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Refugee Week

By Phil Treseder
Swansea Museum Education & Participation Officer

On the 30th of March 2021, His Excellency, Libor Secka, the Czech Ambassador to the UK attended the Wales V Czech Republic football qualifying match for the 2022 World Cup.

Whilst in Wales he took the opportunity to visit several graveyards to pay his respects to fellow countrymen and refugees to Britain who paid the ultimate price whilst serving in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War 2.

The visit included St Hiliary’s in Killay. There are a number of RAF personnel buried there from various countries including the USA, South Africa, Canada and two from the Czech Republic.

Rudolf Rohacek and Josef Janeba were both part of 312 Squadron based at Fairwood Common during 1942.

Rohacek was born in 1914 in Marianske Hory. Following the fall of Czechoslovakia, he joined the Polish Air Force, then the French and finally the RAF.  He was killed on the 27th of April 1942 when his Spitfire crashed very near to Axbridge Railway Station.in Somerset. The most likely cause of the accident was oxygen equipment failure.

Janeba was born in 1915 in Kralove. He was killed on the 2nd of May 1942 when another Spitfire caught and broke off the tail of his Spitfire on take-off. He managed to bail out but had not gained enough height for the parachute to work. The spitfire crashed into Kilvrough farmyard, close to the South Gower Road. Janeba kept a diary, and the last entry is written by his friend and fellow pilot, Vojtech Smolik.

“He died in a plane crash on the 2nd of May 1942. He used his parachute, but the crash happened at a very low altitude, so the parachute could not save him.  He was my best friend. Honour to his memory”.

Photograph of the graves of Josef Janeba and Rudolf Rohacek

The Czech Ambassador also paid his respects to some of the fallen from another Czech Squadron, 311, a bomber squadron based for a while in Pembrokeshire, seconded to Coastal Command. One of the members of the squadron Vaclav Bozdech ended up being a refugee twice. Following the fall of Czechoslovakia he joined the French Air Force. Whilst serving with them he adopted a puppy who he named Antis and on the fall of France escaped with the dog and joined 311 Squadron, where the dog became the squadrons mascot. Unusual for a mascot, Antis went on the combat missions. On his return home, Bozdech had to escape again, this time from the communists and become a refugee for the second time. Antis saved him by first alerting him to a patrol of border guards and later pinning one of them down to allow them to escape and get back to Britain. In 1949 Antis received the Dickin Medal (a Victoria Cross equivalent for animals). In December 2024, the medal sold at auction for £50,000, plus commission.

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International Women’s Day

By Phil Treseder
Swansea Museum Education & Participation Officer

In December 2024, Wales International Women’s Team qualified for the first time for a major international tournament. Women’s football has had a difficult journey. The First World War provided a major boost, but the Football Association worried about its growing popularity effectively banned it in 1921 by threating to ban any clubs from membership that allowed women’s teams access to grounds and facilities.

Women’s football does date earlier than World War 1 and at times there was considerable resistance. A touring team named the British Ladies’ Football Club were in Swansea in July 1896.  A game was held against a men’s team (apparently the first ever such game in Swansea) which resulted in 4 – 4 draw. However, the gate was rather small and as a result the team could not afford the fares to Cardiff, their next destination.

The team did manage to get to Cardiff eventually, but the news was covered by the South Wales Daily Post on the 7th of August with the following commentary.

“So, the British Ladies’ Football Club managed after all to get out of the awkward predicament in which they found themselves on Tuesday and bade Swansea farewell for ever on Thursday. No one could but help sympathise with the poor girls in their sad plight, but at the same time I hope their severe lesson will drive home the conviction that football is not a game for women no more than darning stockings is an occupation for mortals of the masculine gender. The ordinary species of the new woman is almost intolerable, but when females turn out in bloomers on the football field the whole business becomes positively disgusting, and if a slice of bad luck, such as that experienced by the British lady footballers at Swansea, will have the effect of crushing out the practice I shall rejoice exceedingly over it. By-and-by there will be no holding these masculine females”.

One of the earliest known teams in Swansea was Baldwins United, formed during WW1. The team were women working at the National Shell Factory.

The woman who organised the team was Nancie Griffith Jones employed as a welfare officer at the factory. A keen sportswoman, she played football, hockey and water polo.  Later in life she would be awarded an OBE for services in the education sector. She would also spend WW2 as a prisoner of the Japanese as at the start of the war in the Pacific she was running a school in Singapore.

SM MI 6877.2 is a photograph of the team taken at St Helens ground pre or following a match and probably for a game played against Newport in April 1918 to raise funds for the Prisoners of War Fund. Nancie is sitting fourth from left in the front row.

National Shell Factory (Baldwins) taken in front of the old pavilion at St Helens ground.

The team surnames are given along with an initial.  However, some of the newspaper reports provide us with a first name. It is therefore possible to speculate on the full name and address of some of the team.

If anyone recognises them as an ancestor or know of anyone else in the team and can provide further information, please contact Swansea Museum via phil.treseder@swansea.gov.uk

The possible names given along with Nancie Griffith Jones are:

N Dalhgrin
L Quick (captain)
D Wise
D Thomas
E Griffiths
A Davies
G Gower
A Guy
K Roper
M Forrester
In a later game there is an E Mountfield

A few possibilities include:

The captain is named as Lizzie in a newspaper report. Possibly Lilian Elizabeth Quick born in 1895 in Wolverhampton and living in Margaret Terrace, St Thomas in 1911.  If so married Evan Gordon Davies in 1924.

K. Roper in the newspaper is named as Katie. There is a Catherine Roper born about 1900 living at 3 Wandsworth Street with her brother and uncle.

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Oxfam T-shirt

New Donation

In October of 1969 a group of young people gathered at midnight at Singleton Park. They were taking part in a 20-mile charity walk to Porthcawl that would take them up to 8 hours to finish. The donor of this t-shirt, along with the rest of the group were walking to raise money for Oxfam, a charity that fights poverty all around the world.  The front of the shirt has the logo ‘Oxfam Walk 69’ on the front and the back has the easily misunderstood slogan, ‘Help Stamp out Oxfam’.

Photograph looking down at a white t-shirt laid out in a rectangular box. White tissue paper sits underneath the t-shirt. The t-shirt has a bright , circular, orange logo in the centre that says Oxfam Walk 69.

The Swansea charity walk was part of a larger National Youth Walk movement that took place all around Britian. One of the most well-known walks was the summer walk to Wembley Stadium. 50,0000 young people started off at 12 different points to do their charity walk to the stadium, walking up to 30 miles. It was a hot day and quite a few of the young people were new to long distance walking, so the St John Ambulance crew were kept busy treating heat stroke and wounded feet. Those who reached the stadium were welcomed with a concert including the bands Love Affair and Dire Straits.

This T-shirt represents a new generation realising that making a difference to the world starts with a single step.

Followed by thousands of other ones.

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Bison & Buffalo Conservation

Bison & Buffalo heads before conservation

In our Natural History Gallery there were two Bovidae heads mounted on the wall that were in need of care and conservation. Time had taken its toll on the taxidermy heads so Laura, from LR Conservation, came to Swansea Museum to provide the expertise to conserve and clean them.

One is a head of an Indian Gaur Bison. This is the largest species of surviving Bovidae and are capable of killing tigers when provoked. Our bison head came from Kolhapur in Northern India and was donated in 1960. The bison head had serious damage to one horn, which needed to be carefully reattached. It had also been missing its glass eyes for many years.

damaged horn and ear before conservation – bison
repaired horn and ear with new glass eye – bison

The other Bovidae head is of a Water Buffalo that came from Kolhapur at the same time as the bison. There are two different types of water buffalo: swamp and river. We are still unsure which one our buffalo is. They are usually told apart by their body size, which isn’t terribly helpful with only the head. Our buffalo had shrinkage damage where the fillers used by the original taxidermist had dried up. In addition to some repair work, both heads needed a good conservation clean and polish.

cracks & dust before conservation – buffalo
after crack repair and cleaning – buffalo

Due to the expertise of the conservator, both heads are squeaky clean with shining eyes and gleaming horns. Once the mounts are made, both heads will be placed back into the Natural History Gallery.

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New Donation

World War 2 Pepper Pot

Sometimes the most unassuming donations can have an interesting story. The museum has had a recent donation from a local family of a metal cannister of black pepper. The outside looks a bit rusty, and the inside contains an ordinary paper bag of pepper. During World War 2 this pot of pepper was kept in the family’s air raid shelter. However, it wasn’t used for seasoning their rations. The donor’s grandmother kept it there as a last line of defence if the Germans invaded. She had it ready to throw in their faces to blind them so the family could make a quick getaway.

This donation is part of a collection of three items related to WW2 in Swansea. The other two items in this donation are photographs of the donor’s relatives who worked as a nurse and an ambulance driver during the war.

SM2024.1.3

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Rev. Emma Rosalind Lee

By Phil Treseder
Swansea Museum Education & Participation Officer

In January 2024 a film was realised with the title ‘One Life’. The film is based on the true-life story of Sir Nicholas Winton who is played by Sir Anthony Hopkins.

The film focuses on a scrapbook which was put together by the Committee for Czechoslovakian Child Refugees in 1939 and given to Nicholas Winton.  The group supported Nicholas Winton in organising Kindertransport trains of child refugees out of Czechoslovakia in 1939 to escape the Nazis.

The scrapbook is now in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.

In the film, Nicholas Winton browses the scrapbook and stops at an article titled `What they have done to the Czechs’.  In the real scrapbook, to the left of that article is a newspaper cutting from the South Wales Evening Post.  It is a letter to the Editor dated 20th of April 1939, headed `Refugee Children; an appeal’.  The letter is from the Rev. Rosalind Lee, Cefn Bryn House, Penmaen, near Swansea.

The Rev Rosalind Lee was born in Edgbaston, Birmingham but would later settle in Swansea at Cefn Bryn House, Penmaen, with her brother who was a lecturer at Swansea University.  The house still exists and has a spectacular view of Three Cliffs Bay. Both were actively involved in the Gower Society.  The Rev. Lee bought several plots of land on the Gower to stop any development on them and then donated the land to the National Trust.

She became a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse during the Great War and then became a Minister with the Unitarian Church in 1919.  She was a member of the first committee of the British League of Unitarian Women from 1908 and become the National Secretary in 1929.  She would later be elected as President of the Unitarian General Assembly in 1940.

The Rev. Lee served as a Minister in Treorchy, Leicester, Hackney, and Stourbridge and as a district minister in South Wales.

In October 1939 she went to Prague to set up and run a `Friends Refugee Office’ with another Unitarian Minister John McLachlan.  They worked closely with Doreen Warriner, the only one of the three they include in the film.

A full list of the 669 mainly Jewish children they saved are online.  Unfortunately, the last train due to depart on the 1st of September 1939 with another 250 children on board, was prevented from leaving by the outbreak of the war and the majority of those children were subsequently murdered.

The British Government would not allow the transport of the children without guarantors in place who would look after the children and cover the costs.

The list of children includes information on names, dates of birth, and address’s in the UK and who the guarantor was.  From the list we can see that the Rev. Lee was guarantor or co-guarantor for many children.

Not all were based in Swansea, some she obviously managed to place with family and friends.  Some of the many children included were:

Ivo Englander, born 1924.
Eduard Kestenbaum, born 1930.
Ervin Kestenbaum, born 1926.
Renee Kestenbaum born 1928.
Katarina Kestenbaum, born 1931.

None of the above children would return to Czechoslovakia. The two Kestenbaum sisters Renee and Katarina would both, following the war, emigrate to the United States.  The brothers Eduard and Ervin would later apply for British citizenship in 1947 and remain in the UK. At the same time, they both changed their surname to Berry.

It appears that Eduard may have moved to Birmingham, whilst Ervin remained in Swansea.

A search of the Czechoslovakian Holocaust victims list under Kestenbaum only produces two names who may have been their parents.  Frantisek, born in 1898 was murdered on 13th August 1942 at Majdenek.  Hana (although on the record spelling is slightly different, probably a spelling mistake by the SS) was born 1897, and was murdered, place and date unknown.

The surname, Englander appears to be fairly common, so we were unable to locate the parents of Ivo, but it is probably safe to assume they were also murdered.

If they did survive the war, they would have been devastated to find out their son did not. Being the oldest of the five, Ivo became eligible to join up and he joined the Czechoslovakian Air Force operating in Britain. 

He was killed on the 1st of January 1945 whilst returning from patrol with Coastal Command.  In severe weather his Liberator plane crashed into the northern end of the Island of Hoy, Orkneys.

His body was taken to the mainland, and he is buried in Tain Cemetery, Scottish Highlands.