An exhibition is being staged at Ilkley Library showing how local residents rallied round to help those fleeing persecution in Europe during the Second World War.
The exhibition at the Council-owned library is being mounted to mark Holocaust Memorial Day this Friday (January 27) and runs until February10.
Ilkley was designated a 'safe' area for refugees during the 1930s when so many minorities including Jewish people, the disabled, gypsies, and political dissenters were persecuted and driven into ghettoes and eventually labour and concentration camps.
There are some fascinating stories about the lives of these refugees in this exhibition which relate how the Quaker community and residents of European descent in the Ilkley area joined forces to provide accommodation for Jewish people whose situation looked more and more precarious as World War 11 approached.
The Ilkley residents opened up the hostel Loxleigh on the corner of Mount Pleasant and Cowpasture Road and the first boys arrived on March 6, 1939.
The boys, aged 14 to 16 years-old, attended schools in Ilkley and the surrounding area. Further Jewish youngsters arrived in August 1939 and they were the last children to escape from Germany.
Many of the children stayed at the hostel before learning occupations such as agriculture, mechanics or joinery. They sought jobs all over the country.
Others stayed for just short periods before preparing for further emigration. Some joined the Forces and several were able to join relatives who had also been able to escape to the UK.
One of those sent to Ilkley as a child was Arnold Vanderhorst. Arnold contacted Ilkley Library via the Holocaust Awareness Museum to tell his story.
He was born in Arnhem, Holland, in 1935 and five years later his sister Theodora was born. That same year - 1940 - the Germans invaded Holland and in 1942 all Jews older than six years-old were ordered to wear a Yellow Star with the word 'Jood' on it.
One day when the family returned home they found their home sealed by the Nazis. The family broke the seals, and took some necessities. Arnold's mother dropped him and his sister off with trusted neighbours and then gave herself up to the Nazis.
Arnold lived with his foster family until until 1944 when they fled to the woods where they lived in a wooden shelter until May 1945, when the Canadians liberated them. Arnold was sent to the hostel in Ilkley as a malnourished ten year-old to recuperate.
Arnold remembers going to school and wearing a uniform with a green and black tie. He lived with a family at 7 Cunliffe Road - now the Bar t'at - which at the time was Lancaster and Plows plumbers.
He would like to revive more memories of his stay in Ilkley and he hopes that anyone who remembers him may be able to provide more information.
Coun David Green, Executive member with responsibility for culture, said: "Survivor stories such as Arnold's give a unique insight into the lives of those who suffered persecution in Europe.
"This exhibition will provide the opportunity for us all to learn from the experiences of the past and to value people whatever their ethnic origin and background.
"Ilkley people should be proud that they looked after those fleeing the horrors of Nazism and helped them to build new lives for themselves."
