Page 28 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - October 19

reveal that the Habonim organization involved its wits to fight, steal, be sly, and crafty. They all
Chaverim in work far beyond the three famous
Hostels – Exmouth, Dawlish and Teignmouth, in
Devon.
Manny Silver wrote to Kol Vatikei Habonim in
Vol. 1, No 3 in March 1996:
“In 1942 I was a Madrich at the Teignmouth
Hostel. In 1945 I was moved to a Hostel in ‘Ascot’
(Ascot is mentioned by other War-time
Madrichim) to help with the rehabilitation of
hundreds of young teenagers from Buchenwald
and Theresienstadt.”
Manny described briefly the problems in helping
to rehabilitate the Jewish youth after the Nazi
atrocities. Later on Manny joined the Jewish
Relief Unit, as did other Chaverim. He was sent to
an Orphan Children’s home in Austria and then
worked in D.P. camps, where antisemitism was
rife after the war.
Kol Vatikei Habonim Vol 1, No. 7, March 1998:
Sonia Margolis (Margalit) wrote of a boy from the
hostel (Woodford, Marov House, Loughton,
Essex), who by the time he came to visit her and
Moggy at Kfar Bloom, had become a successful
settled engineer with a family. He told her about
many of the boys for whom they had cared in
1945.
The Margalits were then ‘old hands’ at the
Hostels. "We were asked to take over a Hostel of
what ‘they’ called D.Ps. kids of 14 and 15…
The kids from Nazi camps were quite different
from normal English kids. In 5 years of the Camps
these youths survived by being able to live on their
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looked and acted much older than 15.”
Sonya added, “They hoarded and kept everything
– a pen, pencils, a badge. They used to hide bread
and food of all sorts, in their beds! We taught
them English, Hebrew, Mathematics, History.
Some were brilliant and made a name for
themselves in the Academic World.”
Mr. Leon Simon (later Sir Leon Simon) describes
the activities and organisation of the 3 Devon
th
Hostels, in a letter to the Jewish Chronicle, 5
September 1941: “I think that if there was more
true vision in Anglo-Jewry we should not have just
three Hostels of this type, inadequately equipped
and hampered by lack of fund, but should have 10
or 20 times as many, provided with an adequate
budget and assured of the intelligent interest and
support of the whole Community”.
Again from the 1945 Veida: “It was in 1943 that
we began to discuss the question of relief work
abroad. The Community was making preparations
for the training of teams and listing of volunteers.
Our Relief teams which left England in June and
July 1945 today work in Belsen and Celle.”
Linda Marom Shomer is one of our Archivists
who volunteers weekly at the Habonim Archive at
Yad Tabenkin. She has found a wealth of primary
and secondary historical resources that cover the
subject of the Hostels both Wartime and Post War.
This is just a small selection of what there is in the
Archive. She welcomes anyone interested in
delving more into this subject to contact her or
one of the other volunteers.