British (and my favourite) Ralph Vaughan Williams was born on this day in 1872. He served during WW1, and prior to WW2 helped German Jews escape persecution via the Dorking Refugee Society, then in WW2 worked for the Committee for the Release of Interned Alien Musicians. 1/10
Vaughan Williams was no stranger to the misery that war could bring. Born in 1872, he had served on the Western Front near Vimy Ridge with the 2/4th London Field Ambulance, then in Salonika before returning to France as an artillery Lt. in 1918. 2/10
In late 1936 he had learned from composer and political activist Alan Bush of the plight of fellow musicologist, Dr. Gerhard Pinthus who had been arrested in 1933 and since held in concentration camps. 3/10
Vaughan Williams sent the letter to Pinthus' mother in late Jan 1937 and the Gestapo later informed her that they were willing to release her son -now held at Dachau- as long as he left Germany permanently. 4/10
In early 1937, Vaughn Williams joined forces with another famous Dorking resident, the novelist E.M. Forster (A Room with a View) and they set up the Dorking and District Refugee Committee to provide help to refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. 5/10
The Society provided assistance to many Czech Sudeten refugees, but also to Kindertransport Jewish children fleeing persecution, such as Sir Erich Reich who passed away last year. 6/10
Refugees were faced with a new threat once war came - this time from the British government. Internment camps and tribunals were set up to house German and Austrian 'enemy aliens' - ostensibly Nazi sympaphisers - but the net was cast further afield, catching many refugees. 7/10
Vaughan Williams and other personalities protested these measures but they were to fall on deaf ears - that is until the sinking of the internment ship SS Arandora Star on 2 July 1940 as she was carrying over 7,000 deported refugees to Canada. 8/10
The swell of public opinion following the sinking forced the Government's hand and it created a White Paper listing 18 categories of internees deemed safe to release and who could contribute to matters of national interest. 9/10
Vaughan Williams continued to fight for the release of other musician refugees who didn't fall under the 18 categories -sometimes failing- but among those he helped, like Norbert Brainin and Siegmund Nissel, they went on to have great musical careers after the war. 10/10
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With the Paris Olympics about to start, here is a short thread on just some of the 403 known Olympians who lost their lives during the Second World War. 1/9
🇫🇷 Géo André was a French track and field star whose first Olympics were those of London in 1908 and who, despite being badly wounded in the Great War, went on to shine at the 1920 and 1924 games. He enlisted again in North Africa and was killed in action aged 53 during the fighting for Tunis on 4 May 1943. 2/9
🇳🇱 Estella Agsteribbe won gold for the Netherlands at her home games of 1928. She was Jewish and in 1943, was sent to Auschwitz with her husband and two children and murdered there on 17 September 1943, aged 34. 3/9
🇫🇷 Occupied Paris - 23 July 1944
19-year old Madeleine Riffaud cycles along the Parisian cobblestone streets. She has a gun and has been ordered to take the war to the enemy. She stops on the Pont de Solferino. There is a German soldier there, watching the Seine. Madeleine waits until he turns towards her, and then shoots him twice in the head.... 1/10
Madeleine was born on 23 August 1924 at Arvillers in the Somme department. Her parents were school teachers and her father had been badly wounded during the Great War. Family holidays are spent in the Haute-Vienne with family friends near a village called Oradour-sur-Glane. 2/ 10
War and the Germans returned to the Somme in May/June 1940. Madeleine and her family joined the great exodus of refugees and set off to drive the 600 kilometres south to the Limousin. On the way, German planes strafed the road, and her grandfather protected her with his own body as they lay in a ditch. 3/10
🇫🇷 Toulouse - Saturday, 22 July 1944
Ariadna Scriabina (Knout) and two other French Resistance members go to an appartment used as a dead drop at 11 rue de la Pomme in the city of Toulouse. She is carrying false identification papers for other Resistance members. What they do not know is that French Milice are waiting inside... 1/9
Born in Bogliasco, Italy 26 October 1905, her Russian composer father Alexander Scriabin, moved around Europe and when her parents divorced, Ariadna continued to lead a bohemian existence in various countries, such as Switzerland and Holland where she is seen here aged three. 2/9
Her father died of Sepsis in Moscow in 1915 and she went back to her mother and began writing her first poetry. Her mother died in 1922 and it was then that she left Russia and moved to Paris where her uncle Boris lived in exile. 3/9
🇫🇷 Occupied Paris - 20 July 1943
Geneviève de Gaulle, niece of Charles, enters a Parisian bookshop that is used as a dead drop by her Resistance network. Unknown to her, the Gestapo are watching and this will be her last day of freedom and the start of almost two years of misery... 1/9
Geneviève was born on 25 October 1920 in Saint-Jean-de-Valériscle (Gard) southern France. Her father, Xavier, was the eldest brother of Charles and they both saw action in the Great War. When a second war came along in 39, she was in Brittany where her father was moblized as a reserve officer. Charles is on the left in the photo and Xavier second from the right. 2/9
Geneviève was studying in Rennes and as the great tragedy of France's defeat unfolded she moved to be with her grandmother in the Breton town of Locminé. Charles' family were exfiltrated to England and on 18 June, a local priest told Geneviève and her grandmother that he had heard a certain Charles de Gaulle speaking on the BBC from London, exhorting France to carry on the fight. 3/9
🇫🇷 From flying pioneer to speed records, and finally death at the hands of the Gestapo - the story of Joseph Sadi-Lecointe who died 80 years ago this day after weeks of torture. 1/8
Born in the Somme village of Saint-Germain-sur-Bresle (80703) on 11 July 1891, Joseph later went to school in Amiens before going on to finding work as a mechanic and welder in the Minet factory near Paris. It was there, in 1910, that he took a prototype 'Zenith' aircraft for a spin without ever having had a flying lesson and thus became one of those magnificent men in their flying machines, and going on to flying Blériots. 2/8
In 1912 he joined the nascent air arm of the French army and was a sergeant pilot when war came in August 1914. Flying a reconnaissance mission near Belfort, he became the first pilot to sustain damage from gound fire. In 1915 he was flying with the MS 48 squadron based at Lunéville in the Meurthe-et-Moselle before going on to train pilots until the end of the war. 3/8
The last of the few - from the Battle of Britain to Normandy
84 years ago saw the start of a sustained Luftwaffe air campaign against the British Isles that would become known as "The Battle of Britain". One of the fighter pilots, John 'Paddy' Hemingway is still with us and in a week's time will celebrate his 105th birthday. 1/4
Born in Dublin in 1919, he flew with No. 85 Squadron during the Battle of Britain, and had to bail out of his Hurricane over the Thames Estuary the day after his 21st birthday. Burned out by the end of the Battle of Britain, as many of the young fighter pilots were, he was put on light duties and by the time of the Normandy landings held the rank of Squadron Leader. 2/4
In Normandy Hemingway worked as an air traffic controller in the extremely dynamic and fluid battlefield conditions - liaising with forward air controllers who could call in close air support from fighter bombers flying above the battlefield in the cab rank system - an essential component in keeping German armour pinned down. 3/4