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This is a ladies brooch. It is not very valuable but it belonged to a very special lady.

It belonged to a lady called Mrs Caroline Collard (known as Carrie) who lived in Worthing during the war. She wore the brooch nearly every day.

Mrs Collard was a very special person, a widow with grown up children and grandchildren of her own in 1938, but she volunteered to take into her home two German Jewish boys whose parents wanted to send them abroad to escape the Nazis. She did not know the boys or speak any German, nor was she Jewish, but she took in, loved and cared for the boys who had to leave their parents and everything they knew behind and come to a strange country.

During the war she had to cope with unkind comments from neighbours about having "germans" in her home, and she was even denied access to the local air raid shelter because of this.

One of the boys she took in is my mum's godfather and a very close friend of the family, Mr Vernon Mark. He sent my mum the brooch and a letter explaining its history around the time of her 21st birthday.

Joseph - Aged 11