A banner showing a blue sky with mountains in the distance. In the foreground, a copy of Tom Palmer's After the War with the text: 'Five years of After the War - Tom Palmer'

Tom Palmer on the Windermere Children and writing After the War

13/08/25

“That is what After the War is for. To tell the story of what happened to Ben and the Windermere Children. So that we never forget.” – Tom Palmer

August 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the arrival of the Windermere Children to the UK.

Five years on from the publication of his bestselling novel After the War, award-winning author Tom Palmer reflects on the publication of this deeply moving work of historical fiction and explores how the true story of the Windermere Children – a group of over three hundred refugee children who survived the concentration camps of WWII and were relocated to Cumbria – led him to writing this book.

Scroll to the bottom to access supporting resources for this book from The Centre for Holocaust Education, The National Literacy Trust and author Tom Palmer.

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My Wife

It’s five years since my book After the War came out.

The book I didn’t want to write.

Not in the beginning.

My wife had listened to a radio programme about three hundred Jewish children who came to Windermere as refugees in 1945. They had somehow survived the concentration camps and all the horrors that came before. Occupation. Ghettos. The murder of their parents and siblings. Enslavement. Starvation.

“This is your next book,” she said.

I shook my head.

“Just listen to the programme,” she suggested.

I listened. The programme was called Open Country, and you can access it here.
Now I was even more intimidated by the subject. What had happened to those children before they arrived in England and the trauma they carried with them throughout their lives – it was impossible to get your head round.

There was a British man on the programme. An artist named Trevor Avery. He’d set up a museum called the Lake District Holocaust Project in Windermere and the website www.ldhp.org.uk to tell these children’s stories.

“Go and meet Trevor,” my wife insisted. “See what he has to say.”

But I wasn’t sure – I didn’t think I could do it.

But we talked about it some more, and then I changed my mind.

It’s hard to resist when someone believes in you more than you believe in yourself.

Trevor

Trevor is an extraordinary man. A man who has helped tell the stories of people who have been through hell. Generous, as he always is, Trevor shared story after story about these three hundred Jewish children who’d survived the concentration camps. They were dark stories but laced with hope.

Trevor listened to me too. I remember that at one point he said that he trusted me with the story. That made a huge impression on me.

I had my wife’s belief. I had Trevor’s trust. That was enough. I would try to write the book.
Trevor and I made an agreement that I would base every scene on the testimony of the Windermere Boys. Everything would have to be traceable to the words of a survivor. I would stay true to the primary sources.

And so I listened to hours of testimony. I met and listened to Arek Hersh, Mala Tribich and Ike Alterman. I went to Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. I read many books, notably Martin Gilbert’s The Boys.

One man that stood out in my research – partly because Trevor shared so much of his testimony and stories with me – was Sir Ben Helfgott.

Ben

A Polish Jew, Ben’s mother and younger sister were murdered by the Nazis. Then, whilst on a death march, his father was murdered. Ben was put in concentration camps and worked as a slave on starvation rations.

He survived.

Just.

And, unusually, one of his siblings, Mala, survived too.

Ben came to Windermere in 1945, then went on to London, supported by the British Jewish community. He became a British citizen. He got into weightlifting and became an Olympian for Team GB.

Extraordinary.

For his work in supporting refugee charities, he was knighted.

Five Years On

It is five years since Barrington Stoke published After the War.

Of all my seventy books, After the War has sold the most copies. The reason it has done so well – after the work Barrington Stoke did to make it happen – is largely down to those who have championed it.

Looking back, I can clearly remember the moments that made me feel like we’d done a good job with the book.

One of the first was an early review from Tim Robertson, the CEO of the Anne Frank Trust in the UK: “The best children’s fiction book I’ve yet read about the Holocaust. After the War manages to be vividly engaging both as history education and as a human story – eye-opening, exciting, hugely touching. Beautifully structured and written, it may be aimed at 9–14 year-olds, but no-one should miss it.”

Reading that review still thrills me now. It wasn’t so much the knowledge that a quote like that was going to help promote the book, but the validation. If the Anne Frank Trust thought I had done a good job, then maybe I had.

Maybe my wife had been right about what I could do.

Even before the book was published, UCL Holocaust Education were interested in what we’d done. They read it before publication, helped with final details and committed to using it to educate teachers about how to teach the Holocaust. It also became part of their Beacon Schools programme. As a result, many schools have been using the book and have access to the free resources here.

Almost a year after After the War was published, I had to go to London. I’d been invited to the Historical Association’s Young Quills Book Award evening. I asked if Trevor could come too, and they agreed. I needed Trevor there. Because our book had won.

The Young Quills Award is awarded to a novel grounded in historical facts without surrendering story. It recognises good historical fiction writing that encourages youngsters to develop a love of history and a feel for the period they are studying. And it is the readers – young people – who decide the shortlist. To win was a huge honour, and now I knew we’d done the right thing.

You can see the award, a framed image, at the Lake District Holocaust Project Museum above Windermere Library.

I loved winning that award. I love what the award stands for because we’d written the book based wholly on the testimony of people like Arek Hersh, Ike Alterman and Ben Helfgott.

Which brings me to the highlight of my writing career.

Ben Again

A year after After the War came out and seventy-six years after the Windermere Children had arrived as refugees in the UK, a friend and I retraced part of the Windermere Children’s journey – the journey they made from Carlisle Airfield to Windermere, their new home. We raised eight thousand pounds for the Lake District Holocaust Project along the way. We cycled from the airport to Ullswater, canoed up Ullswater, then ran up and over Kirkstone Pass to the banks of Windermere where the children came to stay in August 1945. We finished the challenge on a sunny August evening.

And there he was. Sir Ben Helfgott. Standing where he had arrived on the same date in 1945.

He thanked me for writing the book.

One of his sons was with him. He said that his dad was pleased that the story was being told because soon he would not be around to recount what happened to him and the other Windermere Children.

Sir Ben Helfgott died in 2023.

That is what After the War is for. To tell the story of what happened to Ben and the Windermere Children. So that we never forget.

Tom Palmer

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