The Holocaust and the English School: The Refuge that Saved Young Lives

As the Nazi threat spread across Europe, prominent English citizens established a school for traumatized refugee Jewish children. Pupils and teachers alike showed resilience in the face of war-time deprivations, facing down the suspicions of locals while mastering the intricacies of the English language. The German-born administrators, themselves refugees, helped the children through loneliness and fear with a progressive-inspired education which they graced with kindness. The teenagers watched the orange skies lighted by Luftwaffe bombings of London forty miles to the north yet, still ignorant of the horrors of the Holocaust and the fate of their parents, they came of age in a place open to fun and comradeship. In the process, they formed unbreakable, lifelong bonds.