Staines Yeshiva

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, had survived 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.

Some of the Boys attended the Staines Yeshiva.

Overview

The yeshiva was in Thorpe Lea House in Egham, Surrey, about 30km west of London. It was officially called the Staines Jewish Theological College, or the Yeshiva Torat Chaim. It was run by the Orthodox charity Agudas Israel.

The building is now offices.

^{Ivor Perl}

“I stayed at the college for a couple of years. Although most of the teaching was religious, we also had secular lessons, which I liked very much; the teacher made the classes very engaging. My stay in Egham coincided with the troubles in Palestine, in which I was very interested. I took every opportunity to go to the library and read every paper I could lay my hands on. The problem was that the library was in Ascot, which is a few miles from Egham, and the buses did not run very frequently. Several times, I had to walk one way as I could not wait for the bus. I was becoming very Zionist and wanted to go to Palestine to join the Haganah (the Jewish underground movement). When the teacher found out, he took me aside and told me that, as I was only 16 years old, I would have plenty of opportunities to get killed in a war and that I should stay at least a year longer to study while I could. I remember looking at him in horror thinking, A whole year; that is a lifetime! But he was persuasive and I stayed at the college until the end of 1948.“

Ivor Perl, Chicken Soup Under the Tree: A Journey to Hell and Back (Lemon Soul, 2023).

Fourteen boys from Wellington Street hostel in Manchester were sent here when their hostel closed in the summer of 1946. The President was Rabbi Schonfeld, the leader of Agudas Israel, and the principal was Rabbi Weingarten from Belgium.

The yeshiva closed in 1955 and relocated to Letchworth.