Posted on April 30, 2022
A Gloucester building that housed Jewish child refugees fleeing Nazi Germany is to be given a blue commemorative plaque, following a campaign by the son of one of those housed here. The unveiling will mark 82 years since the arrival of these children in Gloucestershire, but not the end of the plight of refugees.
The former hostel on Alexandra Road in Kingsholm was home to 10 boys who were sent hundreds of miles from their families in order to escape the pogroms and the eventual Nazi holocaust that murdered more than 6,000,000 Jewish people in Europe. Many of the children on the Kindertransport were the only members of their family to survive the genocide.
The Alexandra Road hostel was organised by Gloucester Association for Aiding Refugees, who brought in a Checkoslovakian refugee couple to help raise the rescued children. Apart from a safe home, these children were given education, training and jobs by the city that opened its arms.