Banality of evil

Holocaust art must be approached with care. There’s a worry that by finding fault you’re somehow failing to take the world’s all-time Number one human rights violation seriously. Kindertransport follows the tale of Eva, a Jewish schoolgirl sent from Nazi Germany to Britain at the close of the 1930s. She’s adopted by a rough-diamond Manchester mum (lovely work from Eileen O’Brien) but when her real mother returns after the war Eva claims she’s been abandoned and stages a complete emotional withdrawal.

It’s rather heartbreaking and a touch over-familiar. The best moment comes early on when a sneaky German customs officer rifles through Eva’s bags, steals her money and fobs her off with a sweet. In that simple, horrible scene we see now that Nazi behaviour, far from residing in some outlandish realm of iniquity, is just ordinary neighbourly vindictiveness allowed to flourish unchecked.