“We always knew he’d been evacuated and there were records but we also knew he had a fascinating story to tell.”
A daughter has uncovered mysteries of her late father’s childhood after discovering more than a thousand letters from his time as a WWII evacuee in the US.
Sandy Bennett, 60, is going through a loft-full of cuttings saved by her father Roger of his time living in Massachusetts between 1940 to 1944.
Roger was evacuated from Welwyn, Herts, and sailed away on the steamship the Duchess of Atholl in August 1940. He died in 2021 aged 89 and after his death, Sandy decided to go through all of his documents and letters he kept.
The teacher from Leighton Buzzard said: “I’ve probably looked through one per cent of roughly a thousand documents, if not more.
“We always knew he’d been evacuated and there were records but we also knew he had a fascinating story to tell.
“I knew it was emotional for him so I never spoke to him too much about it while he was still here as I never wanted to upset him over things he didn’t want to revisit.”
Roger lived with his American “foster parents” Bob and Emma Chafitz for four years in Auburn, Massachusetts at the age of eight.
Sandy has discovered his mother wrote to him every week and finding the extent of their correspondence was “incredibly touching”.
Sandy said the couple Robert stayed with were a childless couple and his “foster” father Bob was Jewish.
She said: “They rescued one small boy, a refugee from the UK, without really knowing what was happening to the Jewish population in Europe. He went from quite a strict homelife to an incredible freedom and opportunity in America.”
