Gert Jacobowitz

November 18th, 1924 - July 5th, 2007

Memorial

Mementos

‘You are lucky to be alive. I couldn’t understand that. I thought, and felt, that it was natural to be alive, even if there were Nazis and you had been sent to a Refugee Settlement Farm’.

This Memorial page was created to link with a candle holder made as part of the HMDT 80 candles for 80 Years project to enable people to find out more about Edith and Gert's experiences. https://www.hmd.org.uk/80-candles-for-80-years/

A film about another child who lived on the farm, Walter Kammerling is available here: https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/walter-kammerling/

Gert Jacobowitz ( later Gerald Jayson) and his older sister Edith came to England via Kindertransport on 20 June 1939. At London Liverpool Street Station they were picked up to be taken to a refugee hostel in Belfast, through the help of their parents' contacts, especially Mr Barney Hurwitz and the Belfast Refugee Aid Committee. The children were then taken to a Refugee Resettlement Farm in Millisle, Northern Ireland.

Prior to September 1939 the farm used to be a Jewish agricultural training school. With the arrival of the refugees, nursery, health, laundry and kitchen training was added to the agricultural training for girls. New accommodation and workshops had to be built as there were about 80 refugees on the farm at the beginning of the Second World War.

Gert spent eight years on the farm. Between 1940 and 1944 Gert went to the public elementary school in Millisle together with the village children. Although Gert was ten years old he started with the juniors as he could not speak any English. Gert later attended Regent House Grammar School in Newtownards, and while there became a member of the Army Cadet Corp, read the English classics, took the Junior and Senior Certificates, and in his words ‘gradually turned into a little English gentleman’. In 1947, Gert persuaded the Belfast Jewish Refugee Committee to support his application to Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied Chemistry. He subsequently gained a PhD from the University of Durham in 1955 and became a Professor of Physical Chemistry at Liverpool Polytechnic.

Watch Gert's interview via this link https://www.holocausttestimony.org.uk/interviews-view/gerald-gert-jayson-jacobowitz-interview-usc-shoah-foundation-2

or via the refugee map here: https://www.refugeemap.org/map/records/gert-jacobowitz-1928-1939