Millisle Farm

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Millisle Farm was a farm in Millisle, County Down, Northern Ireland . From May 1938 until the closure in 1948, around 300 Jewish children and young people were housed and trained there, who could be brought out of the German Reich as refugees on the Kindertransport and brought to safety in Great Britain.

Millisle in County Down, Northern Ireland
Millisle in County Down
Localization of Northern Ireland in Europe
Localization of Millisle in Northern Ireland.

The framework of the Millisle Farm

Millisle Farm is very different from most schools in exile , but the facility is in some ways comparable to the Kristinehov boarding school , which - despite its different founding history - also became a refuge for those rescued from the Kindertransport after Kristallnacht . Millisle Farm was much larger and the children attended the public school in Millisle.

Millisle Farm was established as a resettlement farm. Her story "is one of the little known 'secret histories' of the Second World War in Northern Ireland". And not only in Northern Ireland: In Germany, too, little is known of this facility as a result of the Kindertransporte . They are one of the few mentions in a publication by Rebekka Göpfert, in which Millisle Farm and similar facilities are presented as deliberate alternatives to housing the refugee children and young people in British families.

The young refugees who came to Northern Ireland were initially cared for by the Jewish community in Belfast, which received support from several interdenominational committees and also from government agencies. The first accommodation for older young people was set up on Cliftonpark Avenue in Belfast, before other options had to be found due to the increased influx of children due to the child transport .

In May 1939, Barney Hurwitz, Leo Scop and Maurice Solomon rented an approximately 70 hectare farm in Millisle on the County Down coast, about 20 kilometers outside of Belfast, on the former flax for linen on behalf of the Belfast "Refugee Aid Committee" had been processed. As expected in Belfast: The lease was signed over a drink in a Belfast pub between Barney Hurwitz, head of the Belfast Jewish community, and Lawrence Gorman, the landowner.

The beginnings on the farm

Most of them were rescued from the Kindertransport who came to the farm. But there was also a second, smaller group: “The farm also became home to about thirty-five Chalutzim - European Zionists in their late teens and early twenties who were planning to emigrate to kibbutzim in Palestine. When war broke out, trained Chalutzim were unable to leave for Palestine, and many joined the armed services. A few families and some older individual refugees who had managed to leave Germany, Austria and Czeehoslovakia completed the farm's population. "

When they came to the farm in the summer of 1939, they all found some abandoned barns and outbuildings and a ramshackle farmhouse known in the area as "Ballyrolly House". They spent their first night in leaky tents and were only able to move into a previously whitewashed cowshed the next evening. An old stable served as a dining room. There were only outside toilets and latrines had to be dug.

Conditions only gradually improved, and the farm received support from the Belfast Aid Committee and the population. The fields began to be reclaimed, with the younger children helping to collect stones and remove weeds. Meanwhile, the older children and adolescents started growing grain and vegetables together with the adults. "Ballyrolly House" has been made habitable again; Wooden huts with dormitories and a few small bedrooms were built; the cistern was cleaned and a pump was purchased. After a while there were showers, toilets, a lounge with billiards and table tennis, offices and a small synagogue. Workshops and storage rooms were added later. in which, among other things, the suitcases of the refugees were kept. For most of the children and young people, these suitcases were the only thing that they had saved from their previous lives.

Bobby Hackworth, an eleven-year-old boy from the neighborhood of the farm in 1939, who later contributed a lot to the processing of its history, described the aim of the farm as "to be as independent as possible, like a kibbutz". This is made more precise in a newspaper article from 1939, in which the conclusion of the contract to rent the farm is reported: “The idea is to give them a new start in life, and at the same time utilize their energies to support themselves by producing sufficient for their own needs. [..] Thus prepare them to make a living for themselves in Palestine, or wherever their final destination may be. "

On September 13, 1940, the Northern Whig newspaper reported the first published field report of the farm. Since spring it has been possible to stand on your own two feet, after only late harvest vegetables were grown in the previous year and dairy and poultry farming could only be started. In 1942 another 43 hectares of land had been cultivated and the refugees could look forward to an excellent harvest. The poultry farm is very successful. It started in 1939 with 650 laying hens and now has 1,100 laying hens and several hundred young roosters. The dairy section would produce all the meat, milk, butter and cheese that the farm would need and already generate a small surplus.

Up to eighty people, including children, lived and worked on the farm at the same time; From the very beginning until the farm was closed in 1948, well over 300 adults and children found a temporary home here. During the war years, young volunteers, mostly from the Jewish community in Dublin, came to help on the farm in the summer. From this many friendships developed between the refugees and Dublin families.

school

The children attended the local school. The school teacher, John Palmer, made sure that each refugee child sat next to a local child. In this way he wanted to help the refugee children to learn the English language better. But: “On the farm we spoke and read German for the first few years. It was only thanks to comics [...] that the Belfast Jewish children kindly passed on to us that my English began to improve. "

At the age of 14, many of the refugee children also switched to local secondary schools, some of them attended evening school in nearby Donaghadee. Joining the local scouts or attending first aid courses at the Red Cross were common, and the boys between the ages of fourteen and seventeen took part in the training of the "Air Training Corps". The Jewish children integrated well into the local community, and Bobby Hackworth remembered the great fun they had each week playing soccer together. This was followed by other invitations, for example to concerts.

everyday life

For the managers of the farm, not only was the farm itself the focus of their work, but there was also a lot of paperwork to be dealt with with the authorities. And although the refugees had fled National Socialism and were staunch opponents of Hitler, as Enemy Aliens they were not spared many restrictions in everyday life: They could only stay in certain areas; from 10 p.m. there was a curfew; they were required to carry an "Aliens Registration Book" with them, and permission from the local police was required to leave the yard, even for one night.

Still, going to the cinema was popular, even if the Donaghadee cinema was three miles away. Occasionally the young people also visited Belfast, but this was only possible to a limited extent due to the costs and rationing. Some were invited to visit the Dublin families who made up the volunteers who helped out on the farm during the summer. But traveling was not easy during the war years, fuel was scarce and heavily rationed, so bicycles or horse-drawn carts were sufficient as a means of transport.

Some of the people who are important to the farm

In her publications, Marilyn Taylor names some people who were of particular importance to everyday farm life:

  • Eugen Patriasz
    Eugen Patriasz, a Hungarian refugee, was the manager of the farm. He had brought an agricultural university degree with him in Vienna, but had no practical experience. Patriasz received English citizenship on December 23, 1947.
  • Franz and Edith Kohner
    The two of them came from the Sudetenland with two small children . They managed the farm, bought the supplies, organized food rationing, and handled blackout and other war-related problems.
    At the end of the 1990s, she was over eighty and lived near Newcastle . She provided Marilyn Taylor with many photos of former farm life and told her in detail about her memories of the years on the farm, on which she, her husband and her family had played an important role for several years.
  • Erwin Jakobi (Yakobi)
    He was a former Viennese saxophonist, but on the farm, because he came from a medical family, he was responsible for the health of the children and their well-being. We were then placed in the care of Erwin Jacobi, an older saxophonist from Vienna, and although he didn't look very maternal, he was the best babysitter [child-minder] because he made sure that we had grammar school education ] received.
  • Mr. Mündelheim
    He must have been a kind of handicraft instructor who mainly looked after the     Chaluzim .

Together with other older refugees, these people mastered the difficult task of welding together the heterogeneous group of young people from different age groups and from different countries. Many of the children were alone, many were emotionally scarred, all were displaced - they all had to be integrated into a prosperous and cooperative farm community.

The end of the farm

Most of the refugees stayed at Millisle Farm until the end of the war, some even until the farm was closed in May 1948. Older refugees had joined the British Army Pioneer Corps or had been given jobs. A few refugees were able to start studying with the financial support of refugee organizations. At least one girl finished her nurse training.

It was not until some time after the end of the war in 1945 that the remaining refugees on Millisle Farm learned of the fate of their family members. Most had to realize that their entire families had died in the Holocaust and that they had been orphaned themselves. A few of them were granted the opportunity to go to remaining relatives in Great Britain, Canada or America; from now on most of them had to shape their own lives and their own future on their own.

Looking back, Gerald Jayson (Gert Jacobowitz) judges: “We Jewish refugees who fled the Nazis are always grateful to the Belfast Jewish community for what they did to save our lives. They raised the guarantee of £ 100 per refugee that enabled us to look after us so well and for a long time. We had freedom, food and a wonderful healthy life in the beautiful Irish countryside. What more do you want? "

From Auschwitz to Millisle Farm

In the Belfast Telegraph on 24 January 2002 a report based on a lesser-known aspect of the appeared Millisle Farm drew attention as it is their story ever. Under the heading “From Hitler's Holocaust to a farm in Millisle”, an aid campaign in February 1946 is reported on the occasion of Holocaust Memorial Day . At that time, 100 children were flown from Prague to Northern Ireland in a British cargo plane. These children were orphans who had survived the Auschwitz concentration camp . After they were welcomed at Belfast Airport, the children were brought to Millisle Farm and carefully incorporated into everyday farm life and the leisure activities available there. However, since most of the Auschwitz children grew up in very religious Eastern European families, it was soon decided to move them away from Millisle Farm and to places with larger Jewish communities in England. They were to receive a religious education there that was more in line with what they knew from home.

Fridolin Friedmann was one of the carers for the Holocaust survivors on Millisle Farm for some time in 1945/1946 . When he moved to Bunce Court School in 1946 , he took some boys from the farm with him to his new place of work.

Poetic remembrance

Dr. Ben Maier, "a poet and performer," has published a cycle of poems based on the story of Millisle Farm . Inspired by interviews and historical sources, Maier in The Farm thematizes the daily wonders of this community and develops a story of compassion and determination against the background of the loss experienced.

literature

  • Rebekka Göpfert: The Jewish Kindertransport from Germany to England 1938/39. History and memory , Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1999, ISBN 3-593-36201-5 .
  • Marilyn Taylor: Faraway Home , O'Brien Press, Dublin, 1999, ISBN 978-0-86278-643-4 (Marilyn Taylor is a writer and librarian. Her Faraway Home , a work of fiction based on the Millisle story, won the Bisto Children's Book of the year Award, 2000.)
  • Martin Gilbert : They were the boys. The story of 732 young Holocaust survivors , Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin, 2007, ISBN 978-3-86650-222-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Millisle Farm in Co Down
  2. ^ Rebekka Göpfert: The Jewish Kindertransport from Germany to England 1938/39 , pp. 124–126
  3. ↑ Unless other sources are given, the following statements are based on the essay by Marilyn Taylor: Millisle, County Down - Haven from Nazi Terror (see web links)
  4. ↑ Overall responsibility was “the Belfast Jewish community. To the fore was Maurice Solomon, the treasurer, Leo Scop, the chairman of the Refugee Committee, and the president, Barney Hurwitz. "
  5. ↑ a b c d e Gerald Jayson (Gert Jacobowitz): The Farm
  6. ↑ HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY 2002: An Ulster Haven from Hitler: Remembering Millisle
  7. ↑ “The farm was also home to about thirty-five Chalutzim - European Zionists in their late teens and early twenties who planned to emigrate to kibbutzim in Palestine. When the war broke out, the trained khaluzim were no longer able to travel to Palestine and many joined the army. Some families and some elderly single refugees who had managed to leave Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were also residents of the farm. "
  8. ^ A b WWII: Millisle farm becomes 'The Far Away Home' for Jewish children
  9. ^ Newtownards Chronicle 1939: Refugees at Millisle . “The idea is to give them a new start in life and at the same time to use their energies for self-sufficiency by producing enough for their own needs. [...] This is how they prepare to live independently in Palestine or wherever their ultimate destination may be. ”The same article mentions that most of the refugees would come from Czechoslovakia .
  10. ↑ Northern Whig: Refugee Farmers have 42 acres to harvest. Self-contained Community at Millisle
  11. ↑ a b c d Marilyn Taylor: Millisle, County Down - Haven from Nazi Terror
  12. ↑ For the function and history of the “Air Training Corps”, see the article of the same name in WIKIPEDIA-EN: Air Training Corps
  13. ↑ Naturalization Certificate: Eugen Patriasz
  14. ↑ From Hitler's Holocaust to a farm in Millisle
  15. ↑ Martin Gilbert: They were the boys , p. 351
  16. ↑ Martin Gilbert: They were the boys , p. 406
  17. ↑ Ben Maier: From the Irish Archive: The Farm at Millisle , in: Irish Pages , Vol. 6, No. 1, Ireland in Crisis, 2009, pp. 123-141. [ishpages.org/product/ireland-in-crisis-vol-6-no-1/ Irish Pages ]. A poem from this cycle, ANNA KOESTLER AT CLIFTONPARK AVENUE , can be viewed ikm Internet: Brochure of the Jewish Congregation in Belfast , p. 20.