Refugees in Birmingham

Description:Image: Harry Levine, Newspaper Cuttings, sept-dec 1942 part 2.

This image features a group of Jewish Refugees in Birmingham, including a young child. Such children were at risk during WWII.

After the infamous night of the 'Kristallnacht' in 1938, every Jew in Germany was living in fear of being arrested and sent to concentration camps by Hitler’s Nazi Gestapo. At this stage, the British Government decided to intervene and help the plight of Jewish children – in some cases left homeless, without their parents and families. Families in Britain were asked to provide emergency accommodation for children at risk.

The Children’s Refugee Movement, as it became known, was responsible for removing around 10,000 children from Nazi Germany to lodgings in England- private, homes, hostels, farms, and camps. The conditions these children faced varied greatly. At first, some children were placed in the care of other Jewish families, sensitive to their religious background. But many others soon came under the care of families with whom communication and empathy would be extremely difficult, on both sides.

After being traumatically separated from their parents, these children were now expected to very quickly assimilate to middle class British patterns of behaviour. They were told not to risk speaking their foreign language in public. Many children of the same family were often separated to different homes according to age groups.