British Society and the Jews: a Study Into the Impact of the Second World War Era and the Establishment of Israel, 1938-1948
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BRITISH SOCIETY AND THE JEWS: A STUDY INTO THE IMPACT OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR ERA AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF ISRAEL, 1938-1948. Submitted by Nicholas Mark Burkitt to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in September 2011. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: 1 ABSTRACT The thesis examines the relationship between Britain’s Jews, both established and refugee, with the host community from 1938 to 1948. The relationship is studied in the light of events in Europe and the Near East from the 1938 Anschluss to the 1948 founding of Israel and the ways they impacted upon Jews in Britain. The work shows a positive reaction towards Jews in Britain, with few, but specific exceptions. Existing academic work has often concentrated on those exceptions, particularly in the East End of London. This study looks at the wider Jewish experience to show a more peaceful and tolerant coexistence than has formally been presented, especially to recently arrived Jews. The focus of the thesis is on the different personal experiences of Jews in Britain, against the more familiar high political context of the period. The thesis does not dispute the existence of anti-Semitism, but shows that it was limited to traditional geographical areas and has been in many cases confused with a more general xenophobia towards any ‘outsider’ or ‘foreigner’. It also deals with what the study refers to as ‘pragmatic’ government decisions regarding Jews and highlights some non-Jewish reactions which have been seen as discriminatory, but in fact were often born out of naive ignorance or having no realistic alternative. Using different approaches to examine a wide and fragmented cross section of Jews, the thesis shows the internal struggle many faced when dealing with the issues of what it meant to be British, a Jew and for some, a desire to have a safe homeland in Palestine. Overall, it is a study in the transformation of Jewish society in Britain from being deferential and submissive to one of assertiveness and self-reliance born out of necessity. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I should like to give particular thanks to Professor Richard Overy for his advice as my principal Supervisor, along with Professor Jeremy Black and Dr. Jane Whittle. Of special note in their assistance and encouragement were the staff of the Wiener Library, the London Metropolitan Archive, Glamorgan Archive (Cardiff) and David Morris at the West Glamorgan Archive. I am grateful to the Office of the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain for allowing access to their records held at the London Metropolitan Archive. Special thanks for their help and providing information must be given to Kevin Mularski and Jennifer Zorek-Pressman regarding family details, photographs and permission for their use. I am also appreciative to those people I spoke to personally, who through interviews were able to give me an insight into the lives of Jews and non-Jews during the 1930s and 1940s, namely Joan Dare, Edith ‘Eva’ Jones and Chanie Rosenberg. Additionally, my appreciation extends to those who were helpful in providing information relating to specific areas or persons, such as Howard Beck. Finally, I must also thank the editing skills and patience of Tina and Manjit, whose efforts with this work have been invaluable and often essential. 3 CONTENTS Title 1 Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 3 Contents 4 Abbreviations 5 Introduction 6 Chapter One 42 Chapter Two 123 Chapter Three 190 Chapter Four 264 Conclusion 336 Appendices 346 Bibliography 372 4 ABBREVIATIONS AAC…..Academic Assistance Council. AJEX….Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women. AJR…....Association of Jewish Refugees. BBL……British Brothers’ League. BCRC.....British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia. CBF……Central British Fund for German Jewry (1933-1935). CBF……Central British Fund for Jewish Relief and Rehabilitation (1944-1978). CCAC….Churchill College Archive Centre (University of Cambridge). CCJR…..Central Council for Jewish Refugees (1939-1944). CGJ….....Council for German Jewry (1936-1939). CPGB….Communist Party of Great Britain. FCRA….Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens. GAAR….Gloucestershire Association for Aiding Refugees. GCA……Gloucestershire County Archive, Gloucester. JRC…......Jewish Refugees Committee. LSE…......London School of Economics and Political Science. MRA……Moral Re-Armament (otherwise known as the Oxford Movement/Group). RCM……Refugee Children’s Movement. SPSL……Society for the Protection of Science and Learning. TNA…….The National Archive, Kew, London. UM……...Union Movement. 5 INTRODUCTION The central aim of the thesis is to form an understanding of Great Britain’s relationship with its Jewish population between 1938 and 1948 and how this was influenced by events in Europe and the Near East at a time that saw an escalation in the persecution of continental European Jewry. The Second World War, Holocaust, the emergence of the state of Israel and the beginnings of the Cold War had a direct impact and consequence for Anglo-Jewry and its relationship with British host communities. The importance of the study lies in seeing the ten year period as a unique experience for Anglo-Jewry and the rest of the British people. The thesis examines a country under the unprecedented pressures of an economic depression, a total war effort, with a socially and politically divided Jewish community. It is these consequences of events from outside of Britain, which impact upon it and the people, that are the focus for the study. The ideology and foreign policy of Nazi Germany and later on, the pressure of world opinion over the fate of Jews and Palestine, had profound effects upon British community relations for both Jew and non-Jew. The Anschluss and Kristallnacht of 1938 brought about a rapid and large scale influx of Jews into Britain, which resulted in a variety of responses from both British society and an already pressurised indigenous Jewish population. How the former dealt with its Jewish population varied considerably, often depending upon the context of the events between 1938 and 1948, which included the Second World War, the Holocaust 6 and the ‘dirty war’ in the establishment of the State of Israel.1 The starting point for the thesis comes at a time when Jewish immigration into Great Britain significantly increased because of two key actions by Germany’s Third Reich The first event was the Anschluss (March 1938) or union between Germany and Austria, whereby the latter was amalgamated into the ‘Greater German Reich’ and consequently unleashed a wave of Austrian anti-Semitic activity.2 Later in the year, there followed Kristallnacht (November 1938), the name given to the imprisonment, violence and murder of Jews by German/Austrian citizens and encouraged by the government.3 The conclusion for the thesis is the establishment of the State of Israel (May 1948). This not only relieved much of the pressure being applied to British Jewry concerning its 1 Prior to 1948, events in continental Europe have always produced a flow of Jewish immigrants to Great Britain. The pogroms and emancipation of Jews of eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth centuries resulted in the population rising from 75,000 in 1880 to approximately 300,000 by 1914. Assimilated and ‘respectable’ Jewry was overwhelmed. The numbers would have been greater but for restrictive government legislation such as the 1905 Alien Immigration Act. The next significant influx of Jews came with the rise to power of the Nazis and another 11,000 came to Britain up to 1938 and Anschluss. From mid-1938 to September 1939, a further 44,000 arrived. The highpoint came just after the Second World War, when there were approximately 425,000 Jews in Britain. T. Endelman, The Jews of Britain 1656 to 2000 (Los Angeles, 2002), pp.3, 127, 215. R. Winder, Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain (London, 2005), p.169. 2 For a variety of perspectives written or translated into English on the events surrounding Anschluss and its consequences, a number of recent publications range from E. Orsten, From Anschluss to Albion: Memoirs of a Refugee Girl 1938-40 (Cambridge, 1998), looking at a Jewish ten year old girl and her brother rescued by the Quakers and sent to Britain, to the more cultural and social impacts detailed in D. Daviau (Ed.), Austrian Writers and the Anschluss: Understanding the Past, Overcoming the Past (Ariadne, 1991), W. Wright (Ed.), Austria, 1938-1988: Anschluss and Fifty Years (Ariadne, 1995) and D. Lehr, Austria: Before and After the Anschluss: Personal Experiences, Observations and Comments (Pittsburgh, 2001). Also of particular interest from a personal and reflective perspective is Kurt von Schuschnigg’s The Brutal Takeover: The Austrian Ex-Chancellor’s Account of the Anschluss of Austria by Hitler (London, 1971). 3 Within such general accounts of the Holocaust, there are useful commentaries on Kristallnacht to be found in D. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (London, 1997), K. Reuband and E. Johnson, What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany (Cambridge Ma., 2003) and I. Kershaw, Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution (Yale, 2008). For a more in-depth analysis of events surrounding Kristallnacht, important contributions have been made by A. Read and D. Fisher, Kristallnacht: The Beginning of the Holocaust (London, 1991), M. Bard, 48 Hours of Kristallnacht: Night of Destruction / Dawn of the Holocaust: An Oral History (Connecticut, 2008), M.