Windermere Children: In Their Own Words, The (2020)

[bunniefuu]

♪

IAIN GLEN: In August , at the end of the Second World w*r,

children were flown from Prague

to a remote corner of northwest England.

We had no parents, we had no brothers or sisters.

We had nobody.

We're just on our own.

Everyone was on, on our own.

GLEN: They were all survivors of the n*zi concentration camps

and were brought here as part of a remarkable scheme

to rehabilitate child refugees.

I came with absolutely nothing.

I had no clothes of my own, no toys, no possessions.

IKE ALTERMAN: Because we didn't know when we're going

to get our next meal,

that was still in our brains.

Used to... wherever you had a pocket, a pocket,

you started pushing food into it.

GLEN: Amidst the chaos of postwar Europe,

one charity, called the Central British Fund,

organized this entire project.

Leonard Montefiore and, and his team,

they had to liaise with the Czech authorities,

they had to liaise with the Red Cross, the R.A.F.

There were lots of organizations

that all had to be pulled together.

GLEN: Having survived the Holocaust,

their new home was a quiet and beautiful location--

Windermere in the Lake District.

After all the dirt and deprivations we had,

after we came to Windermere, it was absolutely fantastic.

[panting]

ALTERMAN: It was a wonderful feeling,

being free and doing what you want to do.

[laughing]

GLEN: They were cared for by a team of volunteers,

many of whom were refugees themselves,

who brought with them experimental ideas

on child psychology.

LYDIA TISCHLER: In front of our eyes,

new techniques were being developed,

so in this sense, Windermere was really quite innovative.

GLEN: Over the course of one summer,

the children began to recover,

rebuilding their lives and forming life-long friendships.

It was like a family, really, a family affair.

GLEN: This film tells the story of an extraordinary project

and the children's survival.

AREK HERSH: I started feeling

like I'm a human being again.

That's what Windermere did to me.

♪

♪

GLEN: Windermere in the Lake District.

This beautiful and secluded location was home to a factory

which made seaplanes during the Second World w*r.

In , the aircraft factory closed,

but the buildings and accommodation remained.

And it was here that an extraordinary act of rescue

took place.

Historian Trevor Avery has done extensive research

into what became known as the Windermere Project.

Over here, directly over this fence

and just in the near distance,

would have been the canteen.

So we're at the epicenter of the estate.

Obviously, there's nothing left there today,

but that's, that's basically what we're looking at.

[children shouting in distance]

♪

GLEN: children arrived on the th of August ,

but they began their lives thousands of miles away,

in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.

I was born in a place called Ozarówice.

I was very happy there as a child, roaming around.

I used to love that feeling, to go to bed

and cuddle up next to my grandfather,

who had a long beard.

SAM LASKIER: As a child, I enjoyed every minute of it.

We lived in Warsaw with my family.

I had two sisters.

My parents were both tailors.

♪

I had one brother and three sisters.

My brother was called Tovia,

my, one of my sisters was called Bluma,

Itka, and Mania.

My eldest one was Mania.

GLEN: Before the start of the Second World w*r,

Poland was home to over three million Jews,

the largest population of Jewish people in Europe.

♪

LASKIER: This photograph, I've got

my mum, my dad, and my older sister.

And my mother might have been pregnant with me.

I was , and that's the last time I saw them.

♪

GLEN: In Warsaw,

Sam Laskier witnessed the Nazis' invasion of Poland

in September .

♪

LASKIER: They marched into Warsaw.

I went to watch them, and I admired,

well, sort of admired-- they looked, they looked fantastic.

The tanks, the motorbikes, the uniforms,

it impressed me tremendously.

Not realizing what's coming afterwards.

GLEN: After Poland surrendered,

the Nazis introduced anti-Semitic laws

against the country's Jewish population.

Businesses were closed, properties seized,

and Jews forced to wear a Star of David to identify them.

Certain restrictions started.

With this, you couldn't go to a school anymore,

you couldn't go on this side of, of the town,

you couldn't go to that side of the town.

If you saw Germans, you had to bow.

And you were fearful of going out, because...

You, you were fearful in case a German soldier was passing.

Because you knew-- trouble.

♪

GLEN: The Nazis segregated Poland's Jewish population,

forcing them from their homes into overcrowded ghettos

in cities across the country.

Arek Hersh was ten years old.

There was , people in the ghetto.

♪

I've seen people starve in the street,

dying in the street, children dying in the street...

Starvation was absolutely horrific.

All kind of illness developed.

No doctors, no medication.

People and families slept in the streets.

Every day, people came home from work.

They beat them,

and also started hanging people.

We had to watch them being hanged.

Terrible situation.

We were... that was in .

GLEN: In , the Nazis began their final solution:

a plan to exterminate all Jews in occupied Europe.

In the ghettos, people were rounded up and separated.

Tens of thousands were sent to their deaths.

Those deemed physically fit

were chosen to work as sl*ve laborers.

For many Jewish families, once separated,

this was the last they would see of each other.

German soldiers came in

and said to my father,

"Come on, I want your son."

And my father pleaded with them to take him,

that I'm only a little boy.

[inhales]: And...

[voice breaking]: I'm pausing a little bit here because I get so emotional...

[breathing rapidly]

When I mention this, because...

[crying]: They tore, they tore me out

from my father's arm

and took me away.

This moment I will never ever forget.

Then there was my mother, my sister,

and my little brother, who was about nine.

And they're counting, they're counting, they're counting,

they're counting, they go like that.

And the rest-- my mother, my sister, my brother,

and the rest of all these people--

they were marched out.

Can you imagine, nine-year-old, he's got to walk out like that,

with, with g*ns behind him?

Walked out of the square and turned,

never to be seen again.

They started shouting as soon as the trains were there.

All women and children, everybody--

fit or not fit, everybody,

all-- my grandmother, my mother, my sisters, everybody--

all the women and children

had to get into the truck straight away.

And as we were driving past a small wood,

we could hear a lot of sh**ting,

so we more or less knew what happened

to those people who were taken away to begin with.

And one of the women in our truck became hysterical,

she was really screaming.

They stopped the truck,

they dragged her down from the truck,

and they shot her.

HERSH: A hundred people in a goods wagon,

standing up, we had nothing.

For a toilet, we had a bucket and a blanket.

And we arrived after about two-and-a-half days,

we arrived in Auschwitz.

Never heard about the camp, didn't know anything about it.

I'll show you my number.

B.

That was my name, and anytime they wanted me,

they called me by the number.

Slept , people in a barrack.

Three bunks up, all the way down, , people.

On the other side, the same thing.

, people in, in a barrack.

ALTERMAN: We could see at night.

We could see, the chimneys were glowing

from the crematoriums.

hours a day, these chimneys were spewing this stench

that was coming in, in the air.

"Well, I hope it's not me tomorrow.

I hope it's not me tomorrow, I hope that..."

You lived from one day to the next

because you didn't know what was going to happen to you.

♪

GLEN: In January , after surviving over two years

in different sl*ve labor and concentration camps,

some of the child prisoners were moved out.

Facing defeat from the advancing Allies,

the Nazis forced them to march in freezing conditions.

After two days marching, we were stopped in a town.

We, they were loading us onto a, a train, a goods train.

GLEN: Arek, Sam, and Ike were all on the same wagon

traveling to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt

in occupied Czechoslovakia.

This photograph is just a few minutes

after finding out that we'd been liberated.

♪

All the guards were left,

and we, we were left on our own to rejoice--

if you can call it that--

the day of liberation.

♪

This is me on the wagon waving my hand, with my cap on.

♪

I'm actually here, not very noticeable, here in the back.

I knew them all.

We were due to be exterminated the following morning.

♪

HERSH: We were woken up

with music, dancing.

The Russian army liberated us on the th of May .

And I did survive.

♪

I was already getting very, very ill, really ill.

But they found me,

and they took me down into a, a makeshift hospital.

I couldn't talk.

My whole body was in a spasm.

I'm sure that what would have happened another day,

I wouldn't have been alive.

GLEN: By the end of the w*r,

six million Jews had been m*rder*d,

including one-and-a-half million children.

Europe was in chaos.

Cities lay in ruins,

and there were million homeless and displaced people.

At the same time,

Britain was in an economic crisis.

Six years of w*r had left the country almost bankrupt.

Assisting foreign refugees was not seen as a priority.

However, one British philanthropist

was determined to help.

TONY KUSHNER: Leonard Montefiore is a remarkable figure.

His response to these children

reflects both that desire to do the right thing,

to do charity in the right way,

and a genuine compassion and warmth towards them

as very, very scarred young people.

GLEN: A founding member of the Central British Fund for Jewish Relief,

Montefiore had helped

bring , Jewish children to Britain

before the w*r

in a scheme known as the Kindertransport.

KUSHNER: One hand, he wanted to deal with them

with tough philanthropy:

They should stand on their own two feet.

On the other, he was a warm individual

who realized very quickly what these children had gone through,

and that they needed particular care and love

to, to stand a chance being able to keep going

in a, in a world that was not going to make it easy for them.

GLEN: In a speech at Cambridge University,

Montefiore recalled being in Europe in May ,

and witnessing firsthand

the recently liberated Jewish refugees.

KUSHNER: "I saw some of the first arrivals

"brought by air direct from the camps.

"I've never seen anything so ghastly in my life.

"The people I saw were like corpses that walked.

"I shall never quite forget the impression they made.

"But when we got down to considering what could be done,

there were immense difficulties."

Then Montefiore faced the practical issues

of how to bring the children.

But the greater problem was, in a sense,

the Home Office being very, very concerned

that not too many children would be brought here.

They were even more worried about Jewish adults coming,

survivors coming.

They wanted to make the scheme very, very narrow,

and they also wanted the children to come to Britain

for a very limited amount of time.

♪

GLEN: Returning to England,

Montefiore lobbied the British government,

writing numerous letters, until, in July ,

two-year visas were issued

for up to , orphaned Jewish children.

They insisted, however, that Montefiore and the CBF

cover the cost of supporting them.

So, just as he had done with the Kindertransport before the w*r,

Montefiore appealed to Britain's Jewish community.

KUSHNER: They did this

at a time of depression,

economic difficulties in Britain,

so there was enormous generosity.

♪

GLEN: Donations flooded in from all parts of society,

rich and poor, who wanted to help.

Now, Montefiore needed to find somewhere

for the children to stay.

The government suggested a former aircraft factory

in Windermere in the Lake District,

which had had accommodation for its workforce.

KUSHNER: There was a decision made very early on

that the peace, beauty of the countryside

would be restorative.

That they would be physically well looked after--

they'd have warm accommodation, they'd have proper food--

but that they needed to have their, sort of,

spiritual needs dealt with,

and that somehow being in a beautiful, tranquil place

would help them.

♪

GLEN: Back in Czechoslovakia, aid workers began identifying

hundreds of children in the liberated camp of Theresienstadt

who could be evacuated.

So, Montefiore's team flew to Prague.

They had to liaise with the Czech authorities,

they had to liaise with the Red Cross,

the Home Office, the Ministry of Defense, the R.A.F.--

visas, permissions, paperwork.

A large problem being

that these youngsters didn't have proof of I.D.

GLEN: The Home Office had stipulated that the children had to be

between eight and years old and fit to travel.

AVERY: There is a remarkable story of a medical officer.

He was given the job to assess them.

And it seemed that no matter what condition they were in,

he would look them up and down and stamp them "fit to travel."

Which meant they came with TB, with signs of typhus,

with varying illness and ailments.

♪

[chuckling]: We knew we were going somewhere nice.

We knew the w*r was over.

It didn't matter where we were going.

GLEN: August .

children who had survived the n*zi concentration camps

and had been chosen for evacuation

were photographed together in Prague's Old Town Square.

♪

And then we were told that we're going to England.

We couldn't speak any, not a word of English, nothing.

I knew, I knew two words, I know "okay" from the pictures.

♪

GLEN: Montefiore and the CBF

negotiated with the Royal Air Force,

and it was agreed that a squadron of Stirling bombers

would give the children passage to Britain.

♪

♪

I mean, you must have seen some recording of it?

Well, I'm on one of them, as well, there,

as I'm walking up from...

It was only three months after the w*r.

I already had a little bit of hair,

and I looked quite reasonable.

You'd think I'd just come from holidays.

♪

And we were loaded children to a b*mber,

on one side, on the floor-- we sat on the floor.

♪

It was very jolly, actually-- some, even on the plane,

we started dancing around on the plane, as well.

It was so exciting.

That... we were going somewhere

where it's, it's going to be our home.

GLEN: Amongst the children were six three-year-olds

that the Red Cross had included in the evacuation party.

Bela Rosenthal was among this group

who boarded the last plane.

JOANNA MILLAN: My first memories, my first real memories

was snatches of the plane.

Very dark, very noisy, very scary.

Nobody told us anything.

And so being plucked like this, without explanation,

was, was terrifying.

The only comfort I had was,

the other five children were with me.

So we were on the flight, on the same flight together--

we were on the last plane that left from Prague.

GLEN: Six-year-old Zdenka Husserl from Czechoslovakia

was on the same plane.

Separated from her parents at the age of three,

she had no memories from before the camps.

It was very noisy,

there were no seats in the plane,

we sat on the laps of grown-ups.

And I was very attached to somebody.

Because I heard her speak Czech, I thought that was my mother.

And there was a bucket to be sick in

and to be used as a toilet.

♪

NORMAN SHEPHERD: I gave them a bar of chocolate each and they took off,

and then found they'd been sick,

and they...

Because I spoke to them in English,

and also with a bit of irritation from being sick,

and they all got, you know, frightened they were,

poor little devils.

And I went back, and I found some cloths and that,

I said, "Come on, help me to clear it up."

They couldn't understand me,

but they appreciated what I was saying.

So I got them all there,

and after they finished,

I said, "Oh, very good, very good."

And so they came and started holding my hand,

then they got to kissing me.

You could see they hadn't had any,

any affection at all from anyone.

♪

GLEN: After a -hour flight, the children landed in Carlisle,

the nearest airport to Windermere

and the Lake District.

Leonard Montefiore himself

was waiting for them when they arrived.

In Carlisle, the buses waited for us,

and they took us to the promised land,

to Windermere-- outside Windermere.

♪

GLEN: The children came with few clothes or possessions.

They had survived for years

in the deprivation and the horror

of the n*zi death camps.

Welcome to Windermere.

MAN: This way.

[people talking in background]

MONTEFIORE [dramatized]:Welcome.

ALTERMAN: When we arrived

in Windermere,

we didn't know what it was there,

or the... because it was dark.

They let us into what we know now was chalets.

♪

It was like, what, from hell to heaven.

It was, it was phenomenal.

It was delightful, it was tremendous.

There's no, I cannot describe what it was like.

♪

[children laughing]

♪

When you get inside there, and there is a bed,

with...

[crying]: Sheets and...

Cushions.

Things to cover, blankets to cover yourself in.

♪

We just put our heads down and fell asleep.

And we slept, and we slept.

♪

[birds chirping, wind blowing]

LASKIER: The following morning,

of course, we had a very big dining hall.

GOLDBERGER: One talks, how did we feel in the camp?

We were starving all the time.

Thinking of was food.

Not families, not, not anything-- food.

♪

Saw the tables laid with bread, we just couldn't believe it.

♪

As the women were cutting it, they were taking it off quickly.

[children clamoring]

Because we didn't know when we were going to get our next meal.

That was still in our brains.

Used to-- wherever you had a pocket, a pocket,

you started pushing food into it.

Some of them hid it under the mattress

because they thought they'll never have bread again.

♪

[panting]

Places we were before was just under hardship and hunger,

and to come to a place like Windermere,

it was absolutely heavenly.

Real heavenly, really heavenly.

[birds chirping]

GLEN: As well as finding the perfect place

for the children's rehabilitation,

Montefiore also chose

the right staff to care for them.

Leading the team was Oscar Friedmann.

AVERY: Leonard Montefiore wanted to appoint people

who would have known something

of what these children had gone through.

And I think Oscar was that person.

GLEN: A German-born Jew and an orphan himself,

Friedmann had trained as a teacher and a psychiatrist

before escaping n*zi persecution in .

AVERY: Oscar Friedmann was a fascinating man.

He was a, a psychiatrist by training.

He himself had survived

a concentration camp, Sachsenhausen.

He'd been badly beaten up in there.

He knew the cruelties,

and he knew something of the cruelties

that these children would have,

would have experienced and witnessed.

One of the things that you find with the children

when they came

was, they had almost a chip on their shoulder--

"You don't know what we've been through,

"you don't know what we've lived through,

you don't know what we've seen."

And Oscar was able to say, "Well, actually, I have.

I was there, I've been there."

And that was important in terms of,

to touch base with these children.

Mr. Friedmann was absolutely wonderful.

He never raised a voice to anybody.

And he was always listening to you

if you, if you would come to speak to him.

Very clever man.

He was given a job to bring us back to normality.

His idea was, "Let each one develop their own thinking

and their own character."

And he done it fantastically.

♪

GLEN: Friedmann brought with him from Germany

many progressive ideas about child psychology.

He decided that what the children needed at Windermere

was freedom.

After years of terrible oppression,

there were to be few rules.

♪

[boy laughing]

It was paradise there-- it was paradise.

[boy cheering]

Some of the boys used to be

in a pair of underpants and a vest,

and they were running about in the, in the streets.

We didn't have any bikes-- didn't matter whose it was.

If there was a bike there, well, we'd get on it.

♪

[boy cheers]

GLEN: While the older children

embraced their new freedoms,

the very youngest were still adjusting to normal life.

This photo was taken in ,

just after we arrived in Windermere.

Here are the six of us that were always kept together,

and I'm the one with the, holding the soft toy.

♪

Nobody had told me that I'd been liberated,

so coming to England was really, really frightening.

I came with absolutely nothing

because I had no clothes of my own,

no toys, no possessions,

no parents, no family, um...

I barely knew who I was.

GLEN: This youngest group,

aged only three when they arrived,

had survived Theresienstadt concentration camp together.

MILLAN: We formed our own little family group;

we all took on different roles.

We never moved without each other...

You know, we cared for each other.

If one had a nightmare, we didn't go to the grown-ups.

It was always one of us that would,

you know, help out if there was a problem,

they hurt themselves...

And we really were totally self-sufficient.

Even at that age.

♪

GLEN: After a few weeks, they were moved out of Windermere

and into the care of nursery nurses.

Assisting them was -year-old Lydia Tischler,

who had herself survived the concentration camps.

They began carefully observing the children's behavior.

If one child got something, everybody else had to have it.

If one child went...

Nobody went for a walk on their own.

They always had to be in a group.

It's almost as if the group was some...

some sort of safety net.

♪

GLEN: Observations about the children

were sent to psychoanalyst Anna Freud,

the daughter of Sigmund Freud.

A Jewish refugee, she had fled to Britain from Austria in .

Like Friedmann, she also brought with her

new ideas about child psychology.

TISCHLER: She went through these cards with us

and really introduced us

to, you know, psychoanalytic thinking

of child development.

One began to get some understanding

that all this behavior had a meaning.

♪

MILLAN: We had quite a lot of problems

reentering into society.

Getting used to eating with knives and forks.

I mean, there's pictures of us eating with our hands

because that's what we did in the camps.

We didn't have a lot of language at all.

There was no one to teach us.

So we were communicating non-verbally.

We were like puppies or kittens, I suppose.

We just had no idea what was expected of us at all.

♪

GLEN: The observations of the children

formed the basis of a groundbreaking study

on the development of child psychology

published by Anna Freud in .

TISCHLER: She was interested in children

and what makes them develop, and how they develop,

and, of course, her interest later

in psychoanalytic theory

was very much colored by her work with the children.

♪

GLEN: In Windermere, realizing the older children's education

had been stopped by the w*r,

a special curriculum was put together

to educate them for the future.

OLMER: We had to build some kind of a life,

and the life of future was only this knowledge.

We didn't have any knowledge at all.

We had every opportunity

to do whatever we are capable of doing.

You know, if you wanted to go and play the piano,

they'll give you facilities for that.

[slowly]: Good afternoon.

These children hadn't had any education

for five, six years-- none at all.

They were absolutely hungry for educational materials:

books, art, mathematics.

These children, more than anything,

wanted to learn English-- become English.

Many of the images that you see of the children

in Windermere in the Lake District,

you invariably see one or another of them holding a book.

Or a group of them

working at books under trees.

I am... here.

Can you see me?

GLEN: The children's rehabilitation at Windermere

was overseen by a team of volunteers.

<span tts:fontStyle="italic"> Yitgadal v'yitkadash <span tts:fontStyle="italic"> sh'mei raba, amein.</span></span>

GLEN: One of these was a young rabbi.

AVERY: Rabbi Weiss was a crucial figure

in the recuperation of these children.

Leonard Montefiore wanted to provide

a Jewish context for the children to arrive into.

Some of the boys that had come from Orthodox families

welcomed a religious context here.

Other of the boys, having lived through the camps, would say,

"After what I've seen, there is no God."

So there were a lot of discussions.

♪

We liked him very, very much, indeed-- everybody did.

He was our goalkeeper.

He shoveled in with everybody.

[boy yelling]

A bit of a beard.

But the only frum people I knew

were rabbis who had beards to here.

So...

And he's playing football on Shabbos!

We couldn't believe it.

[yelps]

GLEN: The physical education of the children

was also carefully considered.

Answering an ad in a local paper,

P.E. teacher Jock Lawrence

took charge of sport at Windermere.

LAWRENCE [dramatized]: Down-- press-ups.

Now, please.

GLEN: After years of starvation and neglect,

Lawrence gave the children the opportunity

to rebuild their strength

and experience the joy of winning again.

[blows whistle]

Start again, with Ben.

He taught us football.

I used to be, play football quite a lot.

I started feeling that I'm growing.

I started getting taller.

And that was a wonderful thing, because I was quite small.

♪

AVERY: George Lawrence, Jock Lawrence,

was used to working with teenage boys.

[people calling]

AVERY: Jock was instrumental

in, in arranging football matches

with local teams,

in doing competitions.

He could communicate with them through sport,

through exercise.

Fresh air and, and the sheer freedom.

They exploded with, with energy.

He became very, very close to the children.

[blows whistle]

That's halftime!

♪

GLEN: Another of the volunteers who came to help the children

was a Viennese émigrée, Marie Paneth.

A friend of psychoanalyst Anna Freud,

she also brought progressive ideas to Windermere,

holding a daily art class

where the children were given complete freedom.

AVERY: Marie Paneth came

from a highly respected academic family of Vienna.

She herself was, had escaped mainland Europe

and come over here with her family.

She immediately found herself mixing in those same circles.

She would have known the Freuds.

She was an art therapist before the term "art therapist"

had even emerged in this country.

♪

TISCHLER: It's a very useful and successful way

of working with people

who find it difficult to express themselves verbally.

Encounters less censorship than talking.

[chuckling]: You know, when you're talking,

you're always careful about not to say something.

♪

♪

This photograph was taken in Windermere.

You can see, actually,

I was puffed up, then, like anything.

[laughs]

I must have-- the food must have been actually very, very good,

or it was plentiful, anyway.

I loved the lake.

Very often I went there with friends.

We sat there by the water

just observing, listening.

♪

HERSH: Going to the lake

on a warm day.

Um, used to swim.

I start climbing on mountains and so on.

♪

Absolutely fantastic.

I used to love every moment of it I was there.

♪

We weren't guarded, we were free,

we had food.

It was a wonderful time for us.

You know, we really started living in Windermere-- slowly.

♪

AVERY : It is a lovely picture.

It's one of the few

that includes an image of Oscar Friedmann

in, in Windermere in the Lake District.

It's very telling, because he's smiling.

For all the descriptions we have of him

of possibly being quite austere and quite remote,

he's clearly relaxed with a group of our...

Of our youngsters.

And that, I think, in a strange way,

is a huge compliment to Oscar Friedmann

and the people in charge of the group,

that they were able to give off this aura

of, of holidaymakers, of ramblers, of walkers,

of young people just enjoying the Lake District.

It is to us inconceivable

what these children were living through

only four or five months before.

♪

♪

GLEN: In mainland Europe,

the Red Cross were tracing n*zi victims,

piecing together the extent of the Holocaust

and trying to reunite survivors with their families.

[cars stopping]

AVERY: A reality began to kick in.

Sadly, the letters began to arrive from the Red Cross,

and the full reality for a lot of these children

was, was horrendous to bear.

And what became almost like a holiday

took a darker turn.

I asked the Red Cross, actually, in Windermere

if any of my family is alive,

and they came back a bit later on and there's nobody,

as far as that was concerned.

And somehow I knew.

I didn't have very, very much hope.

I've lost about people in the... in the w*r.

My whole family was wiped out.

♪

GLEN: But there were some miraculous reunions.

Like so many others,

Salek Falinower had lost his parents.

Salek's brother Chiel came to Windermere to find him.

Chiel had traveled to Britain in

and had served with the R.A.F.

♪

Salek died in , but his sons Ashley and Steven

have never forgotten the story their father told them.

STEVEN FAULL: It was only actually when his brother turned up

that he realized that he was lucky, very lucky.

That made him different

from, obviously, all the, almost all the other survivors

who didn't have any family members surviving.

ASHLEY: I think those who didn't know our father in Windermere

started calling him "the pilot's brother."

Because he became somewhat famous within that community

as having a brother who was in, who was a Jew

who was in uniform, who, most of them,

none of them had seen someone who was Jewish

in uniform before up to that point.

And someone who was alive

and had actually come to Windermere,

and claimed one of them,

was, you can imagine, quite emotional.

♪

GLEN: By October , the Central British Fund

began finding permanent homes for the children.

Having made sure they were kept together at Windermere,

Friedmann and Montefiore knew they now needed

to find their independence.

AVERY: If you're going to reenter society,

you're going to have to play by society's rules,

because society, unfortunately, in ten or years' time,

won't appreciate what you've been through.

So this was his motivations.

And I think crucially,

the seeds were sown in Windermere

that these children would have to learn

to stand on their own feet.

And I think nowadays, you would call it tough love.

♪

GLEN: Originally, all had only been granted

temporary visas for the U.K.

But with strict immigration policies enforced

by many other countries,

and without family elsewhere,

there was nowhere for most of the children to go.

So Montefiore was able to convince the government

to allow those who wanted to

to stay in Britain.

boys went to Liverpool,

some went to London,

Manchester took , Glasgow took some.

It was difficult to get into the normal way of life

without any parents, without any family.

It was very, very difficult for me.

GLEN: The CBF continued to fundraise,

ensuring homes, apprenticeships and schools

were found for the children.

And every time a group left Windermere,

they went to the station

and we used to sing to them, actually, as well, you know?

Unfortunately, we were the last ones to leave,

so nobody came to the station to sing to us.

[chuckling]

But no, it was...

It was very, very... very happy time.

Very, very happy time.

GLEN: By January ,

all the children had left Windermere.

I ended up

to go to Manchester.

I didn't... Manchester?

I didn't know Manchester from London

or, or Birmingham or any other city.

Through the day, you were busy doing things.

At night, you started getting dreams.

And I started thinking,

thinking about what you've gone through,

start thinking what happened to your parents and your family.

GLEN: While the children adjusted to life after Windermere,

Leonard Montefiore continued with his mission

to help other Jewish refugees.

In , the CBF funded a new scheme

which brought a further child survivors to Britain.

KUSHNER: The Central British Fund does not disappear.

It continued its work after the w*r:

new refugee movements;

but it also broadened its work

and became World Jewish Relief.

GLEN: By , over , pounds had been raised by the CBF

to support all the children who had come to Britain.

By helping to manage the funds,

Oscar Friedmann continued to oversee the care

of the Windermere children.

I've seen a number of letters

between the children after Windermere

and Oscar Friedmann.

He wasn't in the business of writing blank checks.

If they needed help in, in, say, buying equipment

to set themselves up in some kind of business,

he would be quite strenuous in his queries as to why.

Where will you get it from?

What's the purpose of this?

I think because resources were tight--

they didn't have a bottomless pit of funding

to help, help these guys.

KUSHNER: Montefiore thought that, "We've got to think long-term."

What was envisaged for them was a industrial future.

But for some, it was also frustrating.

They had higher ambitions,

and the committee and Montefiore were sort of saying,

"No, no, you've got to be sensible,

"you've got to be realistic.

"You may have these ideals,

but you've got to earn your own living."

AVERY: Leonard Montefiore does say

it was touch-and-go at times

whether they could afford to do this.

GLEN: But money didn't limit the ambitions of the children.

In , only years after arriving in Windermere,

Ben Helfgott represented Britain in the Olympic Games,

captaining the weightlifting team.

AVERY: Windermere for him was paradise.

He was years old when he arrived at Windermere.

Within ten years, he became

a weightlifter for Britain at the Olympics.

He carried flags at opening ceremonies.

It's a remarkable transformation.

♪

GLEN: The children found success in a range of careers.

♪

Harry Olmer became a dentist.

Arek Hersh trained as an electrician.

And Ike Alterman ran a jewelry business.

ALTERMAN: I am proud of the fact

that I managed to make a business for myself.

I had the largest trade in Manchester.

GLEN: Settling in to their new lives in England

in the s and 's,

they began to put down roots.

SPIRO: A lot of us

started meeting families, meeting girls,

got married, settled down, having children.

This is my darling wife.

Her name is Jean.

And you've noticed I came on my own.

She let me come on my own. [laughs]

I've got three daughters;

I've got seven grandchildren;

and I've been married about years.

LASKIER: When the kids were young and I picked the children up,

I got very emotional.

Because I know what happened to a lot of children, you know.

I could get hold of my child and hug him and think to myself,

"What happened to all these children that did not survive?

And how could they possibly do things like that?"

These are the sort of things

that always went through my mind-- yeah, they did.

But you got to live, you got to carry on.

You got to, you got to forget.

Otherwise, otherwise you live in misery most of your life.

♪

OLMER: I've got two sons, I've got two daughters,

I've got eight grandchildren.

I'm most proud how they all turned out.

♪

The closeness I had with my mother

was just unbelievable.

Would I love to have a moment for her to see

what I have achieved with my wife,

with children and grandchildren?

I would give anything.

♪

OLMER: Being British now is

being a human being again.

Having a, having a passport, having an identity,

having responsibilities, as well.

I belong.

I belong in a country

that gives me the freedom to express myself.

To say yes or no.

And I'm an equal.

I'm a royalist.

I've written to Buckingham Palace several times,

and I've always followed the queen.

Naturally, Princess Margaret at the time, as well.

And I like to fly British Airways

around the world.

♪

Like so many other people in this country

born in other places,

but they still feel very British.

My son was in the British Army.

It was a great sense of belonging and of...

achievement.

♪

GLEN: The friendships that were forged in Windermere

in the summer of

continued throughout their lives.

SPIRO: We went to each other's weddings,

we went to bar mitzvahs.

It was like a family.

Really, a family affair.

It's important for us to be one of the boys,

because that's the only family we had here.

We had... I had nobody else here except the boys.

And the boys are part of my family.

ALTERMAN: It was very important to us,

because after we've lost everything else...

[voice breaking]: They're the nearest thing.

LASKIER: We lived very near each other.

When Ike got married,

he didn't live very far from me, neither.

And then... I mean, when any of us got married...

Yeah, we... We all got...

We all got invited. Yes.

Not only Ike-- most of the boys.

Yeah, as he says, we're five, ten minutes away. Yeah.

[klezmer piece playing]

[playing solo]

GLEN: The bonds between them

would lead to the creation of their own charity--

the Aid Society,

chaired for many years by Ben Helfgott.

[song continues]

[people talking in background]

GLEN: As well as supporting themselves

and raising funds for others,

the charity has worked to keep the memory of their story alive.

♪

Many of the child survivors

have been recognized for their instrumental role

in Holocaust education in Britain.

Arek Hersh was awarded an MBE.

And in ,

Ben Helfgott was knighted at Buckingham Palace.

If you forget it, what happened,

it can happen again.

This to me is important.

And I try to teach young people

to respect people,

to be kind to people and so on.

♪

GLEN: In May ,

survivors, with their children and grandchildren,

gathered in the same square in Prague

to recreate the incredible photograph taken

just before they left for Windermere.

♪

♪

For the children

who were flown from Prague to Britain,

their story of survival will always be rooted

in one corner of northwest England.

Windermere is my first home in England.

♪

It was my th birthday.

On the Sunday, I took all my family,

we had a lovely meal,

so I had a lovely, lovely weekend in the lakes.

And Windermere has always got a wonderful memory for me.

I was part of a group of children

that I belonged to.

It's a sense of belonging, in a way.

I think Windermere was an important part of that.

The first time.

Really, the first time I was free.

Windermere is always that place of beautiful memories.

I hope my life has not been wasted.

Not just a memory of terrible things,

but a memory of good things, as well.

And the good things started in Windermere.

That's what it was.