Great Clewes Street

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

The Boys had survived the Holocaust as slave labourers in the Nazi concentration camp system, in hiding and by living alone. 

After arrival in the UK, members of the Boys spent time in the reception centres before being moved to children’s homes known as hostels. Others were sent direct to boarding school or yeshivas, and those who were sick spent time in sanatoriums.

Some of the members of the Boys were lucky enough to find relatives or were taken in by foster families but the majority were moved to hostels.

Great Clowes Street was one of these hostels.

Overview

Great Clewes Street is in Salford, Greater Manchester, in the north west of England.

The hostel was opened in the late 1930s to care for children brought to Manchester on the pre-war Kindertransport, before it housed about 20 members of the Boys.

Manchester was an important hub for Jewish refugees who came to the UK. In the 1930s almost 8,000 Jewish refugees arrived in the city. The Manchester Jewish Refugees Committee, which had been set up in 1938, oversaw the running of the hostel. Its chairman was Rachel Barash.