.com or www.rodesmith.com Friday Forum The topic: Telemarketing Phone solicitors are catching a lot of static these days. State legislation has been proposed to allow prospective customers to place their names on a "don't call" list, and restrictions on telemarketers ranks near the top of the People's Agenda poll in The Star. Is phone-selling an invasion of privacy or a legitimate form of commerce? Should the government get involved to protect us from its annoyances and abuses? On Feb. 2, Friday Forum letters will address this question. Send them, using the directions above, by Wednesday, Jan.

31. Coming Sunday Focus on Faith John F. Fink explains why St. Peter has been such a popular apostle. To make contact Kathy Hynds, administrative assistant, (317) 444-6170.

KK JOHAN Ma A INTO THE Arms Of Strangers JtOttlt Te MNDtMRANSPCUr 5 HiH At 1 1)1(1) Rll hard INUom.vtlON BV DA11U CFSARAN'l 2 4i the producer of that film. A preface by Lord Richard Attenborough notes that nearly 1.5 million children were murdered in the Holocaust. An introduction by David Cesarani is a concise history of the rise of Hitler and the Nazis and the formation of the Kinder-transport. This is a powerful and compelling book, appropri-. ate at a time when, for many young Americans, the horrors of totalitarian dictatorship and World War II seem as ancient as the Trojan War.

Roberts is retired chief editorial writer of The Star. tion camps, their fates unknown. This book tells the stories of 13 of the children, three of the parents and two rescuers who bring to mind the heroic compassion of Schmdler's List. It follows the lives of Lorraine Allar, Lory Cahn, He-dy Epstein, Kurt Fuchel, Vera Gissing, Alexander Gordon, Eva Hayman, Jack Hellman, Bertha Leverton, Ursula Rosenfeld, Inge Sa-dan, Lore Segal and Robert Sugar. The authors take us from a childhood in the Germany of composers, scientists, philosophers, writers and artists, to the hell-on-earth fashioned by Hitler and his gang.

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Later in his life, he concluded that vitamin if taken in large enough quantities, would help the body fight off the common cold. Mahatma Gandhi, India's political leader, was probably the most famous pacifist of the 20th century, but he was ignored by the Nobel Peace Committee. He achieved India's independence from Great Britain. Lech Walesa, leader of the Solidarity movement in Po of how to extract ammonia from nitrogen in the air. This aided agriculture greatly.

However, his prize-winning work had a dark side. He introduced poison gas into World War the effects of which were gruesome. The first attack was in April 1915 when 5,000 canisters along several miles emitted gas that took French troops by surprise. They suffered thousands of dead or seriously wounded. Paul Ehrlich of Germany is noted for his cure for syphilis, the "major bullet" salvarsan, which came two years after his prize was won in 1908.

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They have lasted for over 100 years. Richards, of Zbnsville, is president of Euro-Link Publlcflela-tions and Marketing. Over 150 New 2001 Cadillacs Available! several times, while the Nobel committee did honor the treatment of mental illness by lobotomy, the author acidly points out. This book is a carefully researched history of the world's most famous and most sought after prizes that now cover six fields of endeavor: literature, physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and economics. It reveals that Alfred Nobel, after Inventing dynamite in 1866, soon had 15 dynamite factories.

He lived in France for 30 years, and "there was no evidence that he had a single close friend." He never married and clearly had a contempt for mankind. There are many interesting anecdotes. After the end of World War the first prize to be given went to the German Fritz Haber for his discovery around 1908 iROCKHART ESzae "The Power of The fusion of design and technology." 5550 North Keystone Avenue mile South of Glendale Mall www.lockhartcadillac.com 317.253 1551 500.752.9213 1287 U.S. 31 South, Greenwooci 2 miles South of Greenwood Mall ww.lc 317.865.1551 800.43.0415 Yr; The Nobel Prize Author: Burton Feldman Publisher: Arcade Publishing $29.95.