Budleigh Past and Present

Continued from   https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/07/ww2-75-yes-budleigh-was-bombed.html ' Moorcroft', Lansdown Road, offered by Lord Clinton to Belgian refugees in Budleigh during World War One. Perhaps Austrian Jewish refugees were offered work as maids in the 1930s in grand Budleigh houses like this. Moved and curious as I am when reading stories of the plight of refugees, especially those who have somehow found themselves in our local area, I am continuing on the theme of an earlier post about the German Jewish boy R. Muller, who was evacuated to Budleigh during World War Two.  Sadly no one has yet contacted me to say that they knew him, but at Exeter Synagogue they are making enquries.  A 1915 poster published by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, London. It shows a soldier standing defiant as a woman and child flee a burning village in Belgium  Image credit: www.loc.gov The early years of World ...

  Sculptor Frank Meisler's ‘Kindertransport – The Arrival’ (2006) stands outside London’s Liverpool Street station.     A project established by the Association of Jewish Refugees, it pays tribute to those Britons who aided the rescue of 10,000 Jewish children from the Nazi persecution which led on to the Holocaust.  Image credit:  Wjh31  I’m not certain of being around for the centenary of the outbreak of World War Two. So 2020, the 75 th anniversary of the war's end, seems a good time to reflect on those terrible five years that my parents’ generation endured. Especially as it may help to put the relatively minor disaster of Covid-19 into perspective.   Sadly, the grim pandemic has meant that Fairlynch Museum’s VE Day display may not be seen by as many visitors as it deserves. Here’s a testimony from the Museum’s archives which relates to the early years of WW2 rather than to 1945. ...