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AJ R Information Volume XLIX No. 1 January 1994 £3 (to non-members) Don't miss . A call for 'responsible parenting' On the Waugh path p7 Handing on the torch Our new director p8 he current issue is the first to appear in 1994. Others have not. They have either remained alone This statement of the blindingly obvious is not or have, even if married, lacked children or been Indian Summer a bit of padding but has a serious purpose: widowed for many years. Over a century and half ago holiday p9 T nothing makes us more aware of the passage of time Heinrich Heine wrote a poem about the Hospital for than the advent of a new year. It is, after all, the date Poor Jews in Hamburg, in which he stated that he Red on the calendar, and not the 'countdown' marked by could conceive of no greater misery than to be poor, individual birthdays, which signposts our journey sick and Jewish. comeback? through life. With minimal changes Heine's formulation could On this journey, everyone had predecessors - and be adapted to describe the present situation of all too ne of last some have enjoyed the good fortune of having \ear's successors. Having children is an uncovenanted bonus many in our community. They are old, sometimes sick O paradoxes at any time; how much does this hold good for and Jewish in a sense of having been stigmatised that has been the members of the refugee community, many of whom could not have been envisaged in Heine's day. They electoral comeback lack the wider network of uncles, aunts and cousins are also poor — even if their impoverishment stems of Communists in which is normally taken for granted? more from loss of loved ones and loneliness than several European Ex-refugees have, of course, hardly known nor­ absolute loss of material necessities. countries. Reform mality for fifty-five years, i.e. the best part of their It is almost a cliche of social science research that Communists in | hves. The more fortunate amongst them have, though, once an individual's essential needs for food and office do not through marriage and parenthood (not to mention shelter have been satisfied he or she feels emotional necessarily spell the _ grand-parenthood) managed to restore a measure of deprivation more acutely than the lack of creature end of democracy. I normality into their lives. comforts. After all, mental anguish is not confined to In Lithuania they the worst-off in society; nor for that matter, is suicide. moderate (Even crime, conventially seen as a by-product of Russophobia. In poverty, has diverse causes, many of them psycho­ Poland they ; logical rather than material.) counteract undue * Even if state provision supplemented by the input of clerical influence. voluntary organisations procures minimum standards In Italy they are of comfort for the frail and elderly their emotional clean by local problems - of isolation and loneliness — still remain to standards and be addressed. marginalise the AJR was founded by a number of far-sighted neo-Fascist individuals to represent the manifold interests and 'protest' vote. concerns of refugees — and has, on the whole, Their revived discharged this task very well. Today, however, the fortunes in Eastern . founding generation of AJR activists is passing from Germany may the scene. What is required is for members of a new, usefully British-born, generation to come forward and fill the curb Wessie incipient vacuum that threatens to grow wider with triumphalism and the passage of time. We appeal to members of the persuade the 'transplanted' generation — who surely must remem­ powerholders in ber the hardships they originally endured — to make Bonn to show- the successor generation aware of new and greater greater sensitivit}' needs among their own less fortunate brethren. AJR in future than they urgently requires younger people to participate in all did over the its activities — not least as 'befrienders' for lonely and presidential sometimes handicapped or housebound members. candidacy of Unless the children come forward the parents' work Steffen Alblandschaft, 1933 tn Vim. will remain unfinished — with all that that implies for Heitmann. D Paul Kleinschmidt. the most unfortunate members of our community. D AJR INFORMATION JANUARY 1994 Kinders* gift to sick children Profile The Reunion of Kindertransport (ROK) raised £12,500 at their 50th anniversary was privileged. As a pianist she performed reunion for the Great Ormond Street Chil­ Music and mother love several times week, partly before fellow dren's Hospital Wishing Well Appeal. prisoners, partly for Nazi propaganda On a visit to the hospital in November purposes. If when young she had rubbed ROK organisers Bertha Leverton and Rita shoulders with Jewish writers (Kafka, Brod, Rosenbaum saw a new bed dedicated to Baum, Winder) she now got to know Jewish ROK in the building's new plastic surgery composers like Ullmann, Krasna and Haas. ward. Bertha said: 'The support given by In Theresienstadt, ante-chamber to hell, the those present at the Reunion was a manifes­ aforementioned created operas like The tation of their deep gratitude for their lives Emperor of Atlantis and Brundibar. being saved as children. How appropriate it Raphael sang the part of a sparrow in is to choose a hospital whose sole purpose it Brundibar; he turned out eventually to be is to save the lives of children! May afl those one of only 3 survivors in his age group of who come here sick and depressed leave four thousand. with their bodies healed and their spirits In 1944 the grim musical charade came to uplifted'. D an end and Alice had to split mica for the Nazi war effort under military supervision. Visit - or visitation After liberation she returned to Prague where the pitiful Jewish remnant received A controversial educational visit last month generous succour from co-religionists by a group of German right-wing youths to abroad. Israel has resulted in a reprimand for the In 1949 she (with Raphael) emigrated to organiser, Marita Schieferdecker, head of Alice and Raphael Sommer. Photo: Newman. Israel where - middle-aged - she had to set the foreign relations office in Dresden. to and learn Hebrew. There she re-encoun­ Wolfgang Nowak, Saxony's culture minis­ trange parallel between fiction and reality: last autumn when London tered Max Brod, who again reviewed one of ter, called her politically naive for thinking her concerts. such a visit could help Dresden's image or Scinemas showed a film for whose Unsurprisingly Raphael, whom she calls the young people concerned. fictitious heroine only piano playing made life worthwhile, a TV channel features a real the inspiration behind her own survival, Stories that some of the 21 skinheads had heroine who saved her life by playing the also chose a musical career. After studying insulted Jews who accompanied them and piano. in Paris under Tortelier, he became Pro­ caused a disturbance at Yad Vashem were fessor of Cello at Manchester and now This heroine is Alice Sommer (nee Herz). widely reported in the German and Israeli teaches at the Guildhall School of Music. In Alice was born 90 years ago in Prague, a city press. However, Mrs Schieferdecker 1986 Alice, too, came to England. A often dubbed 'golden'. It owed this epithet claimed the reports were exaggerated by Hampstead resident she enters her tenth partly to architectural splendour, partly to journalists who wished to provoke out­ decade with a daily schedule of swimming the many 'goldmakers' employed by the bursts in their search for copy. and piano. alchemy obsessed Emperor Rudolf. For Since 1991 Mrs Schieferdecker has been Alice Prague appears golden for other If music be the food of longevity . organising discussions among the city's neo- reasons. Her parents let her have an excel­ D R.G. Nazis, and also taken groups to tour the site lent musical education; one of her teachers of Auschwitz. She said: 'They ought to learn had been Liszt's pupil. Social and family about Israel and the fate that befell Jews contacts reached into the circle of Jewish during the Nazi period.' D FOR THOSE YOU CARE MOST ABOUT writers who either enriched German litera­ ture or the Zionist movement. As a child she was told fairy tales by Kafka, later Felix Springdene Weltsch became a relation by marriage; A modern nursing home with Max Brod reviewed her piano recitals for 26 yrs of excellence in health the Prague Tagblatt. care to the community. JACKMAN • Licensed by Barnet area health In 1933 she married a Vienna-born authority and recognised by BUPA & PPP. SILVERMAN businessman: their son Raphael was born a (,X>MMERC;iAL rRCirHRTY HYDROTHERAPY & year before Munich. Hereafter rhe horizons PHYSIOTHERAPY darkend inexorably with every few months provided by full time chartered cares . physiotherapists for inpatients bringing fresh disasters for Jews. The story and outpatients. is too gruesomely familiar to need repeat­ ing. Suffice it to say that by 1943 Alice SPRINGDENE 55 Oaklelgh Park North, Whetstone, London N.20 found herself crammed into a Theresien­ 081-446 2117 stadt attic with Raphael, but separated from SPRINGVIEW 6-10 Crescent Road. Enfield. Our her husband (who died of t>-phoid fever in completely new purpose built hotel style retirement home. All rooms with bathroom en-suite from £305 Dachau). Despite exposure to constant per week. 081-446 2117. 26 Conduit Street. Londim \X'!R 9T.'\ hunger pangs, dreadful over-crowding and Telephone: 071 409 0771 Fax; 071 4^H ^0 unremitting fear for her son's health, she AJR INFORMATION JANUARY 1994 means of livelihood for Jewish citizens ever Horthy was taken to Germany and The Horthy more tightly.

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