Leonard Montefiore

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Leonard Nathaniel Goldsmid Montefiore (born June 2, 1889 in Marylebone , London , † December 23, 1961 ) was a Jewish philanthropist . He migrated 732 homeless Jewish children to the United Kingdom as displaced persons after the unconditional surrender of the National Socialist Greater German Reich and gave them education, psychological support and accommodation. His father is the founder of the British Reform Judaism Claude Montefiore .

Life

Montefiore was born on June 2, 1889 in Portman Square, London. He was first privately tutored before going to Clifton College in Bristol and then Balliol College in Oxford , which he left in 1911 before serving in India during World War I and in Siberia from 1918 to 1919. During this time he was promoted to captain , a rank after STANAG OF-2 , which corresponds to that of captain in the German army . In 1918 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire . In 1924 he married Muriel Jeanetta, whose father Adolph Tuck was chairman of Raphael Tuck & Sons . They had two children.

In 1939 Montefiore helped found the Vienna Library in London and has since become its president.

Montefiore died on 23. December 1961 at a coronary thrombosis at The London Clinic in Marylebone .

Act

Before the outbreak of World War II with the beginning of the persecution of Jews in Europe, Montefiore helped found the Central British Fund for German Jewry , which helped numerous Jews to flee Germany.

As a result of the Holocaust against the Jews in Europe, many children had lost their parents in the concentration camps in which they were imprisoned themselves. After the unconditional surrender of the National Socialist Greater German Reich and the liberation of surviving Jews from the camps, these children had no shelter and were considered displaced persons . Montefiore and the Committee for the Care of Children from Concentration Camps , which he set up for this purpose, urged the UK government for approval to fly these children to England to alleviate homelessness. The aim was to give the children not only accommodation but also lessons and psychological support. Since 1933, Jews in Germany had only been given limited education due to the law against the overcrowding of German schools and universities , so most of the children had never attended school. With support from the Central British Fund for German Jewry, the British government acted and approved the admission of 1,000 children on the condition that their ages were between 8 and 15 years old and that they were approved by a military doctor as fit for travel. Montefiore had to guarantee that he would look after the children and raised funds for it. Ultimately, 732 children including 300 were brought to England by the Royal Air Force since August 14, 1945 . These 300 were accommodated on the site of the former Short Sunderland aircraft plant , which is located near Lake Windermere . The story was filmed in 2020 under the name The Children of Windermere in a co-production by ZDF and BBC . In addition, there was a film documentary The Children of Windermere - The Documentation , in which those affected, including Arek Hershlikovicz , Ben Helfgott , Bela Rosenthal and Sam Laskier ; occurred. This was broadcast on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp in 2020 by ZDF-History .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b BBC - Character Biographies - Media Center. Accessed January 31, 2020 .
  2. ^ A b c d Montefiore, Leonard Nathaniel Goldsmid- (1889–1961), scholar and Jewish communal leader | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Accessed January 31, 2020 (English).
  3. ^ A b Joe Shute: From the Holocaust to Lake Windermere . January 27, 2015, ISSN  0307-1235 ( telegraph.co.uk [accessed January 31, 2020]).
  4. ↑ a b c Joachim Käppner: Second rescue. Accessed January 31, 2020 .
  5. ^ Julius Carlebach, Gerhard Hirschfeld, Aubrey Newman, Peter Pulzer, Arnold Paucker: Second Chance: Two Centuries of German-speaking Jews in the United Kingdom . Mohr Siebeck , 1991, p. 520 (654 p., Limited preview in Google Book search).
  6. ^ Central British Fund for German Jewry - Kitchener Camp. Retrieved January 31, 2020 (UK English).
  7. ^ Jason Solomons: The Windermere Children Who Escaped the Holocaust in the Lake District. Accessed January 31, 2020 (English).
  8. ↑ https://presseportal.zdf.de/pm/die-kinder-von-windermere/ Presseportal ZDF
personal data
SURNAME Montefiore, Leonard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Montefiore, Leonard Nathaniel Goldsmid (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish philanthropist
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Marylebone , London
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1961
Place of death Marylebone , London