Facebook post #73 (#72 added to previous WWII Jersey post)
Just slightly more upliftingly, I just discovered an unexpected resident with our Essex family in 1939:
Vera Wisser, aged 17, Jewish refugee
I can find nothing else about Vera, but she was the maximum age for qualification for the kindertransport. This scheme was not a government initiative but volunteers were permitted to organise temporary immigration for unaccompanied children. It was on condition that the immigrants would cost the state nothing, including eventual repatriation.
The right were objecting to refugees, of course, e.g. “German Jews Pouring Into This Country” (Daily Mail). But an appeal for foster homes was put out on the BBC Home Service in November 1938. Cursory checks were made on potential foster homes, and eventually 10,000 children were settled.
“Some never saw their parents again; all suffered the pain of separation; some were so traumatised they couldn’t speak of what had happened to them for decades afterwards – not even to their children. But in each the light of defiance, humour and commitment to life shines through.” (Moss)
It seems probably that Vera was one of the 10,000. She would have landed at Harwich, and taken by train to Liverpool St – the pic is of the kindertransport monument there – and back up to Saffron Walden. The Barnards could afford it, and doubtless Vera was helpful around the house – Willmary, Newport. Still, a pleasing find.
Pathé News – arrival at Harwich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T9xvo1jyRE
Stephen Moss, Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/…/the-kindertransport…
See also: Essex – post #28 – . Nazi trains – post #67.