Upper North Street School Bombing

In June 1917 the 'Great' war had been waging for three years, but that was away in France. In the eastend of London the 13th of June started like any other. No-one could ever have imagined that it would end in a tragedy that would send shock and sadness throughout the country. It affected everyone even the King himself.

It was mid morning when people began to notice something strange in the summer sky. By his time in the war the people were used to Zeppelin raids, but this time it was different. Some people described them as looking like dragonflies. As they came nearer it became clear they were planes fourteen in number, and as they flew they dropped bombs leaving devistation in their wake. As they flew overhead one witness said ''the sun had been shining but it seemed to go out in a roar of thunder''. This was the first fixed wing bombing raid by fixed wings aircraft on women and children.

Twice before the Gotha's of the 'English Squadron' led by Squadron Commander Hauptmann Ernst Branderberg had tried to bomb Britan, this time when they reurned to base leaving a hundred and sixty two people dead and over five hundred injured they probably counted their mission a success. Amongst those killed and injured were the children of Upper North Street school.

Whether he pilot recognised he building he hit was a school or not will never be known. What is known is that the bomb landed on the roof of he school then continued through o the top floor where the girls were taught, it carried on through the second floor which was the boys classroom and finally carried on to the ground floor before exploding in the infants classroom.

Local people, including the mothers of the children rushed to the school to join the teachers digging in the

rubble praying all the time they would find their child alive. The injured were taken to hopitals and those killed were taken to the morque with their greiving mothers. The women of the eastend, like women elsewhere had somewhere in their hearts prepared themselves that their menfolk might never come back, but not their children. Never during their darkest moments did they believe that their children were in any danger in the safety of their school.

The children who lost their lives that day were:
Louise Annie Acampora aged 5 ... Alfred Ernest Batt aged 5 ... Leaonard Charles Barford aged 5 ... John Percy Brennan aged 5 ... William Thomas Henry Challen aged 4 ... Vera May Clayson aged 5 ...  Alice Maud Cross aged 5 ... William Hollis aged 5 ... George Albert Hyde aged 5 ... Grace Jones aged 5 ... Rose Martin aged 11 ... George Morris aged 6 ... Edwin Cecil William Powell aged 12 ... Robert Stimson aged 5 ... Elizabeth Taylor aged 5 ... Rose Tuffin aged 5 ... Frank Winfield aged 5 ... Florence L Woods aged 5.

A week later on the twentieth of June when the funerals were being held hundreds lined the streets in silent respect. Over six hundred wreaths were sent from all over the world. The funeral service at the parish church of All Saints. Among the mourners were many children who had survived the attack.

The Bishop of London conducted the service and knowing what was being demanded on the streets he said ''Little did we expect, after 2000 years of teaching Christianity, that war would be made on women and children ... we must be careful that indignation drives us into the right action. There is much looseness of thought and phrases about retribution. I do not believe that the mourners wish that sixteen German babies should lie dead to avenge their own.

He also read out a message from King George V who visited the eastend immediately after the tragedy.The message read that he and, with Queen Mary. were thinking of the childrens parents and ''their saddened homes, especially today when the bodies of their little ones were laid to rest''. The Kings message went on ''of young innocent lives, at all times pathetic, is made more so that ever in these tragic circumstances. Their Majesties pray that the mourners may be blessed with God's help and comfort in their sorrow''.

The mayor and local  MP Will Crooks decided it would be fitting to set up a memorial fund, The memorisl stands in Poplar recreation park. it was paid for by public donations and unveiled on the twentieth of June 1919.

April 2014 From East London Advertiser

Thieves have stolen trees from a WWI memorial just days after they were planted to mark the deaths of 18 children killed in a German wartime bombing raid.


The trees were placed by Mayor Lutfur Rahman in Trinity Gardens, Poplar, near the site of the bombing of Upper North Street School in 1917 in a ceremony on April 1 attended by the Royal British Legion.

But within days, residents alerted the Advertiser that some of the trees had gone missing, along with a memorial plaque for the site.

Tower Hamlets Council confirmed the trees had been stolen, but said they would be quickly replaced.

A spokeman said: “We are saddened to find that three out of the 10 elm trees along with the black poplar tree planted by the council in Trinity Gardens to commemorate the First World War-era bombing of a local school have been taken.

“We will be looking to replant the missing trees as soon as possible.”

She said no crime had been reported to the Met police as the trees will be replaced, adding: “Parks staff have been informed to keep a close eye on the trees once they are replanted.”

She added the memorial plaque had yet to be “concreted” and was removed from the site by the council after the mayor’s ceremony.

Upper North Street School was struck by one of the first aerial bombings of the First World War on June 13, 1917. The attack targeted the East India and Millwall docks.

 

  

                                                                          

                                                                            

 

The Kindertransport

This statue wasn’t erected in memory of one person but of thousands, they are the children who were saved from Nazi persecution at the start of World War Two and perhaps if you should ever be passing by Liverpool Street Station you might spare a thought to remember the millions of other children who tragically never had the chance to be part of the Kindertransport.

In 1933 Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party came to power in Germany and for the Jewish population and others it was it was the beginning of a nightmare, within months of his appointment as Chancellor work began on the concentration camp Dachau where arrested Communists, Socialists, and labour leaders were held. It was here that the guards practiced their ‘skills’ of dehumanizing prisoners. 
 
It was the same years that specific laws were brought in for the Jewish population, they were barred from holding positions in the civil service, in legal and medical professions, and in teaching and university positions. The Nazis encouraged boycotts of Jewish-owned shops and businesses and began the ook burnings of writings by Jews and by others not approved by the Reich.

In 1935 something called the Nuremberg Laws were brought into force. These laws stripped Jews of their civil rights as German citizens and separated them from Germans legally, socially, and politically. This law also forbade marriages or sexual relations between Jews and Germans. Hitler warned darkly that if this law did not resolve the problem, he would turn to the Nazi Party for a final solution.

During this time thousands left Germany but gradually this slowed to a trickle as visa’s became impossible to obtain and those that were luckier enough to get a visa were not allowed to take out any possessions or money, also they found many countries had closed their borders to them. Then when the Nazi’s marched into Austria and were welcomed by the Austrian people more Jews became under control of the Nazi’s, then on October 15th, 1938 Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia came under the Nazi jackboot, two months later came the event known as Kristallnacht (The Night of the Broken Glass) when nearly 1,000 synagogues were set on fire,76 were destroyed.

More than 7,000 Jewish businesses and homes were looted, about one hundred Jews were killed and as many as 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps to be tormented, many for months. Within days, the Nazis forced the Jews to transfer their businesses to Aryan hands and expelled all Jewish pupils from public schools. With brazen arrogance, the Nazis further persecuted the Jews by forcing them to pay for the damages of Kristallnacht.

Although Jewish and Quaker groups had been trying for months to get Britain to allow free access of Jews to Britain it was this event that spurred them on to greater efforts. They appealed to Neville Chamberlain to permit the temporary admission of Jewish children and teenagers who would later re-emigrate. The Jewish community here promised to pay guarantees for the refugee children. 

With a speed not usually associated with government it was agreed that unaccompanied children ranging from infants up to teenagers under the age of 17 would be able to come, no limit to the number of refugees was ever publicly announced. A comparable U.S. effort to absorb up to 10,000 refugee children by relaxing restrictive immigration statutes failed to even make it out of Congressional committees debating the issue, One congressional committee studied a proposal to bring in refugee children and piously declined, saying it was "contrary to the rules of God" to take children away from their parents

In Germany, a network of organizers was established, and these volunteers worked around the clock to make priority lists of those most imperiled: teenagers who were in concentration camps or in danger of arrest, Polish children or teenagers threatened with deportation, children in Jewish orphanages, children whose parents were too impoverished to keep them, or children with a parent in a concentration camp. Once the children were identified or grouped by list, their guardians or parents were issued a travel date and departure details. 

Each child was allowed to bring a small suitcase and ten Reichsmarks.Upon arrival at port in Great Britain, Kinder without prearranged foster families were sheltered at temporary holding centers located at summer holiday camps such as Dover Court and Pakefield. Finding foster families was not always easy, and being chosen for a home was not necessarily the end of the discomfort or distress.

Although many children were well-treated and grew up to develop close ties to their British hosts, some were mistreated or abused. Some families took in teenage girls as a way of acquiring a maid. There was little sensitivity toward the cultural and religious needs of the children and, for some, their heritage was all but erased.

In all nearly 10.000 children were saved, the German government allowed this to happen with one proviso, that the convoys of children didn’t block the ports so they traveled by train to the Hook of Holland. From there, the children traveled by ferry to the British ports of Harwich or Southampton and travelled to London by train, arriving at Liverpool Street Station.

The last group of children from Germany departed on September 1, 1939, the day the German army invaded Poland and provoked Great Britain, France, and other countries to declare war. The last known transport of children from the Netherlands left on May 14, 1940, the day the Dutch army surrendered to Germany. Most of the children that were part of the Kindertransport never saw their parents again.

In 1940 the British government brought in laws which meant that all ‘enemy aliens’ should be interred, and unbelievably someone decided that the ‘kinder’ fell into this group so about a thousand 16 to 17 year olds were held in interment camps while nearly five hundred more were sent to Australia and Canada, and over a thousand Kinder teenagers served in the British armed forces, including combat units. Several dozen joined elite formations such as the Special Forces, where their language skills could be put to good use.

There have been two Kindertransport memorials outside Liverpool Street Station in Hope Square. 

The first was of a young girl beside a giant Perspex suitcase representing everything each child was allowed to bring with them, unfortunately some of the exhibits began to deteriorate so the were removed to the Imperial War Museum. 

A new memorial was commissioned and it was unveiled in 2006 the sculptor was Frank Meisler designed a group of children who like himself arrived at Liverpool Street Station as part of the Kindertransport.

The adage quoted in the notice at the base of sculpture is: "Whosoever rescues a single soul is credited as though they had saved the whole world." (Talmud, Baba Batra