Bertha Bracey, British Hero of the Holocaust

Bertha Bracey was recognised as a British Hero of the Holocaust in 2010 by Gordon Brown, for her work in helping to bring 10,000 Jewish Kindertransport children from Germany to Britain between December 1938 and September 1939.

Bertha Bracey

Bertha was born in 1893 into a Quaker family in Bournville, Birmingham, where her father worked at Cadbury’s chocolate factory. Bertha was able to persuade her father to let her go to Birmingham University, unusual for a woman at that time. After graduating she worked as a teacher, but in 1921 moved to Vienna where she lived with a German family and set up youth groups. Later she lived in Germany. Her experience of the country and ability to speak German meant that she recognised the danger of the Nazis early and was appointed as secretary for the Quakers’ Germany Emergency Committee in 1933.

In 1938 the events of Kristallnacht in Germany showed that Jewish people in Germany were in immediate danger. A consortium of British Jews arranged for six Quaker volunteers, including Bertha, to go to Berlin and find out what was happening. There Bertha met Wilfrid Israel who introduced her to the heads of Jewish women's organisations from across Germany. These meetings were crucial to the success of the Kindertransport. The volunteers’ report concluded that unaccompanied children should be allowed entry to Britain. This request was refused by the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.

Bertha Bracey was then part of a Quaker and Jewish delegation which met with the Home Secretary Samuel Hoare, who did agree to an unlimited number of unaccompanied children being allowed to come to Britain. The following information is from the Quaker’s website.

“Trains packed with children left European cities bound for the Hook of Holland on 1 December 1938. Quaker volunteers chaperoned each stage of the journey to ensure the safety of the children. The British government assured the safety of the transports, but not the children:

“The Nazis made sure the journey was humiliating and terrifying. Trains were grimly sealed. Parents were sometimes not permitted to say goodbye in public. The children had to take trains to Holland so that they would not "sully" German ports. Their luggage was torn apart by guards searching for valuables." (National Archives)

The first trains departed on 1 December 1938, traveling for over a day to reach safety. The first train brought 200 children from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin which had been destroyed during Kristallnacht. When the trains began to arrive in London they were met by Quakers and others at Liverpool Street station. Here the children were given food and accommodation was arranged for them.

Children were found homes with Quaker families and other communities throughout the country. There were anywhere from 120–250 children on each transport. In total ten thousand refugee children made the journey.”

Getting the children out of Germany could be perilous, and according to Wikipedia, in her later years Bertha told her great-nephew, Nick Bamford, that she would ‘take false papers to the Jews she was helping to escape. Knowing that if she were caught with these she would be arrested and in serious trouble, her strategy was to play up the role of a slightly dotty, middle-aged schoolmistress by approaching every man in uniform and asking, "Do I need to show you my papers?". She was quickly hurried on and so her mission was accomplished.’

Some of the Kindertransport children came to live in Rusthall at The Beacon and attended Rusthall St Paul’s School in the village. I first heard of Bertha Bracey during a talk given by Anne Goldstein about these children and the Basque children who had lived there earlier in the 1930s, and whom Anne has written about here. Anne mentioned that Bertha Bracey had lived in Langton Green in her later years (from the 1960s) where she had moved to be close to her sister. I contacted village historian Peter Batts to see if he knew anything about her. Perhaps because Bertha had been modest about her achievements, Peter had not heard of her before, but he was able to discover that she had lived in Farnham Close, “and how very well qualified she was to live there.” Peter told me The Hatton Trust, who opened Farnham Close in the 1950s, are a charity set up by Mrs Hyatt-Wolf in 1947 to provide accommodation for elderly people who had limited means to buy a house because they had spent their lives in service or work for the community.

Bertha Bracey died in 1989, at which time she lived in a care home away from Langton Green. There is a statue commemorating her in Friends House in London by the sculptor Naomi Blake, an Auschwitz survivor. The inscription reads:

To honour Bertha Bracey (1893–1989) who gave practical leadership to Quakers in quietly rescuing and re-settling thousands of Nazi victims and lone children between 1933 and 1948.

Statue in honour of Bertha Bracey in Friends House, London