South Cumbria remembers the Windermere Boys on Holocaust Day

Although the generation who lived through World War Two is passing on, Windermere continues to remember its role in taking in Holocaust survivors. 

Windermere Lake Cruises chairman Bill Bewery (right) with some of those who attended the reunion (Image: Windermere Lake Cruises)

In May last year, survivors of the Holocaust returned to Windermere with their families for a special reunion to mark the delayed 75th anniversary of their arrival in Cumbria. 

Some of these survivors were 'Windermere Boys.' They were liberated from Nazi camps and brought to a new life in the Lake District in 1945. 

They enjoyed a cruise on the MV Swift and then went to the former Calgarth Estate at Troutbeck Bridge. This was a housing scheme built for aircraft factory workers during the war and was where the boys spent their first night in a new country. 

Windermere Lake Cruises marketing director Jennifer Cormack with Holocaust survivor Alek Hersh (Image: Windermere Lake Cruises)

About 300 Jewish children were brought to Cumbria after being rescued from concentration camps.

Their story became known beyond this region when they were the subject of a BBC TV drama from 2020 called 'The Windermere Children.'

Trevor Avery set up the Lake District Holocaust Project in 2005 as its director. He heard about the children's story when he ran an exhibition in Kendal to mark the anniversary of World War Two. He later set up an exhibition about the children who moved to the Lake District at Windermere library in 2013.

Peter Avery, the director of Lake District Holocaust Project (Image: LDHP)

The project focused on children who were brought from the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. 

In 2021, he presented this story to the UN, which he said came from 'the reputation that the film has gathered.' 

The Duchess of Cambridge met relatives of the Windermere Children and television personality Robert Rinder during a visit to the Jetty Museum in Bowness where she heard about Lake District Holocaust project (Image: Lake District Holocaust Project)

He said: “I think it’s a story for the ages and I think it just had to be done, and it had to be done when it was done,

"It was a race against time; the locals were fading away and certainly the survivors were." 

READ MORE: Plans for new £20million Windermere Children centre in the works

In May 2022, Mr Avery announced that plans were in the 'early stages of development' for a £20 million museum celebrating the child Holocaust survivors rescued from concentration camps and brought to Windermere. 

He said: “One of the survivors said to me “we were liberated from Theresienstadt, but we didn’t feel free until we came to the Lake District.”