As so many women, including nurses and other ‘front line’ staff currently combatting Covid-19 have suddenly become acknowledged heroes, it is very timely to consider another hitherto unsung hero, Doreen Warriner.
Warriner’s battle, however, was not against the insidious, unseen virus, but an all too visible World War Two enemy in Gestapo uniforms. Working with the British Committee for Refugees in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic), she cared for, and protected as far as possible, the wives and children of mainly political refugees, helping hundreds to escape to safety in Britain during 1938–1939.
It was a dangerous activity which ultimately endangered Warriner herself, forcing her to flee too, in 1939. Overshadowed by the venerable Sir Nicholas Winton in London, who focused on the Kindertransports from Prague to Britain, saving 669 children, Warriner’s selflessness was largely overlooked and then forgotten. Fortunately for present day researchers, nephew Henry Warriner’s book has remedied this, raising her profile and giving her the belated recognition she greatly merits. I, for one, applaud them both.
Dr Jana Buresova, Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies
I have read the book and found it fascinating. She was quite a strong passionate woman. As second generation Kindertransportee, I appreciated the depiction of the atmosphere in Prague. This provided another piece of information into a largely skeletal family story.
Warriner’s main focus was adult refugees. Generally speaking, individual rescue efforts relating to adults was the focus some years ago, but has waned with the emphasis on the rescue of unaccompanied children.
I agree this is an important book and am very appreciative of Henry Warriner’s efforts to present his aunt’s story.
In November 1938, working with the social democratic party, Doreen Warriner arranged for the transport to England of both my endangered grandfathers, followed by their wives and children in December (before Nicholas Winton arrived in Prague). I would not be here without her! I am very pleased that her nephew has published a book about her and that there is now a plaque to her outside Hotel Alcron where she stayed in 1938/39. Another unsung heroine of that time is Tessa Rowntree from the Society of Friends who accompanied a couple of the early transports of Czech refugees across Poland to the port of Gdynia and onto the ship for Harwich.
I would like to mention that colleagues of mine living in Prague walked specifically to view the commemorative plaque to Doreen Warriner. They searched for this without success outside the Hotel Alcron and, after enquiring at the reception, were informed that the plaque had fallen off and had disappeared. This is very strange, indeed, and can anyone advise of its whereabouts?
Enquiries have established that Doreen Warriner’s plaque outside Prague’s Alcron Hotel was not the final version, hence not fixed permanently, and fell off and broke. It will be replaced, and is being dealt with by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I also look forward to seeing the plaque in due course.
Covid-19 has unfortunately delayed matters, but it is very appropriate to focus on Doreen Warriner’s biography and plaque in an IMLR blog, since she helped hundreds of German-speaking refugees to escape from Czechoslovakia in 1938-39, just pre-WWII. The Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies now holds some of their archives, available in Senate House Library. In addition, she later became a professor in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, then still part of the University of London.
I agree with Anita Grosz above. Doreen Warriner seems better known for alerting Nicholas Winton in December 1938 to the needs of Prague’s refugee children, but the fascinating book by Doreen’s nephew also reveals more about her work in October, November and December 1938 when Doreen was helping adults – Czech political refugees – and their families escape the Nazis.
Doreen had since mid October 1938 worked in Prague with David Rhys Grenfell, a Labour MP in the UK parliament, planning how to get visas and how to escort political refugees out of the country. In my family’s 2022 website ‘A Sudetenland Refugee Story from the Mykura UK Archive,’ it suggests both Warriner and Grenfell may have been involved in helping my grandparents escape. mykura.co.uk
My German-speaking Czech social-democrat activist grandmother and her two sons left in December 1938, after my German-speaking Czech social-democrat activist grandfather had already arrived the UK in October 1938.
Doreen was an amazing woman, so hard-working, and brave.