The British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC), later the Czechoslovak Refugee Trust Fund,[1] was a non-governmental organisation established in Prague in late September 1938, in the lead up to the Second World War, in response to the large number of refugees fleeing areas under control of Nazi Germany. Its purpose was to give humanitarian aid to refugees and resettle some of them in the United Kingdom or other countries.[2][3] The BCRC aided political refugees, especially Social Democrats and communists, as well as Jews and their families, who fled Nazi Germany or the regions it annexed during 1938 (Austria, in March, and the Sudetenland, in October).[4] The BCRC was initially funded by public donations and appeals following the Munich Agreement in September 1938 and ensuing German occupation of the Sudetenland. In January 1939 the British government gave four million pounds sterling to Czechoslovakia for assistance to refugees and their resettlement in other countries.[5]
Headed by Doreen Warriner and, later, Beatrice Wellington, the BCRC functioned in Czechoslovakia from September 1938 until mid-August 1939. World War II began on 1 September 1939. The BCRC was an umbrella and coordinating organization with cooperative ties to many other humanitarian organizations, national and international, in Czechoslovakia. By one accounting, about 12,000 refugees were able to leave Czechoslovakia, many of them financed or helped by BCRC. The United Kingdom accepted about 12,000 of the refugees, including 669 children unaccompanied by their parents in what is called the kindertransport.