Attlee took in Jewish child who f led Nazis

Clement Attlee secretly sheltered a Jewish refugee who fled the nazis ahead of the Second World War.

Paul Willer, now 90, escaped with his mother and brother to the UK in 1939 and lived with the Labour leader and his family as war broke out.

The former prime minister did not publicise or make political capital out of his sponsorship of the family which allowed them to move to Britain. The then leader of the opposition invited one of the children into his home in Stanmore, north-west London.

Mr Willer, who lives in Gloucestershire, was ten when he stayed with the Attlees for four months.

Today, Mr Willer will meet Mr Attlee’s granddaughter for the first time on the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport scheme, which saved thousands of mainly Jewish children from nazi Germany.

‘It was a remarkable kindness, a generous offer,’ he told the Guardian. ‘Attlee was a modest man. He did not try and glorify himself in any way. He did it for the right reasons.’

Mr Willer and his younger brother were raised by his mother, Franziska, in Würzburg, Bavaria. She Offer: Clement Attlee in 1961 was a doctor and her plan was for all three to escape to London and she would retrain as a midwife.

However, rules barred midwives from living with their children in hospital accommodation and so she was only able to leave if she could find someone to guarantee they would look after her children. She wrote to a German church official in January 1939 and two families, including the Attlees, offered to take a boy each. Mr Willer recalled of Attlee: ‘He was a gentle man and a gentleman. He was very good with the children and affectionate.’ Just before the declaration of war in September 1939, Mr Willer was sent to a school in northern Ireland.

Mr Attlee’s granddaughter Jo Roundell Greene said her late mother, Felicity, ‘mentioned having a refugee to stay’. ‘It will be an emotional afternoon,’ she added.