In 1939 a group of Jewish refugee girls from very young through to teenage were sent to a small hostel in Southport: Harris House. As a thank you to the matron who had looked after them, they wrote a collective ‘diary’ in 1940. The Harris House Hostel closed shortly after and some time after the war ended, the diary was lost, only to reappear in the early 1980s in a flea market. It was then donated to the newly opened Manchester Jewish Museum where it has been on display ever since. In the 1980s Granada Television made a documentary with a reunion of the former child refugees and the matron.

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This is a rare document – the only contemporary collective account written by the refugee children. There were later collections from the 1960s edited by Karen Gershon and following the anniversary reunions of 1988 and 1989, both of which allow later reflections. But even though it was written at the time, this is a complex document, raising many questions:

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• What does it reveal that the Harris House diary was almost lost for good?

• Who is the audience for these testimonies?

• How much agency does this diary show that the children were able to exercise?

• Where is ‘home’ for these children?

• How much agency did young refugees have, and what can we learn about attitudes to children and youth in the 1930s and 1940s?