Published: 23 November 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
CLEMENT ATTLEE, THE LABOUR prime minister whose government founded the welfare state, looked after a child refugee who escaped from the Nazis in the months leading up to the second world war, it can be revealed.
The then leader of the opposition sponsored a Jewish mother and her two children, giving them the confidence and authorisation to leave Germany in 1939 and move to the UK.
After their escape, Attlee invited one of the children into their home in Stanmore, north-west London, testimony and letters show. He neither publicised nor sought to make political capital from his visitor.
Paul Willer, the former child refugee who is now 90 and living in Gloucestershire, was 10 when he stayed with the Attlees for four months until the beginning of the war.
He has arranged to meet Attlee’s granddaughter for the first time on Wednesday at the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport scheme, which saved thousands of mainly Jewish children from Nazi Germany.
FULL STORY Clement Attlee took in Jewish child refugee who fled Nazis (Guardian)
Photo: Paul Willer, now 90, came to the UK as a Jewish refugee in 1939 and lived with Clement Attlee and his family (Sam Frost/Guardian)
