Thanks to the Trustees’ efforts, the old house was saved and returned to community use. To manage and oversee the project, The West House & Heath Robinson Museum Trust was created. With the backing of the Council, The Pinner Association (the amenity society founded in 1932 which had originally raised the money to purchase West House) took on the task of saving the House for the public a second time. Used from that time for community activities, sadly the house fell into disrepair and Harrow Council closed it in the early 1990s. A condition of the Trust was that the Pinner Books of Remembrance should be kept at the House. We have our own memories.The house and grounds were purchased by the people of Pinner after the Second World War and given in trust to the then Council as a war memorial to the dead of the two world wars. “That was on mind when we moved in, but now we have created our own history. “All of my mother's Polish family were wiped out,” she said. Little did Ribbentrop know at the time, but 47 years after he built his house in the English countryside, a descendent of those he had helped murder in the Holocaust would move in with her husband and children. Prosecutors presented evidence that Ribbentrop was actively involved in the planning of German aggression and the deportation of Jews to death camps. In 1946 he was hanged after being found guilty of crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ribbentrop was a key member of Hitler's Nazi Party in the build up to the Second World War, but his influence waned as it became clear that the war was being lost. Our children grew up here, they went to school here.” The property's current occupant continued: “I am not happy with the history but as the years have gone by it has become our house.
All of it's Nazi heritage, such as a flagpole in the front driveway, have since been removed. He even joined Pinner Hill Golf Club.īut on the outbreak of war in September 1939, the house was taken back into British hands and later sold on by the government. Ribbentrop served as German ambassador to Britain between 19 and used the imposing building, commissioned for him by the German embassy, as a country retreat. “But someone said to me that if we moved in, we are the ones who won, because I'm Jewish and I have moved in and now I live in his house.” “When we were told about the history I said I didn't want to have any association with him. In fact, she told the Observer this week, they have defiantly lived there for 17 years knowing that Hitler's fascist foreign minister would be turning in his grave.Īlthough she didn't wish to be named, the Jewish homeowner welcomed us in to see the house in South View Road, Pinner Hill, that was built with imported German bricks and used to have a Swastika marked in its entrance hall. The current owner of Joachim von Ribbentrop's English country retreat moved this week to refute a Jewish Times article last month stating that her family were “shocked” to find out the home's origins. A JEWISH Pinner resident who lives in the house built in 1937 by a notorious Nazi war criminal has said she feels like “she's the one who's won”.
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