The Holocaust Suvivors at Wier Courtney, Lingfield

Although Lingfield and Dormans Land were recognised 'reception areas' for evacuees throughout the war years some villagers were unaware that several child survivors from the European death camps were living at Weir Courtney House, between 5th December 1945 and 18th December 1948.  Weir Courtney was then the home of Sir Benjamin and Lady Drage, Sir Benjamin was the owner of a large furniture store in High Holborn, London.  His home was leased rent-free to the Central British Fund for Jewish Relief and Rehabilitation, the body organising the Children's Refugee Movement, with the agreement that the CBF would pay the rates and taxes and maintain the fabric of the building.

Liberation in 1945 was not a flag waving ceremony for the survivors of the death camps.  Thousands died in the days and weeks after their liberation.  Others would be physically and mentally scarred in the years to come.  Holocaust survivors, who were often stateless, were regarded as aliens at the end of the war and thus subject to normal aliens restriction legislation.

The need to do something led to the 'Children from the Concentration Camps Scheme'. set up by the Home Office, though largely funded by Jewish sources, at the end of 1945.
A strict ceiling of 1,000 child survivors were to be allowed to enter Britain.  The children were "in Britain to recuperate and were to come for that purpose only".
In the end 732 children came to Britain, with the help of the '45 Aid Society'. Once in Britain the Children's Refugee Movement of the Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief took over the welfare and support of the children.

Weir Courtney was one of a total of 28 hostels which were opened to receive the children. The Matron, Miss Alice Goldberger, and her staff devotedly cared for the children from the day they arrived at Weir Courtney in 1945 until their departure in December 1948. 

The emphasis at first, not surprisingly, was on food and medicine.  Meals were large and very regular.  The emotional needs of the children were harder to satisfy. The magazine JOHN BULL, 9 Oct. 1948 quoted from an interview with Alice Goldberger:
on the night the first 22 children arrived in 1945 "they were full of hostility, fear and distrust" when they caught sight of food they rushed to it, snatching bits from each other's plates and stuffing their pockets with uneaten pieces.  These they later hid under their pillows fearing that they would get no more.  When the staff tried to undress them for bed, pandemonium broke out.  They had decided that this fairyland was a trick, as soon as the lights were turned out the S.S. men would come and kill them in their beds.  Some of the children were difficult to understand because they spoke a mixture of several languages picked up in the various camps through which they passed.
Learning English gave them a new start so that by 1948 English was the only language the children used.

On 2nd September 1947 thirteen of the children were considered to have settled sufficiently to be admitted to Dormans Land School.  They were aged between 6 and 10 years old.   Alice Goldberger told the JOHN BULL reporter that  "they hold their own very well in and out of the classroom".  There are no records of the reactions of the village school children towards the children from Weir Courtney Hostel.

Letters from a German Jewish boy to his parents, after his evacuation to Horsham in summer of 1939, have been published and show bitter feelings there against any German speaking children:
"...the atmosphere against the Germans is very strong and it is best not to say a word of German on the street because the reactions are unpleasant, even when you are refugees".
"..In playtime some of the German and Austrian boys had to fight some of the English boys who called them blooming Nazis and swore at us. Though they called            us Nazis it was not a bit of anti-semitism in it."
            [Letters from a War Child: Ernest Dieter Ball's correspondence, 1939-41.
             Publ. by Horsham Museum, 1999].

In Dec. 1948 the Weir Courtney children moved with Miss Goldberger to a house in London which they called 'Lingfield House', at 42 The Grove, Isleworth. This was considered to be a wise move which would prepare them for the future, to develop their confidence and self-reliance and to continue their education in the big city.

The Lingfield House Report for 1950 gives some idea of their improvement after 5 years:
            "..in 1945 our aim was to provide a home for some of the Jewish children from the concentration camps.  It seemed too much to hope that these children could reach maturity unscathed by the horrors they had witnessed and suffered....although they still require the greatest understanding and patience, most of them are now indistinguishable from normal children.  Only one child, a girl now 15, proved to be a hopeless case and had to be transferred to a mental home where she is regularly visited by the matron.

According to the House Report of 1952, 26 children had by then left Lingfield House since it was started in 1945, of those 26:

            6 had been adopted
            4 had gone to Israel
            9 had been re-united with a parent or relative
            5 were working in London
            1 was working in Canada
            1 had died

Alice Goldberger remained a mother figure for all her 'family' of refugee children.  At the end of 1957 the house at Isleworth was closed and a flat in Hampstead was taken as a centre; providing accommodation for the remaining 4 children and serving as a home, in a  real family sense, where all the children could always return when they needed help and advice.

ostel, 42 The Grove, Isleworth
Janet Bateson
November 2004.

Acknowledgements and Bibliography
British Library - Newspaper Library
Dormansland School Register
Letters from a War Child: Ernest Dieter Ball's correspondence, 1939-41.
             Publ. by Horsham Museum, 1999
London Metroplitan Archive:
             (Records of the Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief)
Wiener Library
           
MISSING IDENTITY
On Dec. 18th 1941 Jona Jakob Spiegel was born in the Rothschild Hospital in Vienna.  On his birth certificate only the name of his mother is mentioned.  On September 24th 1942 Jona Jakob was deported to Theresienstadt (near Prague), without his mother.  On the same deportation were several other unaccompanied children.  His mother Elsa Spiegel had been deported three months earlier to Minsk.  She was
 murdered in Trostenets near Minsk

Under circumstances still not clear, Jona.Jakob managed to stay alive in Theresienstadt for two and a half years.  He was one of the hundred children who survived Theresienstadt.  In August 1945 Jona Jakob and some of the other children were sent by aeroplane from Czechoslovakia to England.  For one year Jona Jakob and five other young children stayed in a special Children's Home called Bulldogs Bank.  In 1946 Jona Jakob was transferred to another Children's Home, Weir Courtney, in Lingfield where he spent the next six months.  Later in the same year he was taken in by a Jewish couple and grew up in their home, being officially adopted in 1950.

Jona Jakob Spiegel is now appealing through the Internet for information about his relatives.  He would dearly love to find a photograph of his mother Elsa Spiegel.  Elsa was probably killed in Maly Trostenets outside Minsk where a memorial states that 201,500 persons were murdered.

Bibliography
Letters from a War Child: Ernest Dieter Ball's correspondence, 1939-41.
             Publ. by Horsham Museum, 1999.