Singleton Road

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.

Singleton Road was one of these hostels.

Overview

The hostel was in Manchester in the north-west of England.

Hans Heinneman was the Boys’ rabbi. The staff included Maurice Bickard and Benno Penner, who moved with the Boys from the Liverpool hostel. Ruth Speir, who had been with the Boys in Windermere, was the matron.

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.

Singleton Road was the head office of the religious Zionist organisation Bachad and was known as the Merkaz Limmud.

The property is now divided up into flats.

The Singleton Road Story

It was decided to adapt the Merkaz Limmud into a hostel in September 1945 and the first 22 boys arrived from the Windermere reception centre in October 1945.

It was later decided that the Liverpool hostel would merge with Singleton Road. The Boys staying at the Liverpool hostel were brought to Singleton Road to join a handful of others already in Manchester, where they were supported by the Jewish Refugees Committee.

The emphasis was on learning English but also Hebrew, and the Boys led a religious lifestyle under their Rabbi Hans Heinneman. In their free time, Sam Laskier, recalls that the Boys played tennis, started a football club, went to the cinema and went ice skating on Derby Street.