The Windermere Children
For Holocaust Memorial Day the BBC aired a movie called The Windermere Children, the story of how over 300 child Holocaust survivors were sent to the Lake District to recover and restart their lives. I only got to see it today and I’m so, so glad I did. I never knew anything about this.
So at the time a newspaper reported that the children were “quite cheerful” and that’s the standout thing. What? Definitely this movie doesn’t shy away from showing the scars of the Holocaust. When the children are given bread they immediately run away to hide it somewhere safe, like they would have done in the camps. When a dog barks at the younger kids they flee into the woods in terror. One boy waits by the gate every day in hope his brother survived and will come for him*. All of them are utterly, utterly traumatized and most are completely alone in the world.
And yet the kids are so… normal in most respects. That’s the thing that really got me about this film. The older boys have been through terrible things but they still banter among each other, steal bikes from the local bullies, flirt with girls and so on. One of the most affecting scenes for me is where they realise that three of them were on the same concentration camp train and would have undoubtedly ended up in the same mass grave if things had been different. It broke my heart that there were jokes in that conversation. I was so, so relieved that these boys who’d been through such terrible things all went on to have happy lives.
Right at the end of the film you meet the real-life counterparts of the teenagers at the center of the story. (The actors playing them, by the way, are complete unknowns who were totally, utterly brilliant.) They tell their stories for the camera. You can read them here. They all survived and were happy, one of them went on to become a champion weightlifter and a Knight even.
Just an utterly beautiful movie. But a pointed one, too. I heard a quote once saying that it won’t be all that long before the last Holocaust survivors pass away, so we’d better make damn sure we listen to their stories while they’re alive to tell them. Hopefully this film will be able to help on that account. I’m damn grateful they made it.
*=He does, and apparently that was not a movie invention but something that really happened. Wow.