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Displacement and Identity
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Kindertransport, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Kindertransport takes place in the present day and during World War II. The play examines the painful sacrifices that its main characters make in order to survive. In the play’s earlier timeline, in 1939, a German Jewish woman named Helga sends her young daughter Eva away to live in England, an impossible decision that ultimately saves Eva’s life—but has devastating effects on Eva’s relationship with Helga, who Eva feels abandoned her, even if that abandonment was what allowed Eva to survive the war. (Eva’s parents were both sent to Auschwitz, where Eva’s father perished.) Though it crushes Helga to leave her daughter, it was a sacrifice she needed to make to ensure Eva’s survival; indeed, as Helga tells Eva during their emotionally wrought reunion many years later, “We have all done bad things in the last years that we regret. That is how we survive.”
In England, Lil Miller takes Eva in and cares for her in ways that Helga no longer can. As the years pass, Eva gradually distances herself from her past, denying her roots and repressing memories of her “old” family in order to survive the pain of their abandonment. In time, she assimilates into English culture, becoming a naturalized citizen and adopting the English name of Evelyn. In Evelyn’s mind, denying her past is the only way she can muster the strength to move forward and have a functional adult life. When Helga finds Eva after the war, the sacrifices that both women have made for Eva’s survival come painfully into focus. Though sending Eva away very likely saved Eva’s life, it caused irreparable damage to Eva’s relationship with Helga. After spending so many years apart, Evelyn now considers Lil Miller her mother, and she has no interest in rekindling the relationship she and Helga had before the war. Kindertransport suggests that people must sometimes make painful sacrifices in order to survive,—even it means hurting others or making decisions they will later come to regret.
Related Themes from Other Texts
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Sacrifice and Survival ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Sacrifice and Survival appears in each scene of Kindertransport. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Sacrifice and Survival Quotes in Kindertransport
Below you will find the important quotes in Kindertransport related to the theme of Sacrifice and Survival .
Act 1, Scene 1 Quotes
HELGA. Of course they would send them away if they had places. Any good parent would do that.
EVA. Why?
HELGA. Because any good parent would want to protect their child.
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EVELYN. A chipped glass is ruined forever.
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HELGA. My grandfather used to wear a black hat and coat. ‘You are my children. You are my jewels.’ He told me. ‘We old ones invest our future in you.’
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LIL. You’ve made a mess, haven’t you?
FAITH. Only laying them out.
LIL. You’ll make your mum even worse.
FAITH. Gran, there’s no harm meant.
LIL. There’s harm caused all the same.
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RATCATCHER. I will search you out whoever wherever you are.
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Act 1, Scene 2 Quotes
LIL (gesturing). Over. Finished. Done. Goodbye. Yes. That’s the word. Goodbye.
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LIL. She just wanted to put the past behind her. It was for the best.
FAITH. Whose best?
LIL. Hers.
FAITH. What about mine?
LIL. Don’t be so bloody selfish.
FAITH. Don’t you think that this affects me?
LIL. It affects her more.
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LIL. Don’t hide behind the German. It won’t protect you and you know it.
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Act 2, Scene 1 Quotes
POSTMAN. Thank you for the lesson in saluting (He salutes.) Heil Hitler!
EVA watches.
POSTMAN. Do it back. Heil Hitler!
EVA. Heil Hitler!
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EVELYN. The whitewash has been stripped away and underneath is pure filth.
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LIL. Should’ve realised. Shouldn’t have made you go.
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LIL. Did I start the war? Am I Hitler?
EVELYN. You might as well have been.
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LIL. I saved you.
EVELYN. Part of me is dead because of you.
LIL. Nothing you say will make me walk out that door.
EVELYN. Murderer.
LIL. I kept you alive. More than alive.
EVELYN. Child-stealer.
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EVA. I’m fed up of hiding the watch under my socks to stop hearing the ticking at night.
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FAITH. Did they die for you to forget?
EVELYN. Why are you being so cruel?
FAITH. Destroying these was crueller.
EVELYN. Do you think I don’t know that.
FAITH. Why did you do it then?
EVELYN. Because – and I don’t expect you to begin to understand this – it helps me? It gives me something I can do in the face of it all.
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EVELYN. Well, blood is all I have left. Gallons and gallons of the freezing stuff stuck in my veins. One prick, Faith, and I might bleed forever.
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HELGA. Never mind it. We have all done bad things in the last years that we regret. That is how we survive.
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Act 2, Scene 2 Quotes
EVELYN. Don’t hanker after the past. It’s done.
FAITH. It’s still a part of our lives.
EVELYN. It is an abyss.
FAITH. Before, all I knew was a blank space. Now, it’s beginning to fill up. I have a background, a context.
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EVELYN. I was baptized when I was eighteen. I was cleansed that day. Purified.
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EVELYN. Is it so wrong to want a decent, ordinary life?
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EVELYN. They’re just books. You might not want them . . .
FAITH (taking the books). Of course I want them.
EVELYN. One is the storybook and the other is for some Jewish festival.
FAITH. Thank you.
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HELGA. I wish you had lived.
EVELYN. I did my best.
HELGA. Hitler started the job and you finished it. You cut off my fingers and pulled out my hair one strand at a time.
EVELYN. You were the Ratcatcher. Those were his eyes, his face . . .
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EVELYN. Take them.
FAITH picks up the box of toys.
Have you got everything you need now?
FAITH. More or less.
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