Online Film Screening
Melissa Hacker: My Knees Were Jumping—Remembering the Kindertransports

Holocaust Rememberance Day - Special Online Screening (Only Available in the UK)

Sat, 27.01.2024 -
Sat, 03.02.2024
7:00 PM - 19:00

On the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 and the 85th anniversary of the Kindertransport, we are showing the film My Knees are Jumping by American director Melissa Hacker online for one week. In addition to this online screening, we will also show the film as part of the event "Representing the Kindertransport" on January 30, 2024 at the Goethe-Institut. Melissa Hacker will be present and, together with other experts, will discuss how the Kindertransports are remembered in different countries using different media.

In the nine months just prior to World War II nearly 10,000 children were sent, without their parents, to Great Britain from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Smaller numbers travelled to Sweden, Switzerland, France, and many emigrated to the United States, Israel, Canada, and Australia. The transports started following the physical violence against Jews and their property during the pogroms in November 1938. The first train arrived in England on December 2, 1938. The transports ended with the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. Most of the children never saw their parents and families again, as they soon after boarded trains deporting them to death camps in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe.


One of the children that were rescued by a Kindertransport was Melissa Hacker’s mother, who fled from Vienna and eventually settled in the United States, where she became an Academy Award nominated costume designer, working on films such Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, The Hustler, The Miracle Worker, Tootsie, and many more classic American movies. She is a strong presence of the film talking about her experiences alongside other former child refugees, many of them women. They remember the antisemitism of schoolmates and neighbours, the violence and their fears of the Kristallnacht, the difficult decision their parents had to make to send them off into the unknown, and how they were received in England by foster families. Hacker gives them plenty of space to talk and reflect on past events making this film a moving and invaluable record of testimony.

USA 1996, 76 mins.
Directed, Produced and Edited by Melissa Hacker. Narrated by Joan Woodward. With Eddie Better, Sonnie Better, Erika Estis, Kurt Fuchel, Margarete Goldberger, Anni Goodman, Ralph Goodman, Franzi Groszmann, Ruth Morley, Lore Segal, Norbert Wollheim.