What I read yesterday both does and does not remind me of modern times.

"Many foster homes were not properly vetted and she feared that vulnerable children might find themselves in unsuitable homes or that they had been taken in as cheap domestic help. With the constant influx of new children, arrangements were so hurried, 'none of us knew the children; in many cases not even the bare facts of their backgrounds; and hardly anyone knew the families who offered to take them into their homes,' she wrote later. Tante Anna's disagreement with the Refuge Children's Movement over the weekly 'cattle market' escalated into a painful clash of views" (144).

~ Deborah Cadbury, The School that Escaped the Nazis

Does and does not.

"The Refugee Children's Movement did accept that there were problems at Dovercourt. Organisers conceded that they had difficulty matching each child with a family of a similar background. One internal report went so far as to acknowledge the camps were little more than 'slave markets' where foster parents, however well-meaning, went to select one child 'but unconsciously did harm to many by looking them over and rejecting them'. Indeed, one girl, when her name was announced on the camp tannoy, cried out, 'Ich bin verkauft . . .' ('I am sold'). But for all this, there was no other way of solving the essential problem: to save children they had to empty the reception camps quickly. Volunteers on the ground in Greater Germany responsible for making the selections for the Kindertransports were facing panic from parents desperate to get their children to safety. Tante Anna did not succeed in stopping the hurried foster placements, but she did eventually bring an end to the 'cattle market'. The marching of children and potential foster parents was carried out more discreetly, through private interviews rather than the dreaded Sunday parade" (144).

~ Deborah Cadbury, The School that Escaped the Nazis