It took place exactly 81 years ago today, on 16 June 1940, and it was believed that all of those involved had long since died.
But one of the survivors has been discovered – alive and well and living with her family in America.
Irène Weindling was nine years old when she, her mother and two of her brothers were rescued by a boat owned by the Langlois’ family of Sion Hall Farm at Longueville.
Now called Irène Probstein and living in Massachusetts, she said: ‘I read that no individual involved in this event remains alive today. I am very much alive.’
The rescue mission was organised by the yacht club but many others took part.
There were seven potato boats and 13 fishing boats, as well as private yachts. Other vessels included the Duchess of Normandy and a Fleet Air Arm fast launch, with crews made up of sailors, fishermen, pilots and yachtsmen.
The Weindlings were Jewish and lived in Belgium before the Second World War. On 10 May 1940 their home in Antwerp was bombed by the Germans and the family fled to Paris.
Irène’s mother and three of the children went to Dinard and hoped their father and other brother would reach them there.
‘We went to the train station every day,’ Mrs Probstein said. ‘Finally the trains stopped running.’
They reached St Malo and hired a fishing boat for the following day but its owner did not turn up. But 18 boats from Jersey did.
She said: ‘We had no sooner got on the boat when the French authorities yelled “Allez!” and the English sailors set off.
‘For a time there were some German planes flying low overhead and firing at the boats. After a while the planes no longer followed us.’
It was a very rough crossing and everyone on board – including the crew – was seasick.
She added: ‘I don’t know how long it was before we landed in Jersey as it was very dark, but we could see many people waiting on the dock for the boat.
‘This most kindly family insisted on taking our whole family to their home.
‘That evening we were greeted by a long wooden table laid out with a generous buffet of all kinds of delicious-looking food. Such a welcome I will never forget.’
Mrs Langlois paid for the family to take a ferry from Jersey to Southampton and Mrs Probstein said that she and her family left on the last ferry to leave the Island for England.
That September the family travelled to America and were later reunited with their father and their other brother.
Mrs Probstein added: ‘We learned later that one of the other ships in our convoy, the City of Benares, carrying over 90 British children being sent to America for safekeeping, had been sunk by a German submarine.
‘I believe only seven children survived – a thought that has haunted me all my life,’ she said.
Mrs Probstein is putting together an account of her family’s escape for her grandchildren, and while researching it she came across an account of last year’s parade of sail in St Aubin’s Bay.
She hopes to take her grandchildren to Jersey after the pandemic and take them to the Yacht Club that saved their family’s lives 81 years ago.
‘We have always been so grateful to the people of Jersey who rescued us and the Langlois family who took us in and fed us,’ she said. ‘Their generosity has always remained the most memorable of all of our war experiences.’
