The 'Belsen boys' who moved to Ascot; Central British Fund

The 'Belsen boys' who moved to Ascot
Shortly after the end of World War Two a group of young Holocaust survivors was flown to the UK to recuperate. Thirty of them were housed in the Berkshire town of Ascot, famous for the pomp of the Royal Ascot horse races, where they made an incongruous sight, writes Rosie Whitehouse.

The 'Belsen boys' who moved to Ascot

 

This website tells the story of the Windermere Boys, three hundred child Holocaust Survivors closely connected to the Lake District in Cumbria, UK. They stayed on the 'lost' wartime village of Calgarth Estate in 1945, an estate that was located at Troutbeck Bridge near Windermere.

LDHP Permanent Exhibition - Lake District Holocaust Project

 

I think there were a few girls there as well

 

Re.

(A recent BBC audio - in the "Open Country" series)

BBC Radio 4 - Open Country, The Windermere Boys

The Windermere Boys
Open Country
Helen Mark tells the story of the ‘Windermere Boys’, 300 child holocaust survivors who found rehabilitation and a new life in the Lake District nearly 70 years ago.

 

BBC One - Who Do You Think You Are?, Series 15, Robert Rinder

https://www.thejc.com/culture/tv/ju...o-do-you-think-you-are-robert-rinder-1.468165
"During the programme, he retraces his grandfather’s steps by travelling to Piotrkow, Poland, where Morris was born, through to Buchenwald in Germany and finally to Windermere in the Lake District.
...
He is keen to mention the UK’s role in his grandfather’s story. Through a Jewish charity called the Central British Fund, Morris was one of the 300 orphaned refugee children housed in Windermere after the war. As a result, throughout his life in England, Morris retained “a complete love of his country and democracy under the rule of law.”"



From the Holocaust to Lake Windermere

 

BBC iPlayer - The Windermere Children

BBC drama: Broadcast 27 Jan 2020

"August, 1945. A coachload of children arrive at the Calgarth Estate by Lake Windermere. They are child survivors of the Nazi Holocaust that has devastated Europe’s Jewish population. Carrying only the clothes they wear and a few meagre possessions, they bear the emotional and physical scars of all they have suffered.

Charged with looking after them is Oscar Friedmann, a German-born child psychologist. He and his team of counsellors have just four months to help the children reclaim their lives. By the lake, in sunshine and rain the children eat, learn English, play football and ride bikes. They yearn for news of their loved ones every day, and meanwhile they are invited to express their trauma through painting. Some locals taunt them but they are embraced by others. A number of the older children steal and they are haunted by nightmares. Nevertheless, it is in this environment that they begin to heal.

Eventually, letters from The Red Cross arrive with the terrible confirmation that for nearly all the children their siblings and parents have been murdered. One child, however, is convinced that his brother survived.

The Windermere Children is the stark, moving and ultimately redemptive story of the bonds they make with one another, and of how the friendships forged at Windermere become a lifeline to a fruitful future. In the absence of relatives, they find family in each other."

 

There were actually 732 child survivors from the camps who were flown to Britain. Some had survived only because the Luftwaffe specified the use of child slave labour for making fiddly parts and this saved them from the gas chambers. The expert on the use of child forced labour is Professor Dieter Steinert currently at Wolverhampton University. Dieter was supervisor for my MA dissertation. He has built up a significant body of personal accounts by survivors. For a good general account of the children who came to Britain read The Boys by Sir Martin Gilbert

 

Ceremony marks 75 years since the Windermere Boys arrived in Cumbria | ITV News

A ceremony to mark 75 years since the Windermere Boys touched down in Cumbria, to start their new life, will take place at Carlisle Airport today.

In 1945, with no surviving family members, 300 boys and girls from concentration and labour camps in eastern Europe left their home countries behind to live in the Lake District.