Nightingale 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.

Nightingale Road was one of these hostels.

Overview

Nightingale Road hostel was on a residential street in Clapton, east London. The hostel functioned from June 1946 until mid-1948 and it was home to 40 of the Boys. The house was bought by Zionist youth movement Hechalutz and was originally used to accommodate Kindertransport children. The property is now divided up into flats.

The Nightingale Road Story

David Herman recalls that the hostel was “a very lively place, always noisy, and with lots of activities going on.” Jewish philanthropist Leonard Montefiore, one of the founders of the CBF and the organiser of the Boys’ journey to Britain, was a frequent visitor.

The hostel closed in mid-1948 but the Boys located were reluctant to leave. Herman admits that he, Icu Sunog, Mick Zwirek and Jack Bajer refused to move out and returned home from work one day to find the hostel boarded up and their bags packed. They broke in through a window and slept there. The following day, they were met by local police who escorted them to new lodgings.

The Staff

The hostel was run by Wolfgang David Gordon, who had worked in the Windermere reception centre, and his wife Bianca. Gordon had come to the UK before World War II from Berlin in Germany.