Peter Julyan 🐝 @PeterJulyan - Twitter Profile

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Woman of the Day shopkeeper Louisa Gould born OTD in 1891 in Jersey, who defied the Nazi Occupation of the Channel Islands to shelter a young Russian man escaping slavery. She paid with her life. After the evacuation of Dunkirk concluded on 4 June 1940, Winston Churchill decided that the Channel Islands had little strategic value to the defence of the UK and declared them neutral. Germany, ever respectful of neutrality, invaded just weeks later - 30 June 1940. The Islands remained under Nazi Occupation until they were liberated on 9 May 1945. Some islanders became collaborators. Many more engaged in acts of resistance, large and small. If caught, they paid a terrible price. In 1942, Feodor Burriy, a Russian pilot in his early twenties whose plane was brought down by German fire, was transported to Immelman, the prison camp established on Jersey. Starved, emaciated, worked almost to the point of death as a slave, his great stroke of luck came when a sympathetic islander brought him to Louisa’s door for help. Louisa, a widow, had already lost one son the year before when his ship was torpedoed off Alexandria. Her other son was in the RAF. She didn’t hesitate. She opened her home to him, altered her son’s clothes to fit, changed his name to Bill, obtained a forged ID card for him via the local insurance broker who arranged for another islander to conveniently “lose” his. With the help of her sister Ivy Forster, her brother Harold le Druillenec, and her friends, Louisa helped Bill learn to speak English with a French accent so that the Germans would never suspect he was Russian. She hid him for nearly two years in defiance against the Occupation. “I have to do something to help another mother’s son.” Her great-niece Jenny Lecoat, said, “Initially, she must have been terrified of every knock at the door but time went by and everything seemed fine. She didn’t want to keep him cooped up in the house. He’d already gone through so much and was probably mentally quite damaged. Presumably, it started with getting a breath of fresh air. Then she became a little braver. It snowballed. By the end, there are reports of her taking him to church and going into town on the bus together.” As the number of German troops ballooned to 11,500, the islanders were subjected to ever-stricter rationing. They developed ersatz food: evaporating seawater to make salt; roasting and grinding acorns or parsnips to make coffee; using nettles, bramble leaves or pea pods to make tea. Toothpaste was made from cuttlefish and ivy. Tensions rose and twenty months after Louisa took in Bill, someone cracked. It is thought that neighbours of Louisa sent a damning letter to the Germans about islanders visiting Louisa to listen to the BBC broadcasts on her illegal radio. It was addressed to ‘Victoria College’ rather than ‘Victoria College House’ where the administration was based. The Vice Principal of the College steamed the letter open, read the contents and re-addressed it, thus creating a 24-hour delay so he could despatch someone to warn Louisa about the impending raid. Louisa, her brother Harold, three of her friends - and the following week, her sister Ivy - were arrested and tried. Even as the trial concluded on 22 June 1944, the courtroom could hear the noises of battle in nearby Normandy as the D-Day forces advanced towards the liberation of France. They were all found guilty. Ivy survived. She escaped deportation because a doctor at the Jersey General Hospital forged papers saying she was not well enough to leave the Island. Harold survived Belsen. The friends were imprisoned but they too survived. Louisa was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for failing to surrender a wireless radio, prohibited reception of a wireless transmission and for sheltering Bill. She was taken by cattle truck to Ravensbrück concentration camp where initially she gave English lessons to her companions. Ravensbrück was liberated by the Russians on 30 April 1945. On 8 May 1945 - VE Day - the Germans in Europe surrendered. The following day, on 9 May 1945, British troops liberated the Channel Islands. Louisa did not live to see it. She was taken to the gas chambers and murdered on 13 February 1945, aged 53. Bill was never recaptured. He returned to Russia after the war, sent a letter to the local paper twenty years after the war to thank the islanders for their kindness, and in 1995, he visited Jersey once more to unveil a plaque dedicated to Louisa. He said his heart was “wrung with pain” at the prospect of never being able to shake hands with his “second mother” again. In 2010, Louisa was posthumously named a British Hero of the Holocaust.

TheAttagirls's tweet photo. Woman of the Day shopkeeper Louisa Gould born OTD in 1891 in Jersey, who defied the Nazi Occupation of the Channel Islands to shelter a young Russian man escaping slavery. She paid with her life.

After the evacuation of Dunkirk concluded on 4 June 1940, Winston Churchill decided that the Channel Islands had little strategic value to the defence of the UK and declared them neutral. Germany, ever respectful of neutrality, invaded just weeks later - 30 June 1940. The Islands remained under Nazi Occupation until they were liberated on 9 May 1945. Some islanders became collaborators. Many more engaged in acts of resistance, large and small. If caught, they paid a terrible price.

In 1942, Feodor Burriy, a Russian pilot in his early twenties whose plane was brought down by German fire, was transported to Immelman, the prison camp established on Jersey. Starved, emaciated, worked almost to the point of death as a slave, his great stroke of luck came when a sympathetic islander brought him to Louisa’s door for help.

Louisa, a widow, had already lost one son the year before when his ship was torpedoed off Alexandria. Her other son was in the RAF. She didn’t hesitate.

She opened her home to him, altered her son’s clothes to fit, changed his name to Bill, obtained a forged ID card for him via the local insurance broker who arranged for another islander to conveniently “lose” his. With the help of her sister Ivy Forster, her brother Harold le Druillenec, and her friends, Louisa helped Bill learn to speak English with a French accent so that the Germans would never suspect he was Russian. She hid him for nearly two years in defiance against the Occupation.

“I have to do something to help another mother’s son.”

Her great-niece Jenny Lecoat, said, “Initially, she must have been terrified of every knock at the door but time went by and everything seemed fine. She didn’t want to keep him cooped up in the house. He’d already gone through so much and was probably mentally quite damaged. Presumably, it started with getting a breath of fresh air. Then she became a little braver. It snowballed. By the end, there are reports of her taking him to church and going into town on the bus together.”

As the number of German troops ballooned to 11,500, the islanders were subjected to ever-stricter rationing. They developed ersatz food: evaporating seawater to make salt; roasting and grinding acorns or parsnips to make coffee; using nettles, bramble leaves or pea pods to make tea. Toothpaste was made from cuttlefish and ivy. Tensions rose and twenty months after Louisa took in Bill, someone cracked.

It is thought that neighbours of Louisa sent a damning letter to the Germans about islanders visiting Louisa to listen to the BBC broadcasts on her illegal radio. It was addressed to ‘Victoria College’ rather than ‘Victoria College House’ where the administration was based. The Vice Principal of the College steamed the letter open, read the contents and re-addressed it, thus creating a 24-hour delay so he could despatch someone to warn Louisa about the impending raid.

Louisa, her brother Harold, three of her friends - and the following week, her sister Ivy - were arrested and tried. Even as the trial concluded on 22 June 1944, the courtroom could hear the noises of battle in nearby Normandy as the D-Day forces advanced towards the liberation of France. They were all found guilty.

Ivy survived. She escaped deportation because a doctor at the Jersey General Hospital forged papers saying she was not well enough to leave the Island. Harold survived Belsen. The friends were imprisoned but they too survived.

Louisa was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for failing to surrender a wireless radio, prohibited reception of a wireless transmission and for sheltering Bill. She was taken by cattle truck to Ravensbrück concentration camp where initially she gave English lessons to her companions.

Ravensbrück was liberated by the Russians on 30 April 1945. On 8 May 1945 - VE Day - the Germans in Europe surrendered. The following day, on 9 May 1945, British troops liberated the Channel Islands.

Louisa did not live to see it. She was taken to the gas chambers and murdered on 13 February 1945, aged 53.

Bill was never recaptured. He returned to Russia after the war, sent a letter to the local paper twenty years after the war to thank the islanders for their kindness, and in 1995, he visited Jersey once more to unveil a plaque dedicated to Louisa. He said his heart was “wrung with pain” at the prospect of never being able to shake hands with his “second mother” again.

In 2010, Louisa was posthumously named a British Hero of the Holocaust.

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