MORE than 60 years after Nazis forced him from his homeland, York's first child refugee has made an emotional trip back to the city.

And Harry Baum, now 73, was reunited with the two men he said had become his "brothers".

Mr Baum was 11 when he and his 16-year-old sister Franzi were sent out of Vienna by his parents, afraid for their lives as the Nazi persecution of the Jews intensified.

Arriving in a refugee camp in Harwich, they were spotted by David Hughes, a young student spending his holidays working at the camp.

He asked his mother to take them in. Accepted into the family's Moorgate home, in Acomb, they became York's first child refugees.

Meeting David, now 82, and his brother Michael, 85, Mr Baum said: "This family made an enormous difference to our lives.

"The debt I owe to the Hughes family, and indeed to the city of York, is immense."

Updated: 08:34 Tuesday, September 04, 2001