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Trevor Chadwick

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Trevor Chadwick
Trevor Chadwick in c 1935
Born22 April 1907
Died23 December 1979
NationalityBritish

Trevor Chadwick (22 April 1907 – 23 December 1979) was a British humanitarian who was involved in the Kindertransport to rescue Jews and other refugee children in Czechoslovakia in 1938–1939 before World War II. In 1938, After the Munich Agreement Nazi Germany annexed Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia and occupied the whole Czech part of Czechoslovakia in 1939. The children were mostly resettled with families in the United Kingdom.[1][2]

In 2018, Chadwick was posthumously named a British Hero of the Holocaust.

Early life

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Chadwick was born on 22 April 1907. He attended Oxford University where he was the captain of a rugby team and graduated in 1928 with a third in jurisprudence. His family and friends believed he should have done better. He was a troublesome youth and had a fondness for alcohol. After graduation, he joined the Colonial Service and worked in Nigeria for 18 months. He became a Latin teacher at his family's school in Swanage, Dorset and married in 1931. He was regarded as kind and considerate of others, but unruly and unconventional in his personal life.[3] Chadwick was described by the poet Gerda Mayer, one of the Jewish children he sent to Britain, as tall and handsome, casual and self-assured.[4]

Chadwick and the kindertransport

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The Prague train station as portrayed in the movie One Life.

In January 1939, Chadwick journeyed to Czechoslovakia to accompany two refugee children back to Britain where they had been admitted to his school. He met another refugee child, Gerda Mayer, in Prague, interviewed her and her family, and took her along with the other two children. Chadwick's mother sponsored Mayer, putting up the guarantee of 50 pounds which was required for the permission to admit refugee children to Britain.[5] Chadwick described his initial reaction to the situation in Prague: "We got a clear impression of the enormity of the task. We so often saw halls of confused refugees and batches of lost children, mostly Jewish, and we saw only the fringe of it all."[6]

After delivering the first three children to Britain, Chadwick returned to Czechoslovakia to help rescue more children by sending them to Britain. Thousands were on a list for possible rescue, but he could only save hundreds. In Britain, Nicholas Winton worked to get permissions for children to be granted entry. Working with the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia headed by Doreen Warriner, Chadwick had the task of selecting children for the kindertransport and organizing their departure. His first operation, 14 March 1939, was an evacuation by a 20-seat airplane from Prague which he accompanied. Later evacuation of children was by train. Chadwick accompanied the children to the Prague Railroad Station. From Prague the children, with adult escorts, notably Quaker Tessa Rowntree and Unitarian Martha Sharp, journeyed by rail through Poland or Nazi Germany to seaports on the Baltic Sea or in the Netherlands from where they sailed to Britain. [7][8] [9][10]

On 15 March 1939, the situation in Czechoslovakia became more dangerous. German troops occupied the whole Czech part of the country. The German crackdown stimulated a large market in forged passports and exit documents in which Chadwick was probably involved. Warriner and many other refugee workers found it prudent to leave the country to avoid arrest. on 2 June 1939, Chadwick saw off a final trainload of 123 children and left Czechoslovakia shortly thereafter, possibly fearing arrest by the German Gestapo for forging documents. With his departure, Beatrice Wellington became the sole representative of the British Committee in Czechoslovakia. The evacuation of children continued.[11] All together, until it was shut down with the beginning of World War II on 1 September 1939, the kindertransport escorted 669 children out of Czechoslovakia.[12]

Winton, who was honoured many years later for his participation in the kindertransport, acknowledged the vital roles in Prague of Chadwick, along with Doreen Warriner, diplomat Robert J. Stopford, Beatrice Wellington, Josephine Pike, and Bill Barazetti. Of Chadwick, Winton later wrote, "Chadwick did the more difficult and dangerous work after the Nazis invaded… he deserves all praise".[13][14]

Later life

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Chadwick's life took a downward trajectory after return from Czechoslovakia. He joined first the Royal Naval Reserve and later the Royal Air Force but after several incidents, probably caused by his excessive drinking, was sent back to Britain from North Africa in 1942. He divorced his first wife and married again briefly. He worked at a number of jobs, but was diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent by his family to a sanitorium in Oslo, Norway. He married for a third time there and apparently achieved some happiness and stability, but suffered a stroke and died on 23 December 1979.[15] At the time of his death the work of the Czechoslovak refugee workers was largely forgotten, but the public recognition of Nicholas Winton, beginning in 1988, brought some recognition to other members of the group.[16]

Legacy

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Chadwick is now commemorated in his home town of Swanage, Dorset, with a children's playground named after him in the Recreation Ground.[17] A bronze sculpture of Chadwick with two children by local sculptor Moira Purver has been installed in the recreation ground;[18][19] the statue was erected on 29 August 2022.[20] Swanage Town Council approved in 2020 the installation of a blue plaque commemorating Chadwick at Swanage railway station.[21]

He was a recipient of the British Hero of the Holocaust award in January 2018 for saving Jewish lives.[22][23]

Alex Sharp plays him in the 2023 film One Life.

References

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  1. ^ Roth, Milena (2004). Lifesaving Letters: A Child's Flight from the Holocaust. University of Washington Press. ISBN 9780295983776.
  2. ^ "Letters - Forgotten heroes of the kindertransports". The Guardian. London. 3 July 2015. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
  3. ^ Chadwick, W. R. (2018). The Rescue of the Prague Refugees 1938-39. Kindle Edition. pp. 67–70. ISBN 9781848765047.
  4. ^ "The Trevor Chadwick Memorial Trust". Crowdfunder. Retrieved 6 March 2022.
  5. ^ "AJR". www.ajr.org.uk. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
  6. ^ Chadwick 2018, p. 70.
  7. ^ Chadwick 2018, pp. 73–83.
  8. ^ "AJR". www.ajr.org.uk. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
  9. ^ Kremer, S. Lillian (2003). Holocaust Literature: Lerner to Zychlinsky, index. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780415929844.
  10. ^ Baumel-Schwartz, Judith Tydor (2012). Never Look Back: The Jewish Refugee Children in Great Britain, 1938-1945. Purdue University Press. ISBN 9781557536129.
  11. ^ Chadwick 2018, pp. 21-28. 81-83.
  12. ^ "Nicholas Winton and the Rescue of Children from Czechoslovakia, 1938-1939". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved 6 March 2022.
  13. ^ Chadwick 2018, p. 97.
  14. ^ "The Nicholas Winton Kindertransport Myth Comes Off the Rails - The Occidental Observer - White Identity, Interests, and Culture".
  15. ^ Chadwick 2018, pp. 84–85.
  16. ^ "The Power of Good". powerofgood.net. Archived from the original on 23 October 2013.
  17. ^ "The Trevor Chadwick Memorial Trust". Retrieved 2 September 2021.
  18. ^ "The Trevor Chadwick Memorial Trust". Retrieved 2 September 2021.
  19. ^ "Moira Purver: Trevor Chadwick Sculpture". Retrieved 2 September 2021.
  20. ^ "Trevor Chadwick: Statue of 'Purbeck Schindler' put up in Swanage". BBC News. 29 August 2022. Retrieved 29 August 2022.
  21. ^ Swanage Town Council Minutes, 24 February 2020, pp 4-5.
  22. ^ Eytan Halon (28 January 2018). "Britain honors eight Holocaust 'heroes' for saving Jewish lives". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
  23. ^ "Britain honours its Holocaust heroes". UK Government. 23 January 2018. Retrieved 3 July 2019. "Academics Doreen Warriner and Trevor Chadwick who worked closely with the ‘British Schindler’ Sir Nicholas Winton in Prague to organise the evacuation of hundreds of Jewish children from the then Czechoslovakia to Britain."
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