15 Facts About Doreen Warriner

Doreen Agnes Rosemary Julia Warriner was an English development economist and humanitarian.

Doreen Warriner became the head of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia in Prague which helped 15,000 German, Czech, and Jewish refugees escape Czechoslovakia while the country was being occupied and annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 and 1939.

Doreen Warriner was a posthumous recipient of the British Hero of the Holocaust award.

Doreen Warriner's parents were Henry Arthur Warriner, a land agent for Weston Park, Long Compton, and his wife Henrietta Beatrice, daughter of Thomas McNulty, a Church of England clergyman of a slum parish in the Staffordshire Black Country, who had left Ireland.

Doreen Warriner was educated at Malvern Girls' College, then at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she obtained a first in PPE.

Doreen Warriner found a chaotic situation in Prague and an anticipation that the Nazis would take over the whole country.

Doreen Warriner made contact with the Society of Friends and a number of other humanitarian organisations, but quickly realised that her first priority was not relief, but getting people vulnerable to Nazi oppression out of Czechoslovakia.

Doreen Warriner supervised the departure of the men from Czechoslovakia by train to Poland from where they continued onward to Britain.

Doreen Warriner's main focus was on rescuing anti-Nazi political refugees for resettlement.

The German crackdown stimulated a large market in forged passports and exit documents in which Doreen Warriner was probably involved.

Doreen Warriner was not there but a Canadian Quaker worker, Beatrice Wellington, was detained and questioned.

Doreen Warriner was appointed an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1941 "for services in 1938 and 1939 in connection with refugees leaving Czechoslovakia".

Doreen Warriner wrote favourably of the communist revolutions in Eastern Europe after the war.

Doreen Warriner died on 17 December 1972 after suffering a stroke.

Doreen Warriner was a recipient of the British Hero of the Holocaust award for saving Jewish lives in January 2018.