Thirsk Quaker link to Oskar Schindler
The role a Quaker played in saving lives after the first world war is being celebrated in Thirsk
A Quaker credited with helping save countless lives after the first world war is being celebrated with displays in the North Yorkshire town of Thirsk.
Displays on Jed Hall have been shown at Thirsk Museum and St Mary’s Church detailing the role he played in saving lives and his links to Oskar Schindler.
Jed Hall was awarded a medal by the League of Nations for his humanitarian work, helping many of the hundreds of thousands of civilians starving to death in the seven months between the signing of the Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles.
Quakers were instrumental in this work, which the Germans labelled Quakerspeisungen: ‘Quaker Feedings’.
The displays were put together by Thirsk Friend Geof Sewell who has been researching the Hall family for four and a half years at Friends House in London and the Brotherton Library in Leeds.
He knew the family, who he described as ‘extraordinary’.
Geof Sewell told the Friend: ‘During the 1930s, Jed would take a ‘meal train’ up to the moors to the labourers who lived there in appalling conditions, basically to stop them from starving. He would buy up land to use as allotments for the unemployed, so they could grow their own food.’
The displays show that Oscar Schindler’s family were among the thousands of people saved by Jed Hall’s massive effort.
Oskar Schindler went on to help hundreds of Jews escape from Auschwitz in the second world war.
