The link between St Andrew High and the Gibraltar Camp refugees was recently brought to light when Old Girl Inez Baker nee Schpektor visited the school for which she had such fond memories.
The Gibraltar Camp, now the site of UWI Mona, was set up in World War II as an evacuation camp for some 1,500 Gibraltarans (hence its name) and later as an internment camp for Jewish refugees escaping Hitler’s holocaust. The land was covered by row after row of wooden huts with a few commodes here and there.
Inez Baker née Schpektor was one of the Jewish children at the Gibraltar Camp. She recently revisited her old school and in the Emrie James Museum, much to the delight of some of her classmates recalled with great fondness her St Andrew days.
The remarkable chapter of Jewish internment in Jamaica, including Inez’s memories of Jamaica and St Andrew has been captured by yet another Old Girl, York University Professor Diana Cooper-Clarke – Dreams of Re-Creation in Jamaica: The Holocaust, Internment, Jewish Refugees in Gibraltar Camp, Jamaican Jews and Sephardim. The photograph at left of Inez in her uniform is taken from the book.
Read more on the Gibraltar Camp