Bertha Bracey

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.

Bracey was one of the first aid workers on the ground in Germany after the end of hostilities in 1945. After the war, she was made responsible for women’s affairs in the British and American Zones of Occupation, a post she occupied until 1953.

She was with the first group of the Boys in Theresienstadt and flew with them to the Windermere reception centre and was in charge of the operation to bring the children to the UK.

Bracey was born in Worcestershire, England in 1893. Bracey joined the Society of Friends – the Quakers – when she was eighteen years old.

Bracey became the Director of the Emergency Committee of the Society of Friends. The Quakers played a key role in the pre-war Kindertransport and in caring for refugees.

Bracey also helped found the Stoatley Rough school for German refugees in Haslemere.

Bracey died in 1989.

In 1999, a rose was dedicated to her at the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre. In 2010, she was posthumously recognised as a British Hero of the Holocaust.