Barton House – the post-war haven from hell for eastern European refugees
THE news is dominated by events in the Ukraine, with concerns not only about the fighting but also the growing humanitarian crisis as refugees flee westwards to escape the Russian army.
History is repeating itself. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War there was a similar catastrophe but on a much larger scale. Not only were former Nazi slave workers trying to return to their homes, so too were prisoners of war, writes Nick Saunders.
Ethnic Germans were moving westwards as they lost their homes in what had become the new Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
Many eastern Europeans, especially in the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, fled to escape persecution as their countries were occupied by the Soviet Union.
After the failed uprising against the Soviets in 1956, Hungarian refugees also moved to the west.
Throughout this period Britain accepted a number of refugees from eastern Europe and gave them a home. Some of them found sanctuary at Barton when a humanitarian group, the British Council for Aid to Refugees (BCAR), bought a large clifftop building and turned it into accommodation for those flee to the west.
The A&T reported on what happened at the home from the day it opened in 1954 until its closure in 1991.
The building was called Barton House and it was situated on the western clifftops at Barton, near the present-day Cliff House Hotel. The house had been built in about 1895 as a school for boys.
In the early days of its existence the building was known as Hengistbury School, later renamed Rothsay. The school expanded with wings either side of the main building.
In 1913 it was taken over by two sisters, the Butterworths, who turned it into a girls’ establishment. They renamed it Barton Court School.
During the First World War the building was commandeered and incorporated into an army convalescent camp which was spread over a large area of the Barton clifftops.
Post-war, the girls’ school returned for a brief period before reverting to a boys’ establishment in 1924.
By the 1930s the building had become the Barton House Hotel, which offered relaxing holidays with a sea view.
War once again intervened and the building was requisitioned by the army. At the end of the Second World War, Barton House was used as a rest home for retired nurses.
In 1954 it was bought by Dame May Curwen who in 1951 founded BCAR. This later merged with another like-minded charity and they became the British Refugee Council.
BCAR sought to clear the wartime refugee camps in Europe and care for the victims of the Hungarian communist takeover.
In addition, they also sought to house those people who had fled Russia, Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states and other parts of eastern Europe.
In July and August of 1954, the A&T reported on the preparations for opening of the home, explaining that this was to be entirely paid for out of donations. The 40 occupants would be elderly and the home would help them to have some quality of life and teach self-reliance.
Many of the people who came to Barton House were sent there from all over the UK. For some their stay was sponsored by charities such as Rotary, or by churches of all denominations.
Initially the sponsorship per person was for seven years. This was later extended to 16.
BCAR also worked hard to raise funds for itself. It did this through a series of high-profile visits to Barton House, annual fetes and coffee mornings.
On 15th October 1955 the A&T reported that Bishop Nicodem of the Russian Orthodox Church blessed the house in the presence of Viscountess Falmouth who was then president of BCAR.
This was the start of a nationwide appeal to raise £60,000 to support those refugees who could not work.
The A&T edition of 13th June 1970 reported that Prince Tomislav of Yugoslavia was the guest of honour opening the annual fundraising fete. He commented that he was “greatly impressed to see so many nationalities under one roof, all getting on so well with each other”.
The A&T report from the 1st July 1972 edition records that Airey Neave DSO, MC, who was an MP and had escaped from Colditz in the Second World War, was the guest of honour.
On 21st June 1975 the paper reported that the guest of honour was Ms Jean Heidler, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Despite having little or nothing, the Barton House residents were charitable and supported local causes. The A&T of 7th May 1977 reported that during a fundraising event in New Milton where £689 was raised for the blind, the Barton House residents made a small contribution.
Barton House was run for many years by Erika Sivi, an Estonian refugee. She had worked post-war in Germany in camps for displaced persons. She came to England in 1947 as a voluntary worker in the Westward Ho! refugee aid scheme.
Erika made sure that Barton House was a home and not an institution.
In an interview in 1979 Erika said of her residents: “They don’t forget the past and the scars are still there.”
Also caring for the residents was Sister Elizabeth Balaam, who looked after their medical needs for 12 years before ill health forced her retirement.
Sally Brownson was a cook for 12 years at Barton House, and Christine Jenkins worked there 1974-77, when she was not studying at university.
Christine and Sally have kindly provided a great deal of information about the premises.
The refugees had very little in the way of personal possessions with them. Many people had lost everything when they left their homeland and had to start again on reaching Britain. What few items they had were kept safely in their rooms and jealously guarded.
Every few months the rooms were given a thorough cleaning. This involved weeks of negotiations by Erika with each resident, who were often frightened of the intrusion and scared they would lose some of their meagre possessions.
Christine recalls individual contracts being made and needing to gently talk through with the occupant what she would be doing in their room.
Deep cleaning was important as some of the refugees, living in fear as a result of their past experiences, hoarded food. Newspapers were kept for insulation in their clothing in case they had to leave in a hurry.
Christine recalled that some residents would leave little threads or discrete markers on the doors of their rooms. They could then tell if someone had entered while they were out.
Some residents lived in a constant state of anxiety, fearing the knock on the door or the arrival of ‘the authorities’.
This may seem strange behaviour to us today, but it was part of a survival mindset of deeply traumatised people.
Some of the refugees had suffered the most horrendous experiences prior to their arrival at Barton House.
One elderly Estonian man, Mr Roopa, often sat in the hallway of Barton House to question strangers who came in. He was trying to protect Erika and give warning to the other occupants if someone was perceived to be hostile.
Mr Roopa had a scar across his throat and his tongue was damaged. Despite this, he loved to talk and communicate using gestures and the few words he knew. He told of how the Russians came and occupied his country, and fought against them as a young man.
Later, when the Germans attacked from the west, he became a partisan fighting them. Eventually the Russians returned and fought them once again before fleeing westwards.
Mr Roopa was assisted in the hallway by a Hungarian refugee, Mr Banyai, who took notes on all who came in.
Other stories behind some of the residents are just as fascinating. Baroness Vera Dukshta-Dukshinska had fled the Russian Revolution in 1917 and was a refugee for the rest of her life.
Initially she lived in Yugoslavia but when that country became communist post-1945 under Marshal Tito, she moved to England and lived at Barton House.
She spoke in French which was the first language of Russian nobility, and also spoke Russian, Serbian, German and a little English. Christine recalled that she always dressed in layers of chiffon.
She had been in the Winter Palace in 1917 when the revolution began. Sometimes, at night, she would have dreadful nightmares, often running through the house turning lights on, shouting and screaming that the Bolsheviks were coming. It took a great deal to calm her down.
Some residents, like Mrs Krammer, were very withdrawn. When she could be coaxed into talking, she told of walking across Europe as a young girl in 1945, freezing in the winter and starving. She dug potatoes out of the ground with her bare hands and ate them raw to survive.
She worked as a nurse in England, but with no relatives here and, living alone, she ended up moving to Barton House.
During their working lives in the UK the residents took on all forms of employment including farming, interpreting and working in mental health hospitals.
Mr Ivan Sherbakov, was a Russian lawyer who fled the 1917 revolution. He spoke five languages including Esperanto and ended up teaching Russian at Brockenhurst Grammar School.
In addition, he was an accomplished poet whose work was published in 1973 in the book Contemporary Poets.
With language difficulties and the mental scars the residents had accumulated during their traumatic lives, Barton House was virtually a closed community.
But the local residents offered friendship from the very start, as reported in the A&T of 27th August 1955.
Bashley WI took 20 refugees out for a visit to Beaulieu Abbey, followed by afternoon tea.
Offers of friendship were made to the home by Bournemouth-based German Lutherans.
The Methodist Chapel at Barton managed to build a relationship with the residents. The minister there was Christine’s father. The residents had their own Orthodox chapel in the grounds which was run for many years by Ivan Maluka who had lived at Barton House since it first opened. He had also fled Russia.
The A&T edition of 18th May 1991 reported that Barton House was to close. The 25 residents, by then quite elderly, were moved on to other care homes.
The numbers of eastern European refugees had been falling for some time. In addition it was becoming increasingly expensive to maintain and modernise such an old house.
The building lay empty and was boarded up for several years before it was demolished. A block of flats and some cottages were built on the site which retained the name, Barton House.
It should be remembered that during the time Barton House was caring for refugees from eastern Europe, the former RAF camp at Sopley had a similar role on a larger scale when 2,885 Vietnamese refugees lived there from May 1979 to September 1982 until they were integrated into the community.
This camp also had local residents volunteering to make life more comfortable for those in need.
The British people and our local community in particular welcomed the eastern European refugees and supported them through charitable donations.
For some 37 years, Barton House was a home, with the area becoming a haven for those who had fled their homeland.
The compassion, understanding and practical assistance given to the refugees by people like Dame May Curwen, Erika Sivi, Elizabeth Balaam, Sally Brownson, Christine Jenkins and all who worked at Barton House should not be forgotten.
If history is repeated, we will need to show similar qualities.
