Brown Honours Unsung UK Shoah Heroes
Gordon Brown with guests at the Downing Street reception
Two remarkable men aged 100 and 91 were this week among the British heroes honoured by their country for saving the lives of Jews and non-Jews during the Shoah.
While the majority of the 27 individuals hailed in London this week had previously been recognised as Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem, the presentation of the British Hero of the Holocaust Award represented the first time they had officially been honoured by UK authorities for their actions seven decades ago.
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Denis Avey, who as a British prisoner of war swapped places with an Auschwitz inmate in order to gather information on the camp, said he had been embarrassed by the praise heaped on him by the prime minister. Avey said: “I’m more than honoured. I did things automatically. It gets you into a lot of trouble but you sleep at night.
Sir Nicholas Winton, the wartime diplomat dubbed Britain’s Schindler for organising trains to take 669 youngsters from Prague to London at the outbreak of war, told the Jewish News: “It’s nice to be honoured. It’s nice to think that many of the people I helped are still about. They look after me now.”
The remainder of recipients, however, were being honoured posthumously. Among them was the Duke of Edinburgh’s mother Princess Alice of Greece, who sheltered three Jewish women and worked to organise shelters for orphan children. Another was Albert Bedane, a physiotherapist who sheltered a Dutch Jewish woman and escaped French POWs in his cellar while treating Nazi soldiers in the room above.
His granddaughter Sue Grace travelled from her home in Canada to collect the medallion from Communities Secretary John Denham and cohesion minister Shahid Malik. “I would never miss this,” she told the Jewish News ahead of a lunch at the foreign office. “It is so important to be here, to have this recognised. I’m so proud of my grandfather.”
Others honoured were Sister Agnes Walsh, Ida and Louise Cook, Sergeant Charles Coward, Major Frank Foley; Jane Haining; June Ravenhall; Sofka Skipwith; Bertha Bracey; Louisa Gould, Ivy Forester, Harold le Druillenec; Henk Huffener; Stan Wells, Alan Edwards, George Hammond, Roger Letchford, Tommy Noble, John Buckley, Bill Scruton, Bert Hambling, Bill Keeble and Willy Fisher. The award was announced last year following a campaign launched by the Holocaust Educational Trust aimed at encouraging the British authorities to formally recognise acts of wartime heroism on behalf of Jews and non-Jews.
• Anne Frank has been voted the most inspiring and influential woman of the past 100 years, in a poll to mark International Women’s Day. Daily Mirror readers selected Anne ahead of Princess Diana, Margaret Thatcher and Marie Curie.
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