I spent a fascinating afternoon in the London Metropolitan archives yesterday, reading through the Minutes of meetings of the CBF for 1938/39. I will be writing up my notes, hopefully over the next couple of weeks; there were some interesting revelations and useful background to how Kitchener camp came into being.
Source London Metropolitan Archives, City of London, Records of the Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief, Ref code ACC/279
We also received a really helpful email yesterday from a very kind woman working on HMT Dunera files in Australia, who pointed us to an archive maintained by the Australian government. The archive gives some information about the over two hundred Kitchener men who had the misfortune to be put onto the Dunera after war broke out. As you might have noticed, we have a page flagged for research on the Dunera, so hearing about the existence of this database was very welcome. We currently have a request out to them to ask about copyright issues – and we’ll see what we can use here when we get a reply.
Meanwhile, we have a backlog of materials to be uploaded, which I have started on this afternoon. I have given priority to the materials of one descendant in particular, because he was actually in Kitchener camp!
Winston Brill’s father, Walter Brill, was given a place in Kitchener camp – possibly because he had carpentry skills. The family were fortunate in that Walter and his wife Irmgard were both able to make it to the safety of the UK, where Irmgard soon gave birth to Winston who, as a baby, was made famous in this context in a photograph used in a promotional magazine that was produced about Kitchener camp.
Winston has been told that Irmgard – just arrived by plane from Germany a few days day or so before he was born in a London hospital – was asked what she wanted to name her baby boy. Irmgard replied “Winston,” believing it to be a common English name because she had heard a lot about Winston Churchill.
Most touchingly, Winston’s middle name is “Jonas,” after a Jonas A. May – one of the two brothers who ran Kitchener camp.
What a wonderful set of histories we are now able to share …
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When you look at the various documents pages, by the way, you might find it useful to click on the links under the document uploads, if you don’t know what some of the documents are.
This page, which I have just created, might prove helpful – https://kitchenercamp.co.uk/what-is-this-document/
Please bear with me – it’ll take a while to get up to speed with all this, but I’ll get there as fast as I can!
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Finally for today, I have just uploaded some photographs of Felix Bujakowsky.
These are fascinating for me, because when Felix’s grandson got in touch to say his grandfather had been in Kitchener camp, and he started to give me their family story, I started to realise that I had heard of Felix before …
If you are interested to know more, please see www.fromnumberstonames.com where there is further information about this connection between the two Kitchener refugees.