UK broadcaster Attenborough, 94, hosts families of his Jewish refugee ‘sisters’
Irene and Helga Bejach, part of the Kindertransport rescue mission from Nazi Germany, took shelter with the British family during WWII

Sir David Attenborough on Sunday announced he hosted in July a reunion for the families of two Jewish refugee sisters who fled Nazi Germany during the Holocaust and were adopted by his parents.
The two girls, Helga and Irene Bejach, were 12 and 13, respectively, when they arrived in Britain in August 1939 as part of the Kindertransport rescue mission that saved some 10,000 Jewish children from the Nazis.
The sisters were taken in by Attenborough’s parents, Mary and Fredrick, and lived in their Leicester home for seven years and were like “sisters” to their three sons, David, Richard and John.
The 94-year-old broadcaster kept in close contact with them after the war and maintained relationships with their children.
The late Richard Attenborough, an acclaimed actor and Oscar-winning director, also spoke fondly of them, saying that “they helped shape our lives” and that “we loved them and cherished them.” He kept in touch with them, phoned them regularly, and they visited each other, and though Irene died in 1994 and Helga in 2005, Attenborough was still thinking about them and writing about them in the final years of his life.
July’s reunion was attended by the descendants of both the sisters, including Helga’s daughter, Beverly Rich, who told the Sunday Times that Sir David appreciated the significance of his parents’ benevolence.
“I think that when he looked at all of us leaving, it hit him that we would probably not have existed if it was not for the humanitarian kindness of his family,” she said.
Attenborough described the event as an “unforgettable afternoon” and told The Sunday Times: “I feel sort of inhibited about revealing it all because it’s nothing to do with me — it’s a credit to my parents.”