Sir Richard Attenborough remembers Kindertransport

By Richard Attenborough for MailOnline Updated:


In the nine months before the outbreak of World War II, 10,000 children, nearly all Jewish and most from Germany and Austria, came to live with foster parents in Britain in an extraordinary mass rescue mission co-ordinated by the British Government. It became known as the Kindertransport.

Among those who responded to the urgent appeal for help were Lord Richard Attenborough's parents. Here, the 85-year-old director remembers how Helga and Irene Bejach arrived in August 1939, when he was 15. They stayed with the Attenboroughs for seven years before moving to America. Irene died in 1992 and Helga in 2005.

I will never forget when Helga and Irene first arrived at our home. They were two pale waifs with their pathetic little cases, aged ten and 12. They looked sad and ill. They were also nervous wrecks.

Lord Richard Attenborough

Kindertransport: Lord Richard Attenborough remembers how his parents fostered two German girls during the war

Their house in Germany had been smashed by Nazis with guns and their father taken away. After the girls had been with us for three weeks, my brothers David, John and I were called into the study by our parents.

Our mother said, 'We absolutely love you boys, but we will have to show even more love to these girls because they are here on their own and without their parents. It is entirely up to you, darlings, if they stay.

Kindertransport

Children pictured on a train in the film 'Into The Arms Of Strangers: Stories Of Kindertransport'

' We realised, even though we boys were all quite young ourselves, how shocked and frightened the girls were. My parents always stood up and were counted wherever they saw an injustice being done. And the Kinderstransport was a great example of caring for human dignity, for racial tolerance and for compassion.

The three of us boys had no hesitation in taking Helga and Irene into our family. We really did see them as sisters, virtually from the time we were told they were going to live with us.

Initially, they were very reclusive, but they grew into attractive and confident young women.They helped shape our lives. We went on holidays together, and played together as brothers and sisters, and I adored them.

After the war, Helga and Irene moved to America to join relatives, and both married there. I would talk on the phone to them at least once a month, certainly for the first 20 years after the war, and would see them when I went to America or they came over here.

We loved them and cherished them – and were so proud of them.

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