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Until recently, Rosemary and Martin Anderson from Tynemouth knew nothing about the secret past of the three-storey Victorian house they’d lived in for five years. Their home on Percy Park looks like any other on the seafront, but back in the 1930’s, it was home to dozens of terrified Jewish girls who had fled the Nazis.

The girls had been sent to the UK by their parents, travelling alone on the Kindertransport, a rescue effort between 1938 and 1940 which brought thousands of child refugees to Britain. They lived in the house on Percy Park overlooking the sea for about a year, but all trace of their presence there had disappeared in the years since. Tyneside’s Jewish community pulled together to save them when so many others perished. So why had the girls’ presence in Tynemouth been completely forgotten?

Lauren Laverne tells the story of the forgotten Holocaust safe house and some of the lives it helped save.

Written and researched by Jane Downs and Jo Lonsdale
Executive Producer Rik Martin

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