The BBC has issued an apology after facing criticism for a December 26 episode of its popular program The Repair Shop, which discussed the Kindertransport without mentioning Jews, despite the operation’s central role in rescuing Jewish children from Nazi persecution during the Holocaust, i24NEWS reported.
The episode centered on the restoration of a 19th‑century cello belonging to theater producer Martin Landau, who fled Nazi Germany for Britain at age 14 aboard a Kindertransport convoy. The cello had been smashed by Nazi guards shortly before his departure and remained unrepaired for decades.
The Repair Shop, known for featuring expert craftspeople restoring items of deep personal significance, devoted nearly a quarter of the hour‑long episode to the cello’s history and the broader context of the Kindertransport. British actress Helen Mirren presented the instrument to the team, and luthier Becky Houghton restored it before it was played on screen by Jewish cellist Raphael Wallfisch.
However, the program never stated that Landau was Jewish or that the Kindertransport was primarily a rescue operation for Jewish children fleeing Nazi persecution. Historically, the Kindertransport enabled the evacuation of approximately 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia between 1938 and 1939, with support from Jewish and humanitarian organizations.
The Jewish Chronicle reported that the word “Jew" was allegedly removed during editing from a sentence spoken by Mirren, which aired simply as, “…children were sent by the Kindertransport," without further explanation.
Following public backlash, the BBC added a correction to the episode’s iPlayer page, acknowledging that “the Kindertransport was the organized evacuation of approximately 10,000 children, the majority of whom were Jewish." As of early this week, however, the episode’s description on the BBC’s official website still did not reference Landau’s Jewish identity or the Jewish nature of the rescue effort.
The BBC has continuously come under fire in recent years over its anti-Israel bias, which has reared its head even more since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
In November of 2023, the corporation published an apology after falsely claiming that IDF troops were targeting medical teams in battles in and around the Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
Before that, the BBC falsely accused Israel of being responsible for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza, which the IDF proved was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket. The network later acknowledged that “it was false to speculate" on the explosion.
Last year, the BBC faced mounting scrutiny for using the son of a senior Hamas official as a narrator in its documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone."
Following the criticism, the British broadcaster acknowledged that there were “serious flaws" in the program.
Last month, the BBC announced compulsory anti-discrimination training for all staff, beginning with modules on antisemitism and Islamophobia.