The ’45 Aid Society was set in 1963.
Its founders were a group of child Holocaust survivors, known as the Boys, who were brought to the United Kingdom after the end of World War II.
The Boys wanted to give back to the society that had welcomed them and support its members.
Our Charitable Work
The ’45 Aid Society are active in charitable work.
The ’45 Aid Society was founded by child survivors of the Holocaust. They arrived alone, traumatised and
orphaned, yet determined to live.
They created the ’45 Aid Society to care for one another as a family bound by shared loss and survival, and to rebuild what the Nazis had tried to destroy – Jewish life, continuity, and hope.
Today, the ’45 Aid Society stands as their living legacy.
Our charitable work provides essential welfare, care, and companionship to survivors in their later years, ensuring they live with dignity and are never alone. We also support Holocaust education programmes.
Find Your Family History
Our archives contain an array of documents and photographs related to the history of the Boys that track their history.
Our Research Team are here to advise you.
If your family member was one of the Boys, we can help you to trace their history.
We can help you to:
To contact our research team click here.
Education
Our aim is to raise awareness and understanding of the Holocaust through education by telling the Boys stories, commemorating their families and the communities in which they lived.
Our Educational Principals
The ’45 Aid Society aims to teach the lessons of the Holocaust through the lived experience of The Boys, a unique group of Holocaust survivors. Our approach uses their individual stories and personal experiences, human connection and ethical reflection, and offers enquiry-based learning with access to a fascinating set of authentic archival material.
Our approach is:
Human centred: The ’45 Aid Society is a unique organisation made up of a community of Boys and their families. Its programme focuses on lived experience/real-life stories through the testimonies of the Boys and Girls who were brought to Britain for recuperation and recovery after the Holocaust. The Boys’ lived experiences in the hostels in the UK and in the communities where they built a new life connects local and global history making it community driven.
Inclusive: The ’45 Aid Society believes Holocaust education with the right support of teachers can be accessible to all.
Historically Rigorous: The ’45 Aid Society focuses on the Boys’ lives in their entirety across multiple phases from childhood and family life, through incarceration, persecution, liberation, recovery and the building of a new life as a refugee. The ’45 Aid Society’s abundance of primary sources: photographs, audio testimonies and original wartime documents offer context and chronology providing the scaffold for learning about the Holocaust in their pre-war countries of origin: Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Romania.
Enquiry Based: Our stress is on dialogic teaching, literacy and oracy. The material available in our digital archive encourages students to investigate, reflect and discuss as young historians, an effective form of Holocaust education in UK and international curricula.
Emotionally Aware: As their families, our personal connection to the survivors and their stories emphasises emotional awareness, sensitivity and care. The ’45 Aid Society celebrates the legacy of the Boys experiences as they live on in the second, third and fourth generations making the Holocaust relevant in the modern context and encouraging ethical reflection.
Visit the Education section on this website to discover our teacher’s aids and download lesson plans.
This website is designed to help teachers, students and researchers of the Holocaust.
Contact us: if you would like to use the Boys’ story as an educational tool, please get in touch for authorisation. To do so click here.
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