Posted on January 27, 2023
Number 55 Percy Park looks much like all the other town houses on a well-kept seafront parade in Tynemouth. But more than 80 years ago, it played a small yet significant part in the rescue of Jewish children from the Nazis.
Following a BBC investigation, a blue plaque was unveiled on the house to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day and to mark the property’s forgotten past.
When Martin and Rosemary Anderson moved into their home in July 2017, they had no idea about what once took place within its walls.
“The previous owners, who’d lived here for a number of years, clearly didn’t know because a unique bit of history like that would have been a good selling point,” Martin says.
During World War Two, the Andersons’ home served as a sanctuary for more than 20 Jewish girls who had fled Nazi persecution.
They came to the UK on the Kindertransport, the rescue effort in 1938 and 1939 which brought thousands of mostly Jewish refugee children to Britain.
The girls lived in the terraced house for about a year, but all trace of their presence there has since disappeared.