Elaine Blond

https://45aid.org/carers/elaine-blond/
Elaine Blond

Blond was a one of the main organisers of the pre-war Kindertransports. After the war she played a prominent role on the Committee for the Care of the Concentration Camp Children.

Blond was born in Manchester in 1902. She was the youngest daughter of Michael Marks, the Russian-Polish immigrant who founded Marks and Spencer.

She was a Zionist and her sister Rebecca founded the Federation of Women Zionists and the World International Zionist Organisation.

Blond was a key figure in the Refugee Children’s Movement from 1938, which was merged with the Central British Fund in the 1940s.

Her first husband was Normal Laski, a cousin of Neville and Harold Laski. She married her second husband, Neville Blond, in 1944.

In 1948, they emigrated to the USA. Blond later became an important patron of the sciences and the arts. The Blond’s donations helped double the laboratory size within Queen Victoria Hospital grounds in 1959 and donated the new Burns Centre there in 1964.

This profile was written by Ruby Kwartz.