Kershaw House

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.

Kershaw House was one of these hostels.

Overview

The hostel was in the neighbourhood of Moss Side in south Manchester, in the north-west of England.

It opened in January 1939 and was originally known as the Refugees Temporary Shelter. The Boys often refer to this hostel as simply Moss Side.

The hostel was run by the religious Zionist organisation Bachad. Among the Bachad members who worked at the house were Israel Cohen, Herbert Laster and Ida Gross who had been in Windermere.

Arthur Kershaw donated the house, a large spacious villa, in 1938. Kershaw was a property speculator and estate agent.

The Kershaw House Story

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.

The first group of the Boys to leave Windermere was a group of 23 girls who arrived at Kershaw house in mid-September 1945. Lessons were English. modern Hebrew and Jewish history and geography. Eventually in March 1946, it was agreed that the girls would attend Broughton High.

The Central British Fund (CBF) were unhappy with the situation at Kershaw House, as half of the girls who lived there were Orthodox and the other half were not. They did not mix with each other and it was decided that the hostel would close and the girls would be relocated.