This magazine has often told the story of support Quakers gave to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. Now the Jewish community is seeking a permanent record of our help in those chilling years.
Dr Peter Kurer was seven years old when he came to Britain. ‘My parents, my brother and I escaped the holocaust due to two Manchester Quakers, Horatio and Mary Goodwin, jewellers of Swan St. Manchester,’ Peter has told us.
'They gave the 'Guarantee' which made it possible for our family to escape from Vienna. My brother and I were given two years free education at Friends School Wigton, Cumberland, by the end of which time my father could afford the fees and we had virtually all our education at Quaker boarding schools.'
Peter and his brother recently went to the Old Scholars reunion, 50 years after leaving Wigton (and 20 years after the school closed). Two of his daughters went to the Mount school in York – 'and were as happy as we had been at Wigton.'
Peter is trying to get a more detailed picture of the help the Society gave to Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria. After writing an article for the Association of Jewish Refugees magazine, he had a remarkable response. 'I have had letters, emails and phone calls, all full of praise and gratitude to the Quakers who made their escape possible, thus saving their lives or helping in myriad of different ways.'
But it is all such a long time ago! 'The generation who received the help are no longer with us. We, their children, are well into our seventies and so now to record accurately details of the help given is hard and gets more difficult by the day. There are many Jewish organisations looking for the names of those who were involved and about the interest, care, help and generosity which they know was showered by Quakers on those escaping.'
Peter's ambition is to get acknowledgement of Quaker help in a prominent site such as Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.
If Friends can assist Peter in his task –'I would welcome any information, from the smallest detail onwards', he says, please contact him via us.
posted by Eye @ 10:04 AM
1 Comments:
Hello Peter, I am tracing my family history and on the off chance I typed my G. G. Grand fathers name into Yahoo "Horatio Goodwin" and up popped your article from The Friend. The Horatio that you talk about was (I think) my Great Grand Uncle. The story that I had been told was that my G G Grandfather went into business in the Swann Street shop with a Hungarian Jew, who made clock and watch cases; my GGGrandfather made the movements to fit inside. Whether this is true or whether the story has changed with the passage of time I don't know. I would be very greatful if you could fill in any details. The content of your article came as a very big suprise to me and may have taken my family history investigations down a new and fascinating avenue!
Sue Pope(nee Goodwin)
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