This little-told story of the young people rescued from concentration camps and sent to Britain is poignant, hopeful – and should shame our government to the core
The most powerful moments of The Windermere Children (BBC Two) come in the final few minutes when the drama stops and the teenage Polish actors playing Holocaust survivors brought to Britain after the war are suddenly replaced by the survivors themselves – real people, still alive, talking about their happy and fulfilled lives. It seems more than just a familiar device to show that the film is based on actual people and true events. This has been a story about survival and recovery from unimaginable trauma, so seeing these men smiling, thriving, provides an unexpectedly optimistic conclusion.
In 1945, the British government agreed to accept about 750 children rescued from Auschwitz and Belsen; 300 of them were brought to Windermere for a period of rehabilitation before being found permanent homes. The children file off the bus in silence, and are told to queue up for a medical examination – boys to the left, girls to the right – before being made to strip off their clothes. “Relax,” one boy tells another reassuringly. “Relax gets you killed,” comes the reply. When one is asked his name, he automatically rolls up a sleeve to show the camp number tattooed on his arm. They are taken to sleep in factory workers’ barracks, which from the outside look disturbingly like concentration camp sheds. They find it hard to believe that this is not going to end badly.
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