New BBC drama and documentary tell the extraordinary story of the Windermere Children

The BBC marks Holocaust Memorial Day with two special films
True story: The drama and documentary mark Holocaust Memorial Day
BBC/Wall to Wall/ZDF
Katie Law @jkatielaw28 January 2020

The extraordinary true story of how 300 child survivors of the Holocaust were rescued and brought to live for four months near Lake Windermere in August 1945 is told tonight, both through a documentary consisting of archive footage and eloquent first-hand testimonies from a handful of still-living survivors, and a superb feature-length drama, showing beforehand, based on those testimonies.

They are being screened as part of Holocaust Memorial Day, and the effect of watching them back to back is nothing short of devastating, although ideally they would have been shown in reverse order .

The children — who included six three-year-olds, and who were presumed to be orphans when the camps were liberated — were flown from Prague to Carlisle and on to a disused seaplane factory and adjoining accommodation, with no possessions apart from the clothes they were wearing.

Their rehabilitation was part of a programme masterminded by philanthropist Leonard Montefiore (played in the drama by Tim McInnerny). Montefiore persuaded the Home Office to give the project the green light as long as he could raise enough money through The Central British Fund (now known as World Jewish Relief), which was set up to assist Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler.

Extraordinary: The one-off special is based on a true story
BBC/Wall to Wall/ZDF

He raised the cash, then recruited a team of counsellors and volunteers, some of whom were themselves refugees, including German Jewish psychologist Oscar Friedmann (played by Thomas Kretschmann), who passionately believed that with the right care and encouragement, these traumatised children could recover from the horrors of the camps and forge new lives.

The drama focuses on the touching friendship of five teenage Polish boys, three of whom happened to have been on the same train that arrived in Theresienstadt the day before the Russians liberated it. “We were due to be exterminated the following morning,” says Ike Alterman in the documentary, now in his nineties. For the next few months, the children (played by young actors from various Polish communities in Germany, Poland and the UK), were nurtured physically and emotionally.

Television shows in 2020

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They were taught to speak English by Rabbi Weiss (Konstantin Frank), they learned to play sports under the ‘tough love’ stewardship of Jock Lawrence (Iain Glen) and were encouraged to express themselves “without instruction or critique” through painting, under the watchful eye of Marie Paneth (Romola Garai). Even her work as an early pioneer of art therapy, however, could not prepare her for some of the terrible images the children produced. Gradually they learned to trust, to stop stealing food and to form bonds with each other and the staff.

They were allowed to roam outdoors as they pleased, to discover what freedom felt like. But as both the movie and the documentary make abundantly clear, for all that the children were given, nothing could ever replace or make up for what they had lost.

“Empty, alone… family, family, family,” murmurs the young Ben Helfgott (Pascal Fischer), as he ties his boot laces and stares at the palm of his hand.

The Windermere Children: In Their Own Words is on BBC4, 10.30pm and The Windermere Children is on BBC2, 9pm tonight.

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