Elaine Blond

The Central British Fund (CBF) put together a large team of people to look after the Boys.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

The British government offered 1,000 visas to bring the Boys to the UK but the caveat was that the CBF were responsible for their care and would pay all the expenses.

Blond was a one of the main organisers of the pre-war Kindertransport. After the war she played a prominent role in the Committee for the Care of the Concentration Camp Children.

Blond was born Elaine Marks in Manchester in 1902. She was the youngest daughter of Michael Marks, the Russian-Polish immigrant who founded Marks & Spencer.

She was a Zionist and her sister Rebecca founded the Federation of Women Zionists and the World International Zionist Organisation.

Blond was a key figure in the Refugee Children’s Movement from 1938, which was merged with the Central British Fund in the 1940s.

Her first husband was Norman Laski, one of the directors of Marks & Spencer, a cousin of political figures Neville and Harold Laski. She married her second husband, Neville Blond, in 1944.

In 1948, they emigrated to the USA. Blond later became an important patron of the sciences and the arts.