George and Edith Lauer

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.

George Lauer was born in 1907. Before the war, he lived in Prague and worked as a chemist. He tried to seek asylum in the UK in 1938 but was deported.

He was taken with his wife, Edith, from Prague to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in 1943. There he was appointed head of sanitation. After the ghetto was liberated in May 1945 by the Soviet Red Army, the new Czech government employed him and his wife to stay and deal with the typhus outbreak. Edith was in charge of youth welfare and drew up the list of the 300 Boys who made up the first group to arrive in the UK.

The Lauers accompanied the children on the journey to the Windermere reception centre and flew in the last plane with the youngest children. Edith headed up the care of the young children and stayed with them in Windermere. She went on to work with the children in the Weir Courtney hostel.

The couple emigrated to the USA in late 1946.