Sophie Dann

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.

Sophie Dann was born in Augsburg, Germany, in 1900. She trained as a nursery teacher and children’s nurse. In 1933, she was forced to leave her job by to antisemitic legislation introduced by the Nazi government.

She fled to Britain in 1939 with her sister Gertrud.

During World War II, the Dann sisters worked with Anna Freud at the Hampstead War Nurseries, caring for children evacuated from the East End of London. In 1945, they assisted Freud in caring for six young members of the Boys who had survived Theresienstadt concentration camp at Bulldogs Bank in Sussex. Dann and Freud documented their observations in a 1951 publication titled An Experiment in Group Upbringing. She then moved to the hostels of Weir Courtney and Lingfield House.

Dann died in 1993.