The Boys' Families - '45 Aid Society

The ’45 Aid Society archive contains a significant collection of family photographs taken before World War II. They capture a Jewish world that was destroyed. The archive is also a memorial to the families of the Boys who were murdered in the Holocaust.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after World War II for rest and rehabilitation.

Behind each picture is a story.

These stories told in the albums below matter because time and time again in their testaments the Boys reference the strength they drew from from the families that they had lost.

Each photograph is precious.

The Boys tried to hold on to the pictures that they had rescued from their homes and taken to the ghettos and camps. The pain of loosing the photographs of their families was something that they never forgot.

Photograph of Sam Freiman at home in 2018.

Sam Freiman in 2018.

“When we arrived at the camp, they made us give them everything but our shoes. They gave us thick blue paper overalls. They said they would shoot us if we did not do as they said.

I had photographs of my family. I didn’t know what to do. I was frightened, so I gave them up.

It was a terrible mistake.

I should have taken the risk. I should have tried to keep them. It would have been worth being shot for.”

Sam Freiman was the sole survivor of his family.