In August 1945, Britain did an extraordinary thing. Using RAF bombers that had completed their last missions, 732 Jewish refugee children, newly rescued from concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Theresienstadt, were flown from Poland to England and given a new life.
Under pressure from Leonard Montefiore's newly-created Committee for the Care of Children from Concentration Camps, the government was persuaded to open up rehabilitation camps, such as one on the bucolic shores of Lake Windermere. And so, in the unlikely village of Troutbeck Bridge, on the Calgarth estate in a prefab scheme that had housed workers at the Short Sunderland aeroplane factory during the war, a remarkable story of redemption and renewal began.
The story is now told in dramatic form in the film The Windermere Children, which airs in the UK on BBC Two and on German channel ZDF at the very same time (a simulcast first in European broadcasting) to mark Holocaust Memorial Day and 75 years since the end of the Second World War.
“I hadn't heard of the story either,” admits The Windermere Children scriptwriter Simon Block. “Not many people had. I was brought the story by the production company, Wall to Wall, but from then on it was about trying to get as much information about what had happened as possible and find the dramatic arc inside it.”
“Fortunately, the characters involved are so strong and the emotions and trauma so powerful, the facts did not need bending to make a compelling human story. It told itself.”
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Many of [the actual Windermere children] were at the preview screening I attended. Harry (Chaim), Ben, Arek, Ike, Harry and Bela sit in the audience, behind the young Polish actors who play them in the film, most of them making their screen debuts. The film's more recognisable talents are there, too: Romola Garai, Iain Glen and Tim McInnerny, fine actors who all acknowledge with humility that the real stars present are the survivors.
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At the screening, Iain Glen was greeted by the young Polish actors with hugs and high fives, like a favourite coach or even relative being welcomed after a long gap. He plays a gruff Scottish PE teacher based on the real-life Jock Lawrence, enlisted to give the kids some physical therapy through exercise, football and swimming in the lake. “Jock was enlisted for physical therapy even though I don't think he knew too much about the science of it all and he certainly was not prepared for the level of trauma he encountered,” he says. “But he could see the positive effect of getting them outdoors in the fresh air.”
One of the children under Jock's charge was Ben Helfgott, who went on to become an weightlifter for Great Britain at two Olympic games. “It's a redemptive story in the end,” remarks Glen. “These survivors are testament to the programme there and show that life may not forget but it can recover and rebuild.”
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Given one of The Windermere Children's most moving scenes involves a family reunion, it's a poignancy not lost on the film's creators. Says writer Simon Block: "That storyline is absolutely true - you couldn't possibly make something like that up - but sadly something like that is now impossible according to UK law.”
"It shows this isn't just a historical drama but very much part of our present. It's a picture of when Britain did something great and was enriched because of it, and hopefully it can be a reminder that we can still do the right thing again.”
The last word on The Windermere Children practically speaks for itself. At the screening, survivor Harry Spiro stood up carefully, shaking slightly on his feet but his voice was strong and clear. “I was the only one from my family who survived the Holocaust. I lost everyone, I had nothing. I had no home, no family.”
“But I was a Windermere boy and now 70 years later I have a wife, three children, nine grandchildren and great grandchildren. I never, ever thought back then I would have a family, but I got a whole new life here and lots of other lives came from that. So I say: no, Hitler you did not win but look at me, I got my life and my family…”
