Introduction

About eighteen months ago Felix and Josh, from Hampton School, discovered an obscure reference to something called a ‘kinderhostel’ which existed in Lebanon Park, a road close to where they lived in Twickenham in the late 1930s and through the Second World War. They discovered that the ‘kinderhostel’ was home to ten Jewish boys who had been forced to flee Nazism in their home countries just before the Second World War. Josh and Felix researched further and were able to discover more about the boys who came to Twickenham, were honoured to find many of the relatives of those boys... and were privileged to find one of those boys still alive and well, living in the USA.

In December last year young people from eight secondary schools around the London Borough of Richmond met online with the author Tom Palmer. The students had already read Tom’s book, ‘After The War’, about a group of boys who had survived the Holocaust and came to Britain in 1945. For the next hour, the students asked Tom how he approached writing a story based on the truth of the most troubling and dark period of human history.

What follows is the students’ creative responses to the true story of the boys who fled from Nazism and lived in our borough. Some of the students have also written reflections on why it is important for us all to learn about the story of the boys of Lebanon Park. Others have written about the impact of reading Tom Palmer’s book.

There are lots of people who we would like to thank for their help in this Holocaust Memorial Day project. First, we’d also like to thank our MP, Munira Wilson, for her powerful words that open this booklet. Similarly, we’d like to thank all the teachers who worked very hard to make it possible for their students to attend the session with Tom Palmer and for everyone’s responses to appear in this booklet during such trying times. Importantly, we’d also like to thank the families of the boys who came to Twickenham in 1939. They have been wonderfully supportive with their time and precious images and memories of the boys in later life. Lastly, we’d like to extend a huge thank you and ‘well done’ to all the students who gave up their spare time to write such moving responses and reflections. They are all a hugely fitting way to remember the boys who lived in the Lebanon Park ‘kinderhostel’ and their families who were left behind.

Thank you for reading our booklet. We hope that you find it worthwhile. In a difficult time of rising Holocaust denial and antisemitism we think it is important for everyone to mark Holocaust Memorial Day and we hope that you think this is a meaningful way of doing so.