Catalogue description KITCHENER CAMP, RICHBOROUGH, KENT. RECORDS, 1939-1988

The documents in this collection offer an insight into the day to day lives of the inmates of the Kitchener Camp for refugees near Sandwich at Richborough, Kent in 1939.

The items have been arranged in order of importance with their individual accession numbers.

For other material relating to the Kitchener Camp see Document collection numbers 1291 and 536a.

Sep 1985; Oct 1987; May 1988; Jun 1988

This collection comprises 4 separate deposits. The core material was deposited by Phineas May in October 1987 (Accession numbers 54096-54102) when he was Honorary Custodian of the Jewish Museum at Bloomsbury House. He also deposited the entertainments licence at 644/5 in May 1988. In addition Peter Mansbacher, a former inmate of the camp, deposited some material which includes a brief autobiographical sketch at 644/7 and memoirs at 644/8 (Accession number 55506). Harold Jackson also deposited some photographs in September 1985 (Accession number 49111)

For a more detailed account of the origins and activities of the camp see They Found Refuge by Norman Bentwich, Cresset Press, 1956, pp 102-114.

• Refugees
• Second World War, 1939-1945
• Jews

The Kitchener camp, a derelict site which had previously been an army camp, was taken over by the Council for German Jewry at the beginning of 1939 as a result of pressure from the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland to rescue threatened Jews from Germany and Austria. Conditions for admission were that inmates must be aged between 18 and 40 and that they have a definite prospect of emigration overseas. The camp began receiving refugees in February 1939 and ended with the outbreak of war in September after which most of the inmates chose to enlist in the British army.

Three young English Jews, Jonas and Phineas May and M. Banks, who were later to become commissioned officers in the Pioneer Corps, were put in charge of the management of the camp.