British Heroes of the Holocaust Medal Winners
The British Hero of the Holocaust Medal is awarded by the government of the United Kingdom in recognition of British citizens who undertook extraordinary acts of courage and self-sacrifice, to help rescue Jewish people and others.
Denis Avey | Avey was held as a prisoner of war at E715, a subcamp of Auschwitz. While there he saved the life of a Jewish prisoner, Ernst Lobethal, by smuggling cigarettes to him. |
Albert Bedane | Provided shelter to a Jewish woman and others, preventing their capture by the Nazis. |
Bertha Bracey | Bracey was an English Quaker teacher and aid worker who organized relief and sanctuary for Europeans affected by the turmoil before, during and after the Second World War. These included many Jewish children threatened by the Holocaust and rescued in the operation known as the Kindertransport. |
John Buckley | One of ten British prisoners of war who risked execution to save the life of Hannah Sara Rigler. They were also recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. |
John Carvell | Along with fellow diplomat, Sir Thomas Preston, Carvell issued almost 1,500 Jews with certificates to enable them to escape to Palestine. |
Trevor Chadwick | Chadwick, along with fellow academic Doreen Warriner, worked closely with the British Schindler,Sir Nicholas Winton, in Prague to organize the evacuation of hundreds of Jewish children from the then Czechoslovakia to Britain. |
Ida Cook (a.k.a. novelist Mary Burchell) and Louise Cook | The two sisters helped 29 Jews escape from the horror and danger of Nazi persecution in Germany and Austria during the three-year period preceding World War II, but mainly after Kristallnacht in November 1938. |
Battery Sergeant Major Charles Coward | Coward, known as the Count of Auschwitz,was a British soldier captured during the Second World War who rescued Jews from Auschwitz and claimed he had smuggled himself into the camp for one night, subsequently testifying about his experience at the IG Farben Trial at Nuremberg. He also smuggled at least several hundred Jewish prisoners out of concentration camps. |
Arthur Dowden | Vice-Consul General in Frankfurt who went far beyond the call of duty to save lives by issuing visas and by going through the streets distributing food in the days when Jews were not allowed to receive it. |
Alan Edwards | One of ten British prisoners of war who risked execution to save the life of Hannah Sara Rigler. They were also recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. |
Willy Fisher | One of ten British prisoners of war who risked execution to save the life of Hannah Sara Rigler. They were also recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. |
Major Frank Foley | Foley was a British Secret Intelligence Service officer. As a passport control officer for the British embassy in Berlin, Foley bent the rulesand helped thousands of Jewish families escape from Nazi Germany after Kristallnacht and before the outbreak of the Second World War. He was also recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. |
Ivy Forster | Forster was a politician from Jersey. During World War II she and her family sheltered Russian forced labourers brought to the islands by the Nazis, activity that resulted in her sister Louisa Gould being killed in a concentration camp. Gould and her brother Harold Le Druillenec were also honored by the British government. |
Louisa Gould | Gould was a Jersey shopkeeper and a member of the British resistance movement in the Channel Islands during World War II. From 1942 until her arrest in 1944, Gould sheltered an escaped Soviet slave worker known as Feodor Polycarpovitch Burriy on the island of Jersey. Following a trial, she was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp where she was gassed to death in 1945. Her sister Ivy Forster and brother Harold Le Druillenec were also honored by the British government. |
Jane Haining | Haining was a Scottish missionary for the Church of Scotland in Budapest, Hungary, who risked her life to help Jews during the Holocaust. Se was named one of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. |
Bert Hambling | One of ten British prisoners of war who risked execution to save the life of Hannah Sara Rigler. They were also recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. |
George Hammond | One of ten British prisoners of war who risked execution to save the life of Hannah Sara Rigler. They were also recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. |
Rose Henriques | Henriques, with her father James Loewe, was the warden of the St George’s Jewish Settlement in Stepney, east London. When the war ended she went to Germany where she worked alongside a number of Jewish welfare groups at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and then at the nearby displaced persons camp. |
Henk Huffener | |
Bill Keeble | One of ten British prisoners of war who risked execution to save the life of Hannah Sara Rigler. They were also recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. |
Harold Le Druillenec | Along with his sisters Louisa Gould and Ivy Forster, Le Druillenec helped an escaped Russian prisoner of war. He was arrested in Jersey – the Channel Islands were the only part of Britain the Nazis occupied during World War II – the day before D-Day in 1944. He was believed to be the only British citizen who survived Bergen-Belsen. He and his sisters were honored by the British government. |
Lena Lakomy | Risked her life in Auschwitz to save the life of Hela Frank. |
Roger Letchford | One of ten British prisoners of war who risked execution to save the life of Hannah Sara Rigler. They were also recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. |
Princess Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie | The mother of Prince Philip, Princess Alice stayed in Athens during the Second World War, sheltering Jewish refugees and was recongized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. She is buried in the Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem. |
Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes | A British diplomat who was chargé d'affaires in Berlin from 1937 to 1939. He unofficially aided Captain Frank Foley to enable thousands of Jews to escape. |
Thomas Noble | One of ten British prisoners of war who risked execution to save the life of Hannah Sara Rigler. They were also recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. |
Sir Thomas Preston | Along with fellow diplomat, John Carvell, Preston issued almost 1,500 Jews with certificates to enable them to escape to Palestine. |
Margaret Reid | Worked in the Passport Control Office of the Berlin Embassy and issued visas that allowed thousands of Jews to emigrate. She often bent the rules for issuing visas, a practice that was deliberately overlooked by the British Consul-General Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes |
June Ravenhall | |
Otto Schiff | Helped to create the Jewish Refugees Committee which arranged to bring Jews out of Germany and Austria to Britain during the war, as well as supporting them financially once here. |
Solomon Schonfeld | Schonfeld was a rabbi who saved hundreds of Jews from the Death Camps by acquiring visas which allowed them to escape the Nazis. |
Harold Scruton | |
Sofka Skipwith | Skipwith was a Russian princess who, after working for Laurence Olivier and being interned by the Nazis in France in World War II, worked to save Jews. She was honoured for her efforts by both the British government and by Israel, where she has been named one of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. |
Robert Smallbones | Consul General in Frankfurt who went far beyond the call of duty to ensure that Jewish families were given visas to save their lives, gave refuge to hundreds in his home and visited concentration camps to demand the release of interned Jews. |
Joan Stiebel | Stiebel was a secretary to Otto M. Schiff and responsible for making travel arrangements to bring 1,000 underage Jewish orphans from Nazi concentration camps to the UK. |
Sister Agnes Walsh | |
Doreen Warriner | Warriner along with fellow academic Trevor Chadwick, worked closely with the British Schindler,Sir Nicholas Winton, in Prague to organize the evacuation of hundreds of Jewish children from the then Czechoslovakia to Britain. |
Dorothea Weber (née LeBrocq) | Sheltered her Jewish friend Hedwig Bercu during the German occupation of the Channel Islands at great personal risk. She was aided by a German soldier, Kurt Ruemmele, whom she married after the war. |
Stanley Wells | One of ten British prisoners of war who risked execution to save the life of Hannah Sara Rigler. They were also recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. |
Sir Nicholas Winton | Established an organization to rescue children at risk from Czechoslovakia. Winton supervised the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II. Winton found homes for the children and arranged for their safe passage to Britain. This operation was later known as the Czech Kindertransport. He was recongized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. |
Sources: “Britain honours its Holocaust heroes,” Press Release, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, GOV.UK, (January 23, 2018).
“British Hero of the Holocaust,” Wikipedia.
Dominic Harris, “Belsen survivor remembers horrors of concentration camp during World War II,” Daily Record, (March 31, 2016).
Clemmie Moodie, “The only British survivor of Nazi death camp who endured horrors with stiff upper lip,” Mirror, (April 1, 2016).
Heather Stewart, “Theresa May backs building of Holocaust centre near parliament,” The Guardian, (May 6, 2019).