- The Observer
24 25.08.19 News
The forgotten haven:
Kent camp that saved
4,000 German Jews
Descendants of men
who fl ed the Nazis will
unveil a plaque in their
honour on the war’s
80th anniversary.
By Harriet Sherwood
It is a near-forgotten chapter in 20th-
century history: the rescue of thou-
sands of Jewish men from the Nazis,
brought to a camp on the outskirts
of the medieval town of Sandwich in
Kent as darkness fell across Europe.
The Kitchener Camp rescue began
in February 1939, and by the time
war broke out seven months later
about 4,000 men – mainly German
and Austrian Jews – had arrived by
train and boat. Although the story of
the 10,000 Jewish children brought
to the UK on the Kindertransport is
well known, the Kitchener Camp has
received much less attention.
“It’s not even well known in [UK]
Jewish communities,” said Clare
Weissenberg, who has curated an
exhibition that opens at the Jewish
Museum in London on 1 September.
On 2 September, a blue plaque will
be unveiled in Sandwich in the pres-
ence of descend ants of the rescued
men, as well as the son and daughter
of two Jewish philanthropist brothers
who ran the camp.
Among those present will be Paul
Secher, whose father, Otto, arrived
in May 1939.
“My father didn’t talk about it very
much,” said Secher. “I sensed it was
a painful subject for him. He man-
aged to escape but his parents and asister didn’t. The burden must
have been immense.”
After the Kristallnacht
pogrom in November 1938,
when Jews and their prop-
erty were violently attacked,
about 30,000 Jewish men were
rounded up and taken to Dachau,
Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald
concentration camps.
The Central British Fund (CBF),
a Jewish aid organisation in the
UK now known as World Jewish
Relief , persuaded the British gov-
ernment to admit some refu-
gees. Adult men were brought to
the UK on condition they would
not be granted UK citizenship, they
must not work, and they must emi-
grate onwards to the US, Australia
and elsewhere.
The CBF organised transporte
,
d),
e
h
v-
u-
to
uld Some rescued men, above, at
Kitchener Camp near Sandwich,
Kent, in 1939; refugee musicians,
right, gave concerts for the locals.
Courtesy of Werner Weissenberg
and Franz Schanzer families