VOLume 12 NO.8 august 2012

Thomas Mann and the ‘inner emigration’ ast month’s article on Gerhart spell in Buchenwald. But others were Mann über die deutsche Schuld’ (‘Thomas Hauptmann contained a reference mere opportunists, pre-1933 opponents Mann on German guilt’), it exhorted its L to the so-called ‘inner emigration’, of the Nazis who made the necessary ‘German readers’ to acknowledge that a term used to describe those writers who compromises with them once they were the atrocities revealed in the camps, had been opposed to National Socialism in power and then, on the basis of having unique in their scale and horror, were not but chose to remain in Germany after made only limited concessions to the the work of a small group of criminals, 1933, conforming at least outwardly to regime, pronounced themselves resisters but that a large number of Germans had the dictates of the regime. The post- and anti-fascists after 1945. been involved in them. Everything and war confrontation between the ‘inner Prime examples of the latter type were everyone German, Mann maintained, emigrants’ and those writers who had Walter von Molo and Frank Thiess, who was affected by the revelations; the entire been driven out of Germany into real in 1945 became involved in a celebrated German people had been tainted by the exile ignited into a bitter public dispute crimes of National Socialism, which had in summer 1945, in a rare example of a been committed in its name; the atrocities literary controversy that assumed the were the shame of every German. Mann dimensions of a nationally significant was painfully aware of the lack of remorse moral and historical-political discussion among the German people, their failure about German guilt and German attitudes to accept responsibility for their part to the Nazi past. in Hitler’s accession to power and his Open opposition to the Nazi regime was subsequent appalling abuse of that impossible for writers after 1933: it would power. have meant immediate incarceration But the responses that Mann’s article in a concentration camp. But it was elicited from his fellow writers showed possible for writers to register a degree notably little contrition, shame or of non-conformity, if only negatively, awareness of the suffering inflicted on the by withdrawing into the private sphere victims of Nazism. On 4 August 1945, the and keeping their oppositional writings Hessische Post published an open letter to themselves. A number of authors, to Mann from Walter von Molo, which provided they were not Jews or prominent also appeared in the Münchener Zeitung opponents of the Nazis, were able to of 13 August. Molo, now forgotten, follow this course. ‘Inner emigration’ was a bestselling author whose novels implied that a writer was unwilling to glorifying Germany’s ‘great men’ had Thomas Mann, 1875-1955 put himself or herself at the disposal of failed to win him the favour of the Nazis. the regime, but did not openly oppose it. controversy with the most famous exiled So he responded to Mann in the pose After 1945 it became a means by which German writer, Thomas Mann. Mann had of a fellow victim of Nazism, a fellow those who had kept their heads down become the leading public spokesman German untainted by any association under the Third Reich sought to prove of the German exiles, thanks to his with its crimes. their anti-fascist credentials, claiming wartime broadcasts to Germany on the Molo issued a formal invitation to to have engaged in a form of covert BBC, ‘Deutsche Hörer’. He had acquired Mann to return to Germany, but not in resistance – in many cases so covert that the status of spokesman for the ‘other a spirit of remorse and self-criticism. little trace of it could ever be discerned. Germany’, those Germans who sought in Instead, he appealed for sympathy, even For that reason, ‘inner emigration’ has exile to preserve the values of a humane, pity for ordinary Germans: now that he become a discredited term. democratic Germany in opposition to stood on the side of the victors, Mann The writers classified under that National Socialism. In that capacity, Mann, could surely spare some compassion for category were a disparate group. Some after reading reports from the liberated the losers who had survived the ‘twelve could be seen as genuinely anti-Nazi, like concentration camps in Time magazine, terrible years that have been inflicted on Werner Bergengruen, whose Christian wrote an article intended to awaken the us’, for those millions of Germans who humanism made him unacceptable to conscience of his fellow Germans. had been unlucky enough to be unable the Nazis, or Ernst Wiechert, whose Published in the Hessische Post to leave a Germany that had become ‘one exhortation to an audience of Munich on 12 May 1945 under the title ‘Die huge concentration camp’, where there students to preserve a critical attitude Konzentrationslager’ and in the Bayerische were only jailors and inmates. One is left towards Nazi ideology earned him a Landeszeitung of 18 May 1945 as ‘Thomas continued overleaf  AJR JOURNAL august 2012

Thomas Mann  cont. from p1 dumbfounded by the grotesque self-pity emanating from these words and their wilful blindness to the sufferings of others. The description of Germany as a giant concentration camp conveyed the wholly false impression that Germans were victims of the SS state in the same way If you wish to attend, please complete the enclosed form as Jews and other enemies of the regime. and return it to us ASAP It was little surprise that this exercise in hypocrisy and self-exculpation provoked a damning response from Thomas population, leading to contrition and Pacific Palisades, California, was typical Mann, first published in the New York- the acknowledgment of a due degree of of exile life in general. Thiess remained based refugee magazine Aufbau on 28 responsibility. fixated on the hardships he had endured, September 1945. Incensed by Molo’s But the actual reaction was very citing hunger and air raids, but never attempt to equate the sufferings of different. While Mann was working on mentioning the Jews and never sparing Germans with those of their victims and to his reply to Molo, an article by Frank a word for the threat of persecution, make out that those who had been forced Thiess entitled ‘Innere Emigration’ dispossession, incarceration, deportation into exile had had it better than the ‘inner appeared in the Münchener Zeitung of 18 and death that had motivated his former emigrants’ in Germany, he flatly rejected August 1945. Thiess went much further fellow countrymen to flee abroad. Molo’s invitation to return to Germany and than Molo in discrediting the ‘emigrant’ Thiess claimed that the true patriots issued a root-and-branch condemnation writers – he never referred to them as were those who had stayed behind and of everything that had been published exiles, let alone refugees or ‘Vertriebene’ had not abandoned ‘our sick mother in Germany under the Nazis. Far from (expellees) – and in claiming the moral Germany’. This misrepresented the seeing the literature of ‘inner emigration’ high ground for those who had stayed refugees from Nazism as a group who as a literature of anti-fascist resistance, in Germany. In a notorious phrase, he had freely chosen to leave Germany for he declared that ‘in my eyes books that claimed to have justified his decision not an easy life abroad, thus avoiding the could be printed at all from 1933 to 1945 to emigrate with the argument that if he trials and tribulations visited upon those in Germany are less than worthless and ‘succeeded in surviving’ the Nazi years Germans who had remained. Thiess not fit to be handled. There is a stench of alive, he ‘would have emerged from them never addressed the question of the blood and shame to them. They should richer in knowledge and experience than responsibility of the Germans themselves all be pulped.’ if I had watched the German tragedy from for those trials and tribulations, nor that Mann’s dismissal of all literature the box seats and stalls of foreign lands’ of their guilt towards their ‘non-Aryan’ that had appeared in the Nazi years was (‘aus den Logen und Parterreplätzen des fellow countrymen. And after 1945, arguably too sweeping – it would have Auslands’). Jews from Germany continued for many included those of his own works that were The charge that the exiles had enjoyed years to be seen as outsiders to German published in Germany before his final an easy life compared to the sufferings of society, while those exiles who chose to break with the Nazi regime in 1936. Its those who had stayed in Germany was a return were systematically marginalised, wider significance lay in the fact that by contemptible distortion of the facts, made their sufferings trivialised and their extension it could be read as condemning possible only by the implication that the claims to moral restitution dismissed. everything done in Germany under the privileged life Thomas Mann had lived in Anthony Grenville auspices of the Nazis, thereby inculpating very large numbers of Germans. Mann Running with the Torch was not an advocate of the doctrine of collective guilt, rapidly discredited in the post-war years, but rather of collective shame: he hoped that the revelations from the camps would arouse a sense of moral shame among the German

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Views expressed in the AJR Journal are not necessarily those of the Association of Jewish AJR member Hanneke Dye ran with the Olympic Torch in Harrogate on 19 June. Part Refugees and should not be regarded as such. of her nomination was ‘Hanneke was born in hiding in Nazi-occupied Holland.’

2 AJR JOURNAL august 2012

Greta Burkill: A uniquely kind and good listener NEWTONS SOLICITORS

ny German-Jewish refugee who tea, home-made cakes or biscuits, and Our experienced team happened to start a new life in then full attention to whatever we had will give you expert A Britain was more than fortunate come to say. and personal advice to be able to do so in Cambridge. Greta I was one of those teenage girls. 22 Fitzjohn’s Avenue Burkill, German by birth, married to When I told her I wasn’t happy with London NW3 5NB a British mathematician and a young my foster parents she found a new Tel: 020 7435 5351 mother with three children and a virtual family for me. When I pleaded I didn’t Fax: 020 7435 8881 menagerie of animals in her garden, want to go to school but wanted to try [email protected] opened her home to us all – men and to earn my living as soon as possible, women allowed entry into this country she had me accepted at a teacher only as domestic servants, gardeners training college (although I was too or chauffeurs – as young, didn’t have well as to a large the required school spring grove number of children certificate and, at first, RETIREMENT HOME and teenagers. knew no English). She 214 Finchley Road Greta soon realised comforted young London NW3 that most of the latter women who were London’s Most Luxurious came from families unhappy slaves in who had high hopes households. She took  Entertainment  Activities for their children, up their causes; she  Stress Free Living  24 House Staffing Excellent Cuisine had sent them to never even thought  Full En-Suite Facilities grammar schools in of herself. It was said Call for more information or a personal tour their home town, that her husband, a 020 8446 2117 or had given them brilliant academician, or 020 7794 4455 a chance to become had forbidden the [email protected] musicians, artists, word ‘refugee’ to doctors or lawyers. be mentioned in She was determined the privacy of their that these children bedroom – I’m not and young people sure whether she was JACKMAN . should get the best able to keep to that! SILVERMAN education in Britain Many years later, COMMERCIAL PROPERTY CONSULTANTS at a time when the when her husband school-leaving age for had retired and the most was 14 or 15. couple were living She knew everyone in in the Retirement the academic world, Home of Peterhouse, she knew staff at I had a chance to a teacher training visit her. She hadn’t Telephone: 020 7209 5532 college, she had changed a bit and [email protected] access to two of the insisted on reeling off Greta Burkill in 1984, the year she died best public schools, a long list of scientists, and she worked tirelessly to place researchers, doctors etc who had passed her young charges where they could through her hands in those early years. switch on electrics continue their education. There will be She was so proud of them. And a few Rewires and all household many who know that without her help years ago, when I happened to be at the electrical work this would not have been possible. Imperial War Museum for the Holocaust PHONE PAUL: 020 8200 3518 But I want to remember her as the Exhibition, something told me to pick Mobile: 0795 614 8566 uniquely kind and good listener who up a telephone receiver attached to the had time for us all. The front door to wall – there was her voice, so charming the house in Chaucer Road was never and warm, with all those memories of locked – we just entered and heard her 1939-41, talking about her work and Annely Juda high-pitched voice from the kitchen that of her colleagues in the Cambridge Fine Art or the nursery or the garden: ‘Come Refugees Committee. I won’t forget her. 23 Dering Street (off New Bond Street) in, I’ll be with you in a minute.’ Then Nor will so many others who had the Tel: 020 7629 7578 Fax: 020 7491 2139 she was there, followed by a dog or good luck to come under her care. two, with or without apron, chatting Susanne Medas (née Bernstein) CONTEMPORARY PAINTING away to make us feel at ease, cups of See letter by Susanne Medas on page 6 (Ed.). AND SCULPTURE

3 AJR JOURNAL august 2012 Seventy years on: The lost community of Polish Jews is remembered

hroughout mainland Europe, the they, together with approximately another of the departed, El Moleh Rachamim, summer of 1942 was scorching hot. 16,000 Jews, herded together from and Dr Tadeusz Bukowski, the priest TThe German army was fully stretched. surrounding villages, were forced into from Tarnow Cathedral and Director of In spite of this, in what has been termed ghettoes. Notices posted warned Poles the Diocesan Museum, recited prayers in ‘the fateful months of the summer of of certain death for themselves and their Polish. Together with another survivor, I 1942’, the Nazis put into effect the plan families if they hid or in any way helped a took part in laying flowers in honour of for the ‘Final Solution’. Jew. On 11 June 1942, the mass murders our families murdered there. A local elderly The Nazis created, specifically as started. Jews were murdered in the town Pole gave witness to how, as a young boy extermination factories, four new camps: square, 3,000 shot in the cemetery. In the playing with his friends in the woods, Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzec and Treblinka. nearby woods of Zbylitowska Gora, 7,000, he had witnessed the event when 800 In addition to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Europe mainly the elderly and the young, were children had been marched from the local already contained a web of concentration shot and buried in mass graves. A further Jewish orphanage and shot in the woods. camps. Croatia alone housed six of 10,000 were sent by train to the death This area is now enclosed and a memorial these. As ghettoes stone dedicated to and villages were these unnamed cleared, the camps children. were effectively On the Sunday, holding places as we travelled with a inmates waited their group organised by turn for the train ride Jonathan Webber to eternity. to the village of In Paris, a timely Brzostek. Professor warning by a sym- Webber, a social pathetic policeman anthropologist, saved my mother, my first travelled many sister and me from years ago to this the infamous round- town, from which ing up known as ‘la his grandfather had rafle’. Here 13,000 emigrated at the turn Jews, many of them of the last century. women and children The only apparent of Polish origin, spent evidence that Jews several days in a velo- had once lived drome in stifling heat there was a strip of without facilities be- Ceremony at Zbylitowska Gora: (from left) Adam Bartosz, Dr Tadeusz Bukowski, Professor uncultivated land at fore being sent to the Jonathan Webber the edge of a field camp at Gurs and then onwards to the camp of Belzec, the first to use stationary which locals identified as the ancient death camps. As I was a two-year-old, it gas chambers. It is currently estimated Jewish cemetery. Except for the fact that is unlikely I would have survived even the that about 450,000 Jews from that region the topography differed from the rest of long weekend without water. We were of Poland died in Belzec. By December the cultivated field, there was no evidence smuggled into Vichy, then still ostensibly 1942 Belzec had served its purpose: there of its being a cemetery. It was not walled not under Nazi command. For the major- were no Jews in that part of German- off; no tombstones remained. Determined ity of Jews trapped in Europe, there was occupied Poland left to gas. The camp to reclaim and re-dedicate this as Jewish nowhere to run. was dismantled, every trace of its purpose sacred ground, Webber located an old In the Treblinka death camp, over eliminated. Only one person survived this map. He contacted another descendant 800,000 Jews, mainly from Warsaw and camp to give witness to the terrible events of Brzostek and together they financed the Bialystok region, were murdered in which happened there. the work. Determined that the local less than a year. Conditions in the Warsaw For two decades and more Adam community should feel connected with Ghetto were so desperate that medics Bartosz has worked tirelessly not only to this project, he hired local contractors. The euthanised infants to spare them a long commemorate the terrible fate of this area was not to be walled in but enclosed drawn-out death from starvation. region’s Jews but to portray the lives with railings. When the contractor finished For my paternal family in Tarnow, they lived and their involvement with and the work, he reported to Jonathan that these months of 1942 witnessed the mass contribution to their local communities. several gravestones had reappeared murder of almost all the town’s Jews. In This June my husband and I joined the over night. In all, 55 gravestones of the 1939 Tarnow had a population of 56,000, commemorations organised each year by estimated 450 Jews buried in this cemetery of whom about 25,000 were Jews. A Bartosz. As every year, they commenced were returned by the local villagers. book by Adam Bartosz, the historian and in the woods. Here, surrounded by local On this summer’s day in 2012, we Director of the Regional Museum, states: cadets, schoolchildren and adults, as said prayers for the Jews buried in the ‘A significant part of them constituted the well as journalists and reporters, Bartosz cemetery as well for the 500 Jews of intellectual and cultural elite of Tarnow; spoke of the terrible events which took Brzostek who are not buried there but they were lawyers, physicians, musicians, place here exactly 70 years ago. Professor who were murdered by the Nazis. We were teachers, and industrialists ... The majority, Jonathan Webber, an orthodox Jew living accompanied by two elderly survivors of however, were among the poor.’ Soon in Poland though originally from London, the massacre in Brzostek. Now in their after the start of the German occupation, sang the traditional prayer for the soul 80s, they recounted their experiences on

4 AJR JOURNAL august 2012 the terrible day in August 1942 when the there that drove us on. only a handful of Jewish visitors, it was Nazis rounded up the Jews in the square It would be naive to ignore Poland’s local people who filled the seats at a and humiliated them before shooting record of anti-Semitism. Stories of play based on the testimony of the last them. The few who survived were hidden pogroms and the blood libel propagated commander of the Jewish uprising in by neighbours. by Catholic priests cannot just be swept Warsaw. At a concert in front of the bimah, We then travelled to the Catholic away. But the history of the Jews and the only relic remaining in the town of cemetery, where the son and daughter of their Catholic neighbours is a complex its many synagogues, again there was a Rivka Reiss dedicated a memorial stone to one, and not always negative. In Tarnow, full house of locals who clapped hands Maria Jalowiec, their mother’s neighbour documentation dating back to1667, enthusiastically in time with the Yiddish who hid Rivka and another Jewish girl for issued by the owner of Tarnow at that music. I sat next to a tiny lady beautifully two years right under the noses of the time, reiterates guarantees of freedom dressed in Roma costume, another of Germans camped on their farm. Maria’s given to the Jews by previous owners Tarnow’s population decimated by the grandson, Tadeusz, now an elderly man, dating back to 1582 and 1637. In 1906-11, Nazis. bore witness to how, as an eight-year- Dr Elijah Goldhammer, a Jewish attorney, In the woods of Zbylitowska Gora, a old boy, he smuggled food into the barn was the vice-mayor and a street named bishop stood alongside an orthodox Jew. for the two girls. His grandmother told after him remains. It is important to note In the Jewish and Catholic cemeteries of him the food was for the cows, but he that of all the names of the ‘Righteous Brzostek and the forest of Podzamcze understood the reason for the secrecy and among the Nations’ on the wall of Yad the Dean of the Parish, Fr Dr Jan Cebulak, kept it. When the Germans confiscated Vashem in Jerusalem, the names of Poles and the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Rabbi their house, Maria smuggled the girls who sheltered Jews are more numerous Michael Schudrich, stood side by side. out to a local priest who she knew was than those of any other country. In recent Jews recited their prayers, Catholics hiding Jews. He took them in, saying he times, Pope John Paul II, who, as a young theirs. In our tradition we placed stones might as well be shot for 16 Jews as the priest, is on record as having helped the in remembrance of the dead, Catholics 14 already hidden. These Poles deserve to Jews, did much to change the Church’s placed flowers. Two communities united be commemorated as Righteous among teachings, which historically had poisoned in remembrance of the horrific fate of the the Nations. relations between the two religions’ Jews of that area. After this we travelled to a local school, communities. The work of inter-faith Every nation has its thugs and hooligans where a magnificent lunch was put on educators like Bartosz and Webber has who express their self-hatred in acts of for us and we were welcomed by local done much to erode stereotype notions, hatred against an often unknown and dignitaries. Students from the creative which perpetuate fear, which in turn sometimes fictitious enemy. Sadly, anti- arts department put on an entertainment creates hatred. Semitic graffiti and desecration of graves based on their own work created in Throughout these commemorations, occur even here in England. But I can only memory of the Jewish people who had we walked openly as a group of Jews. hope that, thanks to the work of Bartosz lived and died in the area. We were greeted ­Nowhere did we encounter any evidence and Webber and people like them, the with Hebrew words and poems and songs of hostility. In every place we were Jews of Tarnow, Brzostek and Kolaczyce about vanished neighbours and a need for welcomed by the local mayor and local will lie undisturbed in their graves. tolerance. Professor Webber has initiated people walked with us. In Tarnow, with Joan Salter an annual prize for the work of the most creative student and last year’s winner put on a powerpoint presentation of his travels In memory of Yugoslav victims of the Holocaust to Greece paid for by the prize. This year ive members of the Child Survivors’ Stjepan Kolb, protested against the ruling five students were awarded scholarships, Association of Great Britain-AJR (CSA- that the corpses be buried without clothes, financed by an elderly survivor who had AJR), including one born in Croatia, and ensured that they were buried in a been hidden by a local farmer. F attended the annual conference of the respectful way. He kept meticulous records Then, the most gruelling event of the European Association of Jewish Survivors as to who was buried where. Looking day: in temperatures nearing 40 degrees of the Holocaust, hosted this year by the down on the rows of plaques with the Centigrade, we climbed up into the Jewish community in Zagreb on 1-3 June. names, ages and places of birth in the Podzamcze forest outside the town of On the Sunday we joined over 200 section where the infants are buried, it Kolaczyce. On another sweltering day on members from Jewish communities of the was impossible not to imagine the terrible 12 August 1942, 260 Jewish men, women former Yugoslavia for a commemoration suffering they had endured. and children were brought to this lonely service which is held each year on the first In total, just under 30,000 Croatian and place from Brzostek, Kolaczyce and the Sunday in June at the cemetery in Dakovo. 14,000 Bosnian Jews were murdered. Of nearby villages to be brutally murdered During the occupation there were six the 5,000 survivors of these communities, and then buried here in a mass grave. Then, concentration camps in Croatia, including the majority had escaped into the Italian as in forests all over Poland, the evidence one in Dakovo. Housed in a derelict mill Zone by the Dalmatian coast or over the was covered over. An unknown person at near the railway tracks, it was a camp for mountains into Italy. an unknown time had placed a stone there women and children, the bulk transported As we recited Kaddish in memory of marking the site of this mass grave. Now, from the Sephardi community in Sarajevo, the Yugoslav-Jewish victims, my thoughts in co-operation with the Gmina (district) which dated back to the sixteenth century went back to the summer of 1942 and of Kolaczyce, a new memorial has been after the expulsions from Spain. Dakovo the kindness of the unknown policeman created by the Brzostek Jewish Heritage was run by the Ustase, Croatian fascists, who saved me from a similar fate during Project funded by Professor Webber and and many of the women and children the ‘round-up’ in Paris. It is estimated other descendents of the Jews of this area. died under the cruellest conditions. In the that 1,500,000 children died during the It retains the old memorial stone but now six months the camp was in operation, Holocaust. We, the handful who survived covers the full extent of the mass grave. nearly 600 women and children, a fifth as children under occupation, owe it to Although a rough path into the forest of those interned, lost their lives there. those who did not to ensure they are not had been prepared, in the heat of the Uniquely, the bodies were not disposed of forgotten. afternoon the climb into the forest almost anonymously but buried individually in the Joan Salter defeated many of us. It was the need to local Jewish cemetery. The gravedigger, CSA-AJR pay homage to those so cruelly murdered

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experience with which to enrich his life. Eric Bourne, Milldale, Alstonefield, Derbyshire THERESIENSTADT ‘SHOWCASE’ Sir – In connection with Dorothea Shefer- Vanson’s recent ‘Letter from Israel’ about Theresienstadt, a great-aunt of mine, a The Editor reserves the right to shorten correspondence woman in her eighties whom we visited submitted for publication from time to time at the Jewish old age home in Nuremberg, was sent there along with all the other inmates. My mother said that that in itself summed up the Nazi regime’s bestiality: couldn’t they INTEGRATING INTO A NEW WORLD: ‘WE REMEMBER’ have waited for those old people to die THE REFUGEE COMMITTEES Sir – First, I would like to thank you for naturally – who has ever heard of people Sir – Thinking back to my own arrival in this your monthly magazine, which I always from a home for the elderly being sent to country via the Kindertransport in 1939, I read with great interest. a concentration camp? realise how important it must have been In the last month’s copy I read an article I well remember my great-aunt. When for many of us, including the older people about the book ‘We Remember’, written by I saw her last, in the early thirties, she who reached this country on domestic children of the Holocaust who miraculously was complaining of dizziness. She had to permits, to be taken under the wing of survived. I decided to order the book from share her room with another lady who their local Refugee Committees – or, in Amazon and just received it today and owned a cat, which annoyed her and some cases, Bloomsbury House, the head look forward to reading it. caused friction between them. Thinking office of the Jewish Refugees Committee My late parents were refugees. My of what happened to her and the others until its closure some years after the war. mother actually came over on one of the is mind-boggling. She obviously did not I was a member of staff at Bloomsbury Kindertransports, so it is a subject close survive the camp. House as I had no other means of income. to my heart. I had not heard of this book Then there was my father’s stepmother I worked under a Miss Ney in the Children’s before, so it is actually through your from Vienna who had owned a publishing Section and also under Stella Epstein, who organisation that I became aware of it office there. She had been a very active was a lovely, warm-hearted refugee from and thus was able to buy it. Thanks again. ­elderly lady, earning her living diligently. Austria, much older than myself. I was 23 (Mrs) Hannah Rabinowitz, Gateshead She was among those who took a risk by years old when I started there in 1947. availing herself of an opportunity to be sent Whenever I met fellow refugees I would HISTORY OF THE CBF to a rehabilitation place in ­Switzerland. ask them: How did you get to Britain? Sir – George Vulcan, in his interesting Several of the others in the camp were How old were you at the time? Who – as always – review in your July issue too scared to accept the offer, fearing they was responsible for you? The answers of Heroes of the Holocaust: Ordinary might be sent ‘east’, i.e. to an extermina- were at first confusing. Some of us came Britons Who Risked Their Lives to Make tion camp. Those who accepted were sent before the war, many after the war and a Difference, questions whether the to Engelberg, where my step-grandmother – amazingly – some even during the story of the CBF (Central British Fund for wrote her memoirs before passing away. war. It may be a generalisation, but the World Jewish Relief) has been written. Another survivor I knew was a lady younger children – say up to 11 years old It has: Men of ­Vision by the late Dr Amy who moved into a flat opposite ours in and safely living with foster parents or Zahl Gottlieb, was published in 1998 London at the end of the war. All survivors relatives – would not even have known (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) after many years of Theresienstadt spoke of the hunger and of the existence of a Refugee Committee of extensive research. constant fear they had to endure, yet it and its function. This is understandable. Joan Salter, London N10 was said to be the best of all the camps, But mention Bloomsbury House and a sort of showcase. memories come flooding back! The ‘LACKING FLEXIBILITY (Mrs) Margarete Stern, London NW3 youngsters who went to live in hostels AND TOLERANCE’ would have known of a member of the Sir – I really do worry about Peter Phillips. ANGESCHLOSSEN local committee who could make deci- He seems to see everything in terms of Sir – One morning in March 1938 we woke sions ­regarding pocket money, further black-and-white in a rather facile way, peacefully, only to find the street outside ­education or possible vocations, where to unable to understand that, even if you are packed with field guns and armoured cars, obtain clothing when they had outgrown fully assimilated into British society, you my school opposite (Gymnasium WIEN the wardrobe provided by their parents can still regard the country of your birth XIII) taken over by the Leibstandarte Adolf in the one suitcase or rucksack, and much as your Heimat – a lost Heimat maybe, but Hitler with fixed bayonets. If that was not more. still a Heimat. occupation, Mr Tait (Letters, July)...? No doubt the Regional Refugee Com- Like Peter Phillips, I speak English Hans Eirew, Manchester mittees, often staffed by volunteers, did without an accent, having come here at wonderful work in helping us to become the age of nine. I was, of course, educated DEPLORABLE CONDITION OF integrated into our new world. Let us here, served in the British army and spent WEISSENSEE CEMETERY celebrate their achievement by giving most of my professional life in the British Sir – Recently I took my partner on her first them credit! public service. This does not stop me visit to Berlin and took the opportunity to I would like to invite anyone whose from acknowledging my Berlin origins, visit the graves of my grandparents, who memory is still good to write to this feeling comfortable with that knowledge are buried in the Weissensee Cemetery. journal of their experiences – good, bad and experiencing every visit to Berlin Opened in 1880, Weissensee is not only or indifferent – so that we can compare as a homecoming. By being so didactic the most extensive inner-city burial ground notes over this very long distance of time. and lacking in flexibility and tolerance, in Berlin today, but also the largest Jewish Susanne Medas, London W10 Peter Phillips is missing out on a valuable cemetery in Europe in terms of area.

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However, we were both shocked at to children’s literature and Holocaust the state of the cemetery. It is severely education. Her father was associated with HOWICK HALL GARDENS overgrown and there appears to be no one my erstwhile primary school in Berlin, who cares or spends money to improve 13 Volksschule, renamed in his honour the condition of the graves. In 1926 there Alfred Kerr Grundschule. were 200 staff employed to look after the From 1932 to 1936 there were three extensive garden section. Jewish boys in the same class. Apart The cemetery is still used to this day. from myself, there was Felix Frankfurter, We are delighted to invite you to a day Would it be possible to start a fund, to now called Franks and an occasional out at the beautiful Howick Hall Gardens which I am quite willing to contribute, contributor to the Journal who lives in – home of Earl Grey, after whom the famous tea is named so that something is done about this London, and Walter Bloch, now living in deplorable situation? The few non-Jewish Encino, Los Angeles. We three survived on 5 August 2012 £15 pp including entrance fee workers there must have a rather poor and are in regular contact, including impression when they observe how we visiting each other. I have visited the school Refreshments (not included) available in Earl Grey Tea Room neglect our previous loved ones! twice and on one occasion gave a talk to Gordon G. Spencer, Barnet, Herts assembled children and teachers. For further details, please contact Rudi Leavor, Bradford Agnes Isaacs, AJR Scotland & DIFFERENT OPINIONS Newcastle Groups Co-ordinator, on 0755 1968 593 Sir – I refer to the letter from Rose Marie ‘STAMP COLLECTING FOR GROWN-UPS’ Whalley in your last publication and was Sir – Re Fred Jonas’s letter (July), Sir the Thames. Many Barclays bicycles go by very surprised to read that she cancelled Rowland Hill initiated the one penny – obviously a tremendous hit with many her subscription to your excellent maga- postage as part of postal reform in the people both young and old. zine. It just makes me wonder if she would United Kingdom in 1839-40. In May 1840 How true Dr Johnson’s adage that also cancel newspapers, magazines etc the first-ever postage stamp appeared ‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired because they were either so violently anti- – the famous Penny Black. Sir Rowland of life’! (Mrs) Meta Roseneil, Israel or so anti-Semitic or why she started lived in Hampstead, his stay in the area Buckhurst Hill, Essex reading a magazine which had a different marked by a plaque on the site of the Royal opinion from her. Perhaps she would like Free Hospital and a street leading to the THE AJR’S ‘MERCURY SULPHIDE’ GROUP to subscribe to the Iran Government so Hospital named after him. Sir – Michael Spiro, Professor of Chemistry that they can wipe Israel off the earth. Bernd Koschland, London NW4 at Imperial College London, who recently She rightly has her opinion and I have spoke to our St John’s Wood Group, asked mine, especially as I lived among the Arabs SOUP PLATES IN NORWICH me to send him programmes of all the for a considerable time. Sir – Five stoneware soup plates were groups. On seeing the programme for HGS In spite of all the controversies and recently left at the door of the Norwich (Hampstead Garden Suburb), he thought perhaps because of them, I do love your Congregation Synagogue. They are embel- it rather odd that there should be an AJR publication and am delighted to pay my lished with a Star of David and the word group named after Mercury sulphide – contribution whenever it is due. ‘fleishig’ (meat) below the star. So far, it is HgS! Hazel Beiny, Kitty Schafer, Toronto, Canada assumed that they belonged to a Norwich AJR Southern Region Outreach Co-ordinator Jewish boarding school during the war. Can NEW MEMBERS FOR AJR? anybody throw light on the provenance OUTING TO REGENTS PARK Sir – Thanks to the ‘Arab Spring’, which of the soup plates? Was there a Jewish OPEN AIR THEATRE was naively welcomed and helped by boarding school? If so, where? Any clue the West, any Jews left in these Middle gratefully received. Frank Bright, Ragtime Eastern countries should flee for their lives. Martlesham Heath, Ipswich The Musical Gratitude to the liberal West was shown Wednesday 15 August 2012 by fighters in Benghazi, the birthplace ‘TIRED OF LONDON, TIRED OF LIFE’ at 2.15 pm (finishes 5.00 pm) of the ‘Libyan Spring’, who attempted Sir – Midsummer 2012. At last a day of to assassinate the English consul, killing sunshine is forecast instead of the constant two of his bodyguards recently. Equally, rain, causing floods everywhere. At last the cold wind has turned into a light the rebels’ ‘humanity’ was proved by the book by Terrence McNally bandaged fingers of Saif Gaddafi, held by breeze. A day out in London is on the cards. music by Stephen Flaherty a group in Zintan, who is unlikely to have We’re off to see some art at the lyrics by Lynn Ahrens nails under the dressings. Courtauld Institute, where many wonderful based on the novel Ragtime The Muslim Brotherhood, in Egypt Impressionist painters are on view: Van by E. L. Doctorow and in several other countries, has gained Gogh, Manet, Gauguin, Renoir and more. Tragic, poignant and ultimately triumphant, A superb collection and our pleasure is Ragtime is a modern classic. Set at the turn of power under different names. Their the 20th century, this powerful musical unites ultimate aim is sharia everywhere and a compounded when we find drawings by three families separated by race and destiny. The Muslim world order. Some of the toppled Mantegna and Matisse on view as well. timeless contradictions of wealth and poverty, regimes were rather distasteful, but on Two hours pass by in great bliss and joy. freedom and prejudice, hope and despair, make balance preferable to the emerging ones. Then a short break for refreshments this a theatre experience not to be missed. Hopefully the internal squabbles will delay in the café before going out into the If, due to bad weather, the performance cannot the radicalisation of the Middle East. sunshine to a seat on the terrace above be completed, tickets will be exchanged for an the busy and bustling Embankment. From alternative performance. If you are unable Janos Fisher, Bushey Heath to make the alternative date arranged by the here one can see the river sparkling in the AJR, there is no time limit on exchanging your ALFRED KERR CONNECTION sunshine, the many boats travelling up tickets so long as you keep your original tickets. Sir – Mention of Alfred Kerr by Anthony and down filled with happy passengers No refunds will be given. Grenville in your July issue (‘The case of and the dome of St Paul’s in the distance. £18.00 per person Gerhart Hauptmann’) reminds me that The road below is teeming with people, For further details, please contact Kerr’s daughter Judith was appointed OBE holidaymakers from all over the world Susan Harrod on 020 8385 3070 or at [email protected] in the June 2012 Honours List for services enjoying a pleasant stroll by the side of

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The exhibition does tongue-in-cheek very well, even if the joke’s on us. Few REVIEWs can define art these days and real talent may pass unnoticed if it isn’t crazy A rt enough. Take Tracy Emin’s absurd From living memory to Upset scrawled on an ugly board and cultural memory Notes going for a cool £165,000! As she is now STIMMEN DER FLUCHT. a professor, Emin’s engraving of a cute ÖSTERREICHISCHE EMIGRATION NACH Gloria Tessler bird gets celebrity status, attracting a GROßBRITANNIEN AB 1938 frieze of red dots at a price of £275 each. (Refugee Voices: Austrian Emigration Even though most punters could have to Great Britain from 1938) by Anthony Grenville drawn it too. Vienna: Czernin Verlag, 2011, hardback he Royal Academy’s (RA) Sum- Some ideas are graphic, others are 264 pp., €24.90, mer Exhibition (to 12 August wild. Olu Shobowale has made a chair ISBN 978-3-7076-0395-8 2012), now entering its 244th T out of chicken bones. Michael Coombs’s olumes concerned with the year, is all about surprise. Inevitably, the Dyslexia is a jumble of books. There emigration of individuals due to quality is uneven as nearly 1,500 exhibits are painted clothes pegs by Annie Vthe so-called ‘seizure of power’ by vie for attention and are sometimes so Morris and numbered piano keys by National Socialists and its consequences, densely hung that they morph into a Stephen Farthing. Lucy Glendinning’s including the Anschluss, have not been sea of colour and shapes. RA members’ Feather Child is cringe-making but uncommon over the past few years. In Stimmen der Flucht, however, we have works hang beside those of unknown art- imaginative. David Mach’s Spike is a something slightly different, namely an ists – the egalitarian spirit has thankfully leopard made from coat-hangers and his account of the lives of a whole group Michaelangelo-style David piece – that of the Austrian Jews who left for from unlit matchstick heads. Britain in the 1930s and settled here. C. J. Lim’s sculpture has turned Official records are incomplete, but it is London into a Victorian sponge estimated that over 30,000 came, which, according to no less an authority than the cake. The London experience is Israelitische Kultusgemeinde in Vienna, further borne out in Adam Dant’s made Britain, along with the USA, the lithograph of the city’s trendy most important country of refuge for Jews Hoxton Square. But crossing the who fled Austria. To put it differently, of pond, Jock McFadyen’s Buffalo the 120,000 Viennese Jews who survived Grill has a colourful simplicity. The the Holocaust one quarter did so thanks to having been taken in by Great Britain. eponymous American eating-house The raw material that underpins is painted red with white windows this fascinating book forms part of and appears to be drowning in an Refugee Voices, the collection of in- apple green sea and sky, dreamily depth interviews conducted by two pleasing to the eye. Mick Moon’s scholars, Anthony Grenville and Bea mysterious Redwoods, tall sparse Lewkowicz, and others, with ex-refugees trees with the moon reflected in the from Central Europe between 2003 and 2008. Drs Grenville and Lewkowicz water, also has a sense of peace and need no introduction to readers of this tranquillity. Bernard Dunstan’s magazine, of course. Dr Grenville has Rehearsal gives a fluid sense of an used the 25 ‘Austrian’ interviews in the orchestra, emphasising the harpist. collection to form the basis of his account, Kenny Hunter Monument to a Mouse Courtesy of the which actually spans a much longer period artist © Studio Kenny Hunter The muted colours seem busy with sound. than the title would suggest, as it starts with the parents – even grandparents – of returned to the Royal Academy after a few Bill Jacklin’s Battery Park Under the interviewees and thus reaches back years of pandering to celebrities. the Tree has a colourful, smudgy feel, into the later 19th century, well before The show opens in vibrant colours recalling Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières. the break-up of the Hapsburg Empire. in the Wohl Central Hall – a homage to And James Fisher’s Migraine Weather Surprising as it may seem for such a Matisse’s The Red Studio. Here William conveys the blinding yellow of a headache. distinct group, their story had not been Bowyer’s Hammersmith Bridge comes to Anselm Kiefer’s Samson has political fully researched in its particularity: only a few separate topics had been addressed. life, while Eileen Cooper’s Duet shows a edge with a sign indicating Gaza below This was largely due to the fact that it girl with flying hair giving her foot to her a thickly impasto mountainous region. is not easy to access, as the post-war surprised boyfriend. One or two works The work is bisected by a long rifle sources – even AJR Information – mostly offer Olympic themes. marked ‘Samson’. More optimistic is do not differentiate between Austrians There are sadly few portraits but Alaleh Alamir’s upward tapering cypress and Germans. Nadia Hebson’s haunting painting of a tree. The scrupulous tracing of the backgrounds of the group and their lives dark-haired girl recalls Lucian Freud Often the best works are the exquisite in Vienna occupies roughly the first third and John Wragg’s witty character poised miniatures in the Small Weston Room. of the volume and is told through their on a chair against an orange and fuschia Sadly, this year they are replaced by a film recollections, their voices – Stimmen – background, Waiting to Know, is titillating. of a cello making hypnotic sounds. having pride of place. All bar one were

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born in the Austrian capital between 1912 for the promise of a career as a concert in the fourth part. and 1937 and together they represent a pianist. Her solitary game at the height I need to practice this more, I thought cross-section of that society. The account of the battle of playing the piano in the ... and I thought through each note. is thus no less than a social history of absence of an instrument probably saved Meanwhile, the bombing resumed, and Vienna, which by the close of the previous her life. I prayed.’ century had become one of the great The author is a distinguished Holocaust Thomas Ország-Land European Jewish metropolises. Grenville scholar. The title of her book refers to a Thomas Ország-Land is a poet and award- then goes on to chronicle their uprooting, scene she witnessed as a child, enacted winning foreign correspondent who writes flight and settlement in Britain, where they nightly along the banks of the River from London and his native Budapest. developed a particular mix of Continental Danube throughout the siege when the (Central European) and British culture Hungarian Nazis murdered thousands of and greatly enriched life in what came Jewish civilians. to be their adopted land. Their influence The Jews crammed into the vermin- Music in a wide range of fields is, thankfully, infested ghetto tenements of Budapest now being recognised. Their number is, escaped deportation to Auschwitz. Kindertransport ‘Singspiel’ however, fast diminishing; hence the direct Instead, they faced the constant threat LAST TRAIN TO TOMORROW link is being broken to the extraordinary of murder and worse – there was worse – Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, set of circumstances through which they meted out by the uniformed thugs of the 17 June 2012 lived in the country of their birth and that Hungarian Arrow Cross, the role models composed and conducted forced them into flight. In a word, living of the neo-Nazi rabble on the rise today by Carl Davis memory is being replaced by cultural in parts of Europe. memory and their story is moving into The imagination of the ghetto children directed by David Shirley, the realm of history. So it is all the more intensified as they played in an atmosphere text by Hiawyn Oram precious to have a chronicle of their lives approaching the state of collective hysteria he Hallé Orchestra and the Hallé and identities filtered through their own endured by their families. They acted out Children’s Choir performed – so was experience, as we do in this book. well-known dramas or invented new ones, Tit a concert? Six young actors on This is a scholarly account, but as it reflecting the cultural pursuits of their their first professional appearance took is also intended for the general reader community. part – so was it a play? The German word it does not include any methodological ‘Good morning, Ophelia,’ the ghetto ‘Singspiel’ comes to mind. discussion. It is highly readable. It is to be children no longer allowed to attend The distinguished composer and con­- hoped that the original English version school greeted each other in the morning, ductor Carl Davis, creator of extensive­ film of the manuscript will find a publisher so or ‘Good morning, Tristan,’ or ‘Good and television music, was fascinated with that this crucial contribution to the history morning, Rigoletto.’ And the person thus the story of the Kindertransport. When the of immigrants into twentieth-century addressed would meet the challenge by Hallé Society­ commissioned him to write Britain can be made easily accessible to stepping into the chosen theatrical role …. a piece featuring a ­children’s choir, he felt non-German speakers, which of course They played feverishly together throughout inspired to write a serious piece of music includes many of the descendants of the the day and rehearsed new scenes with words spoken by actors and sung by interviewees. Since interest in life histories alone in their minds late into the night. children, showing why it had been neces- has grown so much over the past decades, Some children managed to save lives sary for children to leave their country and it would also be welcomed by a wider through play by defusing potentially lethal their parents as well as the various stages public. situations, adds George Eisen of Nazareth of the journey and arrival in England. Marian Malet College of Rochester, New York. His study The world premiere of Last Train to Children and Play in the Holocaust: Games Tomorrow filled the second half of the Among the Shadows (Massachusetts performance, which was preceded by Games of survival University Press, 1988) cites instances ‘Vltava’ (its principal theme very similar to of children’s games staged to divert ‘Hatikva’), from Smetana’s patriotic cycle WHEN THE DANUBE RAN RED the attention of guards from activities Ma vlast (My Country – Czechoslovakia, by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth punishable by death, such as smuggling the origin of many of the ‘transported’ Syracuse University Press, 2010, food or participating in educational children), played by the orchestra. There hardcover 184 pp., $17.95, activities. followed the children’s choir singing the ISBN 9780815609803 Professor Eisen, another child survivor well-known piece ‘Brother, come and any child survivors of the Holo- of the Hungarian Holocaust, quotes dance with me’ from Humperdinck’s caust owed their lives to games a five-year-old girl engaged in serious opera Hansel and Gretel – also a story of Mthat enabled them to adjust to conversation with her doll: ‘Do not cry, children left to their own devices – and dangerous situations – sometimes even little one! When the Germans come to finally Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to control them – and to relieve tension grab you ... I will not leave you.’ to the Orchestra, brilliantly played by the in relative safety. The most poignant record of a survival orchestra and described by the actors. In a memoir reminiscent of Anne game I know is in Professor Ozsváth’s The main item made a tremendous Frank’s diary, Professor Zsuzsanna ­Ozsváth book. It describes the triumph of a terrified emotional impact, especially on the 40-plus of the University of Texas ­describes the role child over a nightmare at the height of AJR members from Leeds, Manchester and played by games in her own childhood the siege when she was confined to a Liverpool who were in the audience and victory over death during the Holocaust cupboard in an abandoned apartment, whom Carl Davis welcomed. For me, the in Hungary that ended in the 1944-5 exposed to bombing and machine-gun stars were the Hallé Children’s Choir. Fresh- Soviet siege of ­Budapest. The book is a fire. She recalls: ‘I decided to practice faced, immaculately dressed in red T-shirts, profoundly moving work of literary and the piano in my head ... and imagined I perfectly tutored, enjoying every minute, academic merit. was playing Beethoven’s F minor sonata, and very, very musical, they sang like angels. Her experience of the life-preserving op. 3, from the first measure to the last. Many of them went up to the microphone games of Jewish children is very close to Some passages went well, some didn‘t. to sing solos, duos and trios, cool as my own. Other accounts are turning up While my right hand’s fingers were really cucumbers and pitch-perfect. Delightful. elsewhere. singing in the second part, my left hand’s Marc Schatzberger She was then devotedly preparing fingers were too slow playing the triplets Reviews continued overleaf 

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reviews cont. from page 9 provided the finance for the creation of a 90-year-old philosopher-entrepreneur,  children’s settlement in Palestine, helped Emma Klein has left no stone unturned hundreds of his employees to emigrate in her attempt to uncover the man who DVD (paying them two years’ wages!), and was drawn to Jewish-Christian relations not only inspired the Kindertransport essentially as a result of the Holocaust. His A selfless and heroic man movement but supported the operation anguish that religious differences could financially. lead to so much evil led him to play his part THE STORY OF A FORGOTTEN HERO: He counted Albert Einstein, Martin in changing the course of Catholic-Jewish WILFRID ISRAEL, THE SAVIOR Buber and Chaim Weitzmann among relations, following the 1965 Nostra FROM BERLIN his friends, and a touching letter written Aetate, the papal doctrine which absolved directed by Yonatan Nir by Einstein, praising Wilfrid Israel’s Jews of the sin of killing Christ. In time, he copies (in English, German or Hebrew) commitment to saving lives, features turned his attention to the Muslim world, £12, including postage, obtainable in the film. Apparently he also tried to launching the Three Faiths Forum with the from Ophir Baer at [email protected] alert Neville Chamberlain to the plight Reverend Marcus Braybrooke and the late or from Ruth Barnett at of German Jewry. He worked in London Imam, Zaki Badawi. [email protected] as a consultant to Chatham House, Sigi was knighted in 1976 for services recently encountered the young Israeli formerly known as the Royal Institute to industry, made a papal knight by Pope filmmaker Yonatan Nir, whose last film, for International Affairs, and in 1943 he John Paul II in 1985, and in 1998 won IDolphin Boy, was aired on Channel 4 was sent by the Jewish Agency to Lisbon, the Templeton Prize for ‘affirming life’s and won many international awards. He where he managed to secure the safe spiritual dimension’. gave me a copy of the above DVD. Wilfrid passage of a number of Jewish refugees There is his notable achievement Israel was totally unknown to me, which who were stranded there and who still in gaining international recognition is extraordinary as he is credited with speak reverently of him. A saviour indeed! for wartime Swedish diplomat Raoul having provided the inspiration for the Yonatan Nir is well aware of the fact Wallenberg, who risked his life to save Kindertransports. A very wealthy Berlin that the story needs to be retold in the Jews from the Nazis, only to disappear into Jew, he was nonetheless self-effacing and context of what else was happening in the Soviet mists. Sigi helped facilitate the had the misfortune of flying from Lisbon Berlin, Amsterdam and London at the Vatican’s recognition of the State of Israel to London in 1943 in an English plane, only time and for this reason he has decided and ease the process of reconciliation. to be shot down over the Bay of Biscay. to make this DVD available only to This is one of several excellent chapters Although the DVD, which is 30 minutes individuals. Nir and his team are now in in Klein’s biography, illuminating the long and inspired by Naomi Shepherd’s the early production stages of a full-length way Sternberg silently works to achieve biography Wilfrid Israel: German Jewry’s documentary about Wilfrid Israel, with the harmony. Regrettably, she has also Secret Ambassador, almost certainly aim of telling his story more extensively. had to include so many accolades that gives him more credit than he deserves Nonetheless, this short DVD paints a are less interesting to the reader than – there were many other individuals compellingly vivid picture of a selfless and the fascinating insights into his actual and agencies involved in the creation of heroic man. character. the Kindertransports, in Germany, the Leslie Baruch Brent But there are several memorable Netherlands and Great Britain – his is touches. In Klein’s vivid portrayal of the certainly an astonishing story that deserves visit of Pope John Paul II to Rome’s Great to be more widely known. Biography of a philanthropist Synagogue, aided by Sigi, she has us Wilfrid Israel had inherited his ­family’s visualise the two thrones for the Pope SIR SIGMUND STERNBERG: vast department store in Berlin, employing and the Chief Rabbi of Rome flanked by THE KNIGHT WITH MANY HATS some 2,000 people, including about 700 12 cardinals in ermine robes and 12 rabbis by Emma Klein Jews. He was not by temperament a in white. businessman: he was far more inter­ested Vallentine Mitchell, 2012, 264 pp. Klein, who has authored another in art and in his twenties he made a world hardcover, £25, ISBN 9780853038351 book on the removal of the controversial tour that included the Far East, during the he name of Sir Sigmund Sternberg Carmelite convent from Auschwitz, here course of which he acquired hundreds of is to a large extent associated with provides further details on the attempts sculptures and other artefacts. He donated Tthe interfaith movement and his by some American Jews to force the nuns this priceless collection to the Kibbutz diplomatic skills have helped avert some out, nearly overturning the process of Hazorea, on the slopes of Mount Carmel, pretty unpleasant disasters between reconciliation that was beginning to bear which he had helped to found in 1936. Christian and Jew. fruit between the communities. Sigi’s calm Whilst the collection was not welcomed Like many refugees, Sigi, as he is diplomacy, we are told, achieved what by all kibbutzniks at a time when they affectionately known, had to tear up raw passions and political intervention had more pressing matters on their his comfortable, middle-class roots in could not. Interestingly, he reflects to his minds, it was decided to build a museum Hungary and escape to Britain as a biographer that ‘it would have been better for the collection, where hundreds of his teenager. He landed on his feet helping if they had left the nuns there. So much ­acquisitions are now gloriously ­displayed. his cousin, Solomon Schonfeld, future bad blood and so much energy have been Not a great deal of archival material founder of the Hasmonean and Jewish wasted.’ about Wilfrid Israel has survived but, secondary school movement and whom Emma Klein’s attempt to discover the with the aid of photographs, a few he asked to help rescue Jewish children human being within the philanthropist is documents, eyewitness interviews, and from Germany. Sigi knew poverty from best achieved in a chapter on the collapse archival material relating to the rise of his experience as an ‘enemy alien’ but of his first marriage to Ruth Schiff, a gentle the Nazis, Yonatan Nir and his colleagues soon saw an opening in the scrap metal and artistic woman who was perhaps not have created a fascinating picture of a man business and from there rose to become best suited to this restrained and highly who was driven by his determination to an entrepreneur in the metals industry. ambitious man. The author writes with save as many lives as possible. He saw the He discovered, however, that he was not great sensitivity of this period in Sigi’s life writing on the wall long before the great interested in business for business’s sake: and it is this chapter which, more than any majority of German Jews and decided to his true vocation was a career in charity other, delivers real insight into what made use his great wealth for the rescue of as and philanthropy. Sir Sigmund Sternberg the character he is. many people as possible. For example, he In her wide-ranging biography of the Gloria Tessler

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Return to the beautiful city

hen I left Vienna on 28 August heard the warden, who didn’t realise by the Jewish Welcome Service, which 1939 my feeling was one of I understood German, say something invited back former citizens who had left Whuge relief. The idea of return- viciously anti-Semitic to a fellow worker. during the Nazi regime. They arranged ing one day seemed out of the question. Suddenly my perspective changed and various activities for us. I took my elder But life is unpredictable and I did return memories flooded back. daughter mainly because I wanted her many times for different reasons. My next visit to Vienna was in 1988 to see the beautiful city and wander My first return was in 1977, leading with my husband, who had been invited down ‘memory lane’ with me. We visited a group of senior girls from the school there by a pharmaceutical company some obvious highlights. I fell in love where I was teaching. I was fortunate for which he was a consultant. This with the painter Klimt all over again and in having intelligent, motivated students was in luxury, staying at the Hilton and discovered the art and philosophy of an who responded to the preparations I being wined and dined at top places – Austrian painter called Hundertwasser. had organised for them. I asked an art a completely new experience for me. I showed my daughter some places teacher to talk to them about art in As my husband’s work was relevant of special significance for me, including Vienna and a history teacher about the the flat where my grandparents had history. I read various works about 20th- lived. The tenants invited us in with century Vienna which left me amazed at many apologies for its untidiness. But important developments in Vienna in there was now a fitted kitchen! It wasn’t the fields of art, literature, science and as I had remembered it. I didn’t need psychology. to look further – a memory had been The trip, sponsored by the Anglo- rubbed out. Austrian Society, was well organised It was interesting to meet other and much enjoyed by the students and members of the group. Few were from the colleagues I invited to join me. My the UK. Strange to think of this effect own feelings were very mixed – even of the Nazi regime. We were the lucky the map with street names was highly few who had survived and had mostly evocative. Was this really the square prospered. where, according to family legend, I The group was welcomed to the had, at the age of about three, been town hall by the mayor. A special visit in a buggy pushed by my father, who, was to the Austrian President’s private deep in conversation with a friend, apartments in the Hofburg which were The author in 1939 . . . hadn’t noticed I’d got out and somehow only open to the public one day a year. negotiated the traffic on my own? Was . . . and with President Heinz Fischer in 2010 All very beautiful – but more important this the glamorous shopping street was the welcome by the President, Heinz where, as a rare treat, we got fancy Fischer, whose address was warm and open sandwiches from an automat? The convincing. On the way to see him we park where my mother and I had often were told he was very philo-Semitic and met my grandmother turned out much had spent some time in a kibbutz, so he smaller than in my memory. qualified in my view. On a free afternoon, I visited the We were given time to wander around block of flats where my father and and chat to him. I surprised myself by his brothers had had their dental asking him to pose with me for a photo­ surgery next door to my grandparents’ graph. He agreed readily, put his arm flat and where we had spent many round me and joked about how long it evenings. As I was there, staring and took my daughter to take the snap. Life thinking, a tenant from upstairs asked can have some strange twists! me what I was doing. I told her. She to psychiatric illness we were taken to On another evening, we were taken asked my father’s and uncle’s names. the Steinhof, a famous mental hospital to a Heuriger in the Vienna Woods, Schatzberg, I told her. She said: ‘Oh I knew of as a child from the ditty where we drank the customary new wine yes, the Schatzbergs. Wonderful men!’ ‘Steinhof, Steinhof, die Toren auf, Die x and ate good Austrian food. Musicians­ At this, I burst into tears. She said: ‘Go kommt im Dauerlauf’ (Steinhof, Steinhof, played popular Austrian songs with some away, there’s nothing for you here!’ She open your gates, x is coming fast). Now, members of our party joining in. How meant it kindly: Don’t torture yourself! I learned it was a humane, progressive strange! Elderly former Austrian Jews I had to wear dark glasses for the rest institution where patients were treated lustily singing the songs of their youth of the afternoon. kindly, encouraged to wander in and of their oppressors. A part of me The visit was also an eye-opener to beautiful surroundings and worship in couldn’t help feeling nostalgic. me – we lived in a suburb and rarely a chapel designed by a famous architect, I suppose this sums up my feelings came into the centre so I had little idea Otto Wagner. about Vienna – a mixture of love for of its fine buildings and palaces, though Another highlight was a dinner at the beautiful city and horrific memories I knew their names. a palace on the Ring, where we were of 1938-9. Sometimes a tune, not The visit was very successful and was entertained by a glamorous female necessarily a classical one, grabs me by repeated the following year. This time, orchestra. the throat and brings tears to my eyes. we stayed in a youth hostel, where I My last visit was in 2010, sponsored Stella Curzon

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mother became their agent. What a spent in a town in the USA where the wonderfully entertaining morning! population was predominantly Jewish; he Hazel Beiny described how welcome he had felt in the community. In later years, he discovered Edinburgh ‘Music at its Best’ that his great-grandmother was Jewish, INSIDE Our get-together kindly hosted yet again but he ‘married out’, losing contact with by Francoise R, it was a delight to enjoy the family. a veritable symphony of our members’ Ceska Abrahams musical tastes: the foot-tapping Czardas, the AJR the light-hearted Lehar, the solemn Kol Bradford CF Nidre and the tinkling of Swan Lake Reminiscenses and Reminders were accompanied by a graceful ballet Enjoyable reminiscences and reminders, improvisation by Lili. A real treat for Joe e.g. the genuine welcome from ordinary Henderson and Margaret’s first visit to British people, the 1930s-60s, an official Combining Aspects of Scottish our group. letter from London advising on Continental Genius – the Falkirk Wheel Jonathan Kish travel in 1942! Scotland is well known for its Anna Greenwood picturesque scenery and the Scottish Essex (Westcliff) people for their talent for innovative Welcome to ‘Vestcliff’ Bromley CF A Lovely Day engineering. We set out to a destination Chairman Otto Deutsch welcomed out- Following a wonderful lunch at the home that somehow combines both these of-towners to what he charmingly called of Lianne Segal, an in-depth conversation aspects of Scottish genius: Falkirk. The ’Vestcliff’. He gave a fascinating historical on the trauma of the second generation scenery was somewhat marred, but not insight into Leigh-on-Sea, Southend, ensued. A lovely day had by all. obliterated, by the continuous rain, Thorpe Bay and Shrewburyness, with a Hazel Beiny with only occasional short flashes of chance for visitors to spot the landmarks sunshine. The engineering, on the other he mentioned from a dry coach window. hand, was most impressive. The gist Esther Rinkoff Edgware Distributing Charity Money of it is that two canals, the Forth and Julia Samuel of the Anglo-Jewish Society Clyde and the Union, are united at that Operatic Afternoon with spoke to us about her job – distributing place, although one is 35 metres higher Lavish Cream Tea monies from charities. Julia has to apply than the other and also at an angle to A party of 26, led by Esther and Hazel good judgement so as not to be tricked, it. Traditionally, to sail from one to the and comprising AJR members from even on a rare occasion by a dishonest other, one would need to construct and a wide number of groups, met at applicant. man some 12 locks. This spectacular the sumptuous Grim’s Dyke Hotel in Felix Winkler machine, the Wheel, does the job in Harrow Weald. We gathered in the four minutes. It takes four minutes to lovely gardens and, after nice chats Café Imperial Visitors Welcome lift a canal boat from the lower-level and photos, we were treated to an An impressive turnout and an overseas canal and deposit it in a canal 35 metres extensive tour of the hotel and its visitor, the daughter of one of our higher. At present, the construction is beautiful gardens – the former home members. We have visitors at this group there purely as a tourist attraction, but of W. S. Gilbert and where he wrote should you wish to join us! Subjects sometime in the future it will be useful some of his famous pieces. We then discussed: internment camps and past for conveying goods. partook of a lavish cream tea in the experiences. Our group, some 14 persons, had impressive Music Room, followed by a Hazel Beiny a splendid time on the boat and also wonderful live performance of songs at the Tourist Centre and restaurant. from Iolanthe, The Mikado, Ruddigore, Kent Unclear Future Thanks to Agnes and Anthea for the and The Pirates of Penzance. The Ten of us met for a most interesting and excellent way they looked after us. resident singers were of a high calibre lucid talk by Bank of England agent Phil Halina Moss and we loved their performance. The Eckersley about our present financial afternoon was hugely enjoyed by all of situation. The future remains unclear! Ilford Rescued Scrolls us. Leslie Sommer Inge Ball It was very worthwhile to hear again Evelyn Friedlander’s story of the Czech Welwyn GC Discussing every subject Oxford Easy Ways of Shoplifting Memorial Scrolls – over 1,500 Torah under the sun Retired Met police officer David Wass scrolls retrieved and saved from Nazi and A lovely afternoon spent at the home of showed us the many easy ways of Communist hands. It is gratifying to know Monica, where every subject under the sun shoplifting by customers as well as by that they are in service once more. was discussed. store staff. It’s the honest customers who Meta Roseneil Hazel Beiny lose! Pinner Jews and 20th-Century Anne Selinger Popular Music St John’s Wood Food for Thought Brian Nathan’s thoroughly researched Dr Michael Spiro told us about the Radlett ‘You Never Had It So Good’ presentation included the exceptional fascinating life and loves of Alfred Nobel, Myra Sampson, ably assisted by her contributions of Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, who never married. We all agreed it husband/projectionist, who showed George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, would make a wonderful film. Currently, evocative pictures of the era, spoke about Stephen Sondheim, Danny Kaye, Sophie there are 170 Jewish Nobel Prize-winners, the art, architecture, music and fashions Tucker and many more. Walter Weg representing 22 per cent of the total, of the 1950s. A pleasant variant to some whereas Jews represent only 1 quarter of of our more serious get-togethers. HGS The Wonderful Marx Brothers 1 per cent of the world’s population. Food Fritz Starer Die-hard Marx fans joined us to watch for thought. David Lang clips of some of the wonderful Marx Newcastle Brothers films. Warren Ashton was a Brighton & Hove Sarid Writing and Producing BBC Drama source of fascinating information on Spiritual Journey A most interesting account from the family background of the original Historian Mark Perry Nash took us on a Edinburgh-based David Neville on his BBC six brothers and how their dominating spiritual journey of his youth, which was Radio work, writing and producing drama.

12 AJR JOURNAL august 2012

august GROUP MEETINGS Meals-on-Wheels To order Meals-on-Wheels Kingston 1 Aug Lunchtime Social Get-together please telephone 020 8385 3075 (this number manned on Newcastle 5 Aug Outing to Howick Hall Gardens Wednesdays only) or 020 8385 3070 Sheffield 5 Aug ‘Our First Impressions of First Days at School’ Ilford 6 Aug 10th Anniversary Ealing 7 Aug Angela Schluter, ‘Jewish Mother, Nazi Father’ The AJR Paul Balint Centre St John’s Wood 8 Aug Alan Bilgora at Belsize Square Synagogue HGS 13 Aug Zoe Bermant, Director of Marketing at El Al 51 Belsize Square, London NW3 4HX Café Imperial 14 Aug Social Get-together Telephone 020 7431 2744 Essex (Westcliff) 14 Aug Angela Schluter, ‘Jewish Mother, Nazi Father’ Open Tuesdays and Thursdays Welwyn GC 14 Aug Social Get-together 9.30 am to 3.30 pm Radlett 15 Aug Shirley Jaffe: Poetry Reading Cambridge 16 Aug Wiener Library KT-AJR Surrey 19 Aug Coffee Morning Kindertransport special Brighton & Hove Sarid 20 Aug Discussion Group: ‘An Item of interest group Sentimentality’ Harrogate/York 20 Aug At the home of Rosl and Marc Schatzberger Tuesday 7 August 2012 Hendon 20 Aug David Lawson, ‘The Story of Eve Erben’ David Lawson Edgware 21 Aug Zoe Bermant, Director of Marketing at El Al ‘Eva Erben’s Journey’ Kent 21 Aug David Lawson, ‘The Story of Eve Erben’ please NOTE THAT LUNCH Wembley 22 Aug Social Get-together WILL BE SERVED AT 12.30 PM Oxford 23 Aug Annual Garden Party Reservations required Marlow 28 Aug Social Get-together Please telephone 020 7431 2744 Temple Fortune 28 Aug Jackie Waltz, ‘Dance Moves’ august Activities Book Club 29 Aug Social and Discussion Cheshire CF 30 Aug At home of Ben Brettler The Computer Club will be taken by Glasgow Book Club 30 Aug At home of Agnes Isaacs Lisa Gehrlein on Tuesday mornings North London 30 Aug 11th Anniversary Thur 2 Olympic theme – indoor games Exercise with Rosalie Tue 7 Exercise with Jackie Computer Club DAY TRIP ARTS AND EVENTS Thur 9 Exercise with Rosalie TO BRIGHTON DIARY Tue 14 Exercise with Jackie Thursday 9 August To 16 Sept 2012 World City: Refugee Computer Club Stories The stories of 9 individuals from Thur 16 Exercise with Rosalie Trip to Ralli Hall countries as diverse as Poland, Hungary, Tue 21 Exercise with Jackie Lunch and Social Club Czechoslovakia, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Chile Computer Club Three-course kosher meal and Cameroon who have come to London Thur 23 Exercise with Rosalie (salt beef and latkes) since the 1930s. Jewish Museum, London Tue 28 Exercise with Jackie Drive/walk along the sea/beach NW1, tel 020 7284 7384 Computer Club Depart AJR Head Office at Stanmore Fri 3 Aug Prof Peter Beck, ‘A “Test Case” Thur 30 Exercise with Rosalie at 9.30 am, back around 6.00 pm for the 1936 Berlin Olympics? The 1935 All activities begin at 10.30 am. Admission is £7 £10.00 per person England-Germany Football International­ to include lunch from 12.30 pm, or £2 for activity alone. There is a nominal charge of £3 for a carer For further details, please call at White Hart Lane’ Wiener Library, 1.00 accompanying a member for the day, including Lorna Moss on 020 8385 3070 pm. Admission free but please tel 020 7636 lunch. 7247 to reserve a space This trip is subsidised by a kind donor august Entertainment Mon 20 to Thur 23 Aug Seminar: ‘From Poland to Polo in Three Generations?’ Day Thur 2 Top Hat A Q&A session followed by tea and a chat 1 ‘Do Jews Make Their Own Identity or is Tue 7 KT LUNCH completed the afternoon. it Made for Us?’ Day 2 ‘Is “Britain” Good Thur 9 Frank Crocker Anthea Berg for the Jews?’ Day 3 ‘Identity Requires Tue 14 Margaret Opdahl An Other’ Day 4 ‘Looking Forward’ £15 Thur 16 Mike Mirandi Oxford River Boat Outing a session, £35 a day, £125 for the week. Tue 21 Paul Toshner What a wonderful time we had following Speakers include Dr Helen Fry, Trudy Gold, Thur 23 Ronnie Goldberg in the footsteps of Lewis Carroll. Judy Ironside, Clive Lawton. At London Tue 28 Rule Britannia with Jewish Cultural Centre, tel 020 8457 5000 We climbed aboard the comfortable Lynn Radnedge Serafina II and for the next couple Thur 30 Lynda Stryan of hours sat back and listened to the Cambridge Life of Jewish Refugees expert commentary of Mark Davies and in New Zealand enjoyed a delicious lunch. Mark pointed Dr Michael Spiro gave us a wonderful a talk on quilts and admired a design out scenes the author was only too account of his and his family’s life as based on the Underground Railroad, the familiar with in the company of Alice Jewish refugees in New Zealand, his route taken by slaves escaping from the Liddell, whom he immortalised in the schooling and subsequent studies in a southern states of the USA to the north. Alice novels. Alice was the daughter of country where Jewish refugees were a Frank Bright Henry Liddell, Dean of Christ Church. rarity. Keith Lawson A great day out, very relaxing and Glasgow Book Club A Good Read Norfolk A Feast in Norwich Meeting at the home of Eva Szirmai, interesting and a chance to catch up Another get-together in Norwich for a we discussed The Credit Draper by local with old friends. Janet Weston feast, courtesy of Myrna. We also had continued on page 16 

13 AJR JOURNAL august 2012

family announcements Deaths Munk, Ann, who was a longstanding member of the AJR, died on 4 July 2012. Following the overwhelming success of the Jubilee Street Party She will be sadly missed by her family AJR Day Centre is holding an and friends. INDOOR OLYMPIC GAMES STREET PARTY Pilchik, Herta (née Thorsch), born THURSDAY 16 AUGUST Angern, Austria 30 January 1920, died Indoor Activities/Games/Prizes London 3 July 2012. Deeply mourned Entertainer: Mike Mirandi by daughters Helene and Sonya, son-in- Please ring 020 7431 2744 and book your place – £7.00 (including lunch) law Maurice, grandchildren and great- grandchildren. AJR DAY CENTRE BOOK SWAP Come and Browse Through Our Selection of Books Pick a book and take it home – when you’ve read it bring it back and swap it for another one AJR and German-Jewish Studies Centre to hold Unwanted books? September seminar Rather than give your unwanted books to a Charity Shop, bring them along to the AJR Day Centre Book Swap Library The AJR is joining forces Clear out your book shelves! Please let us have any books that you have read with the Centre for German- Jewish Studies at Sussex University to hold a series of lectures, discussions and interviews at the London Complementary Therapy Centre Robert Schon Jewish Cultural Centre (LJCC) Tax Solicitor on 12-13 September. Member of Solicitors The two-day seminar will for the Elderly highlight the cultural legacy Refer to our website to choose a treatment I specialise in: of the Jewish German and Estate Planning Austrian refugees who fled Powers of Attorney and Nazism and celebrate their Deputyship applications remarkable contribution to Living wills life in Britain. Tax and non domicile issues If you wish to attend, please PillarCare including helping to bring complete the enclosed form Quality support and care at home undeclared offshore funds to and return it to the LJCC asap. the attention of HMRC  Hourly Care from 4 hours – 24 hours Tel 020 7267 5010  Live-In/Night Duty/Sleepover Care Email: [email protected]  Convalescent and Personal Health Care West Hill House, 6 Swains Lane, London N6 6QS Dr Anthony Grenville’s book  Compassionate and Affordable Service Jewish Refugees from Germany  and Austria in Britain, 1933- Professional, Qualified, Kind Care Staff 1970 has been reprinted. For  Registered with the CQC and UKHCA copies (paperback), write to Anthony Grenville at the AJR, Call us on Freephone 0800 028 4645 Home Care PILLARCARE Colvin enclosing cheque for £22.50 (incl. postage Care through quality and THE BUSINESS CENTRE · 36 GLOUCESTER AVENUE · LONDON NW1 7BB professionalism and packing) made out to the author. PHONE: 020 7482 2188 · FAX: 020 7900 2308 www.pillarcare.co.uk Celebrating our 25th Anniversary 25 years of experience in providing the highest standards of care in the comfort ADVERTISEMENT RATES LEO BAECK HOUSING of your own home ASSOCIATION FAMILY EVENTS CLARA NEHAB HOUSE First 15 words free of charge, RESIDENTIAL CARE HOME £2.00 per 5 words thereafter Small caring residential home with large attractive gardens close to local shops and public transport CLASSIFIED 25 single rooms with full en suite facilities £2.00 per 5 words 24 hour Permanent and Respite Care Entertainment & Activities provided BOX NUMBERS £3.00 extra Ground Floor Lounge and Dining Room 1 hour to 24 hours care Lift access to all floors. Registered through the National Care Standard Commission DISPLAY ADVERTS For further information please contact: Per single column inch 65mm £12.00 The Manager, Clara Nehab House Call our 24 hour tel 020 7794 9323 13-19 Leeside Crescent, London NW11 0DA COPY DATE 5 weeks prior to publication Telephone: 020 8455 2286 www.colvin-nursing.co.uk

14 AJR JOURNAL august 2012 Obituaries Erika Magda Chary, 8 February 1923 – 8 May 2012 rika Chary (née Weiner) was born salesperson. At 21 she he landed in Normandy. They married in Vienna to Ignaz Weiner and ­received formal ­lessons in November­ 1945 and built a house in E­Mariska Gonda. They lived at Blüten- and ­eventually earned ­Radlett, Hertfordshire. She taught music ­gasse 9 in the Third District. Erika ­attended her Associate of the at Radlett Preparatory School, gave private the Volksschule, Löwengasse, and the Royal College of Music,­ lessons, and performed both solo and in the Luithlen Lycée on the ­Tuchlauben. Her ­Licentiate of the Royal Fidelio Trio. In 1966 they emigrated to the mother taught her the piano and, as a Academy of Music, and United States, where Henry worked as an youngster, she performed at the Palais a Music Education Cer- aircraft engineer in California. Palffy in Vienna. At 15 she escaped Austria tificate from the University of London. Her Music was Chary’s life and her work via the Kindertransport, while her older teacher was the famous Viennese pianist flourished. She taught at the Marymount brother, Hans, emigrated to the USA. Her Edith Vogel. Grammar School and for 50 years taught parents were deported to Minsk, where In 1943 Erika met her future husband, hundreds of students in her private studio. they perished. Henry Heinz Chary, a fellow Kindertrans- She performed in Los Angeles and taught In London, Chary became a domestic port refugee from Vienna, at a piano recital master classes in Europe and China. help. To cure a congenital cataract, she in London. Having been labelled an ‘enemy As a member of the Music Teachers’ ­endured multiple surgeries to gain her ­alien’ by the British government, he had been Association of California and the European sight. Once, while practising piano at interned and deported to Canada; he was later Piano Teachers’ Association, she was a Bloomsbury House, King George VI hap- released and returned to enlist in the British figure of global renown. She established pened to visit and he stopped to listen army. That night he walked her home and, the International Young Artists’ Peninsula to her. During the war years she also while waiting in a bomb shelter during an Music Festival, a competition for classical worked as a cleaning woman, waitress and air raid, they fell in love. The next summer musicians of all instruments below the age of 25. Young musicians from around the world were selected by a committee of accomplished musicians to perform Frederick Leslie Kenett, 12 July 1924 – 2 May 2012 during a weekend at the Norris Center on riting in The Listener in 1966, the Acanthus series. the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The 30th and the publisher T. G. Rosenthal The recognition final festival was held in 2006. Wpronounced Fred Kenett ‘the Fred Kenett achieved Several prizes were established in greatest photographer of sculpture in was the product of a Erika’s name: the Erika Chary Senior the world’. Writing in the New Statesman deep intimacy with his Instrumentalist Award, by MTAC in 1963, the poet and art critic Geoffrey subject and, albeit an South Bay Branch; the Gonda-Weiner Grigson described Fred Kenett’s unconventional route, it Prize, awarded to the best pianist of the photographs in the folios of the Arcanthus was little surprise when International Beethoven Competition, History of Sculpture as ‘one of the finest in the mid-60s he ceased work as a Vienna (1994); and the Erika Chary Award, things in art publishing anywhere, ever’. photographer of sculpture to become by the Vienna University Conservatory Born in Berlin the son of a Jewish a sculptor himself. Not more than two (2009). Erika was awarded the MTAC doctor and a Catholic nurse, Manfred years after he had made the transition to South Bay Branch Distinguished Lifetime Cohn – later Frederick Leslie Kenett – sculpture, The Listener again wrote of him: Service to Music Award (2008), the Golden came to England from the Sudetenland ‘[T]here is a sense of ease and power one Order of Merit of Austria (1997), and The in 1938. During the war, he worked for usually finds only in work by senior and Honour Medal of Vienna (2008). In her the US Intelligence Corps and here he more illustrious names.’ At this time, his acceptance speech on receiving the medal, developed his interest in photography. work took centre stage on the front cover she said ‘I am naturally grateful for my When the war ended he studied at the of The Arts Review, which again praised the English citizenship and am just as proud Guildford Academy. ‘perfect form’ of his work. of my American citizenship … But now Fred Kenett pioneered a means Fred Kenett was a very private man. Vienna is again my homeland!’ Seventy of lighting sculpture for photography Nevertheless, he had met and come years after her escape from Vienna as a which attracted the interest of Delves to know artists such as Picasso and refugee, Chary’s hometown recognised Molesworth, Curator of Sculpture at the Henry Moore. He aroused the interest her as an ‘honoured citizen’. V&A, and, through the publisher George of leading London galleries and his Erika Chary is survived by Henry, her Rainbird, published the Arcanthus series. work was exhibited with much attention. loving husband of 66 years; niece Stephanie Praised as a ‘photographer of sculpture par Suddenly, against this backdrop, Fred Smith and her husband Lawrence Smith; excellence’, in 1960 he was commissioned did not stop sculpting but effectively did great-niece Alexandra; niece-in-law Diane to take colour photographs in Egypt of stop exhibiting. Despite and through Gilbert; great-nephew Gavin; and great- the Tutankhamun museum collection. He this almost self-imposed isolation, his niece Claire. worked with difficulty under surveillance work grew stronger. He was prolific in Robin C. Chiang and was at one point accused of damaging his output, despite the restrictions of an item until he proved his innocence using a studio flat in Kensington. That said, existing B&W photographs. The book’s from the 70s onwards, much of his work author, Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, remained uncast. Up to the very end he Fred Kenett did not intellectualise art. Chief Curator of the National Museum continued to sculpt. The Arts Review, Although he made it difficult for people to get of France, thanking George Rainbird, further commenting on his work, said to know him he was a man of great sensitivity said it was ‘his pulsating enthusiasm and ‘[W]hat we see – the way we see his work and humility. He was my neighbour and a determination’ to produce the book with is exactly as the artist intended.’ dear friend who is greatly missed. I hope the Kenett’s colour photographs that forced In Fred’s own words, art ‘is not a art world and those who come to be inspired her to write the book. Kenett also worked cleverness, not a shrewd stratagem. It is a by art can once more see and appreciate the with Mme Noblecourt on the B&W way of living, a mode of conduct. It is also beauty of this man’s work. photographs of the Egyptian collection in about questions leading to more questions.’ Chris Lanyon

15 AJR JOURNAL august 2012

Letter from Israel Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

Strange new world t is well over 20 years since our children get into the kitchen – or order pizza. Have I mentioned Skatepark? That’s were teenagers, and it was with some Naturally, the second option was the one another of Zikhron Ya’akov’s attractions. Itrepidation that my husband and I that was preferred, and so it continued No matter what the time of day or agreed to leave our comfortable home for most of the week. Nevertheless, in the night, or the state of the weather, the and spend a week in Zikhron Ya’akov course of the next few days I found myself asphalted area that has been set aside for attending to our three grandsons while doing more cooking than I had for years. skateboarding, with its hills and ridges their parents took a well-deserved break Teenage boys are perpetually hungry, and for the various acrobatics that youngsters abroad. don’t really seem to care much what they like to perform, is floodlit after dark. Of Like everywhere else in the civilised eat provided it’s there when they come course, it is situated on the other side world, Israel has undergone many home. They don’t actually mind too much of town, so that the enthusiastic young changes in the last two decades, and who provides it, either. skateboarder had to be taken there, and especially in the sphere of gadgetry. The We soon discovered that our main collected subsequently too. teenage ethos has also moved with the function while in Zikhron Ya’akov was to But all those journeys gave me a chance times, and seems to be preoccupied to ferry the various youngsters to and from to enjoy the sight of the Carmel Mountains an even greater extent than before with school (the youngest boy is only seven to the west and the Mediterranean Sea extra-mural activities. and attends a school quite far away from to the east. Not to mention the traffic So, armed with the various appurten­ home) as well as to and from their various roundabouts, which are a gorgeous sight ances that we thought would enable us after-school activities. There is a surfing in spring, with an abundance of cyclamen to cushion ourselves against the loss of club at the nearby kibbutz of Ma’agan and other wild flowers. The town is our home environment (laptops, books, Michael and the two older ones, aged 16 certainly well looked after, with greenery mobile phones, painting things, exercise and 12, are keen surfers. It did not matter and plantings that would do credit to any equipment, etc), we embarked on the that the weather was neither warm nor town in Western Europe. journey to another planet – the world of sunny. They donned their wet suits and off When the week came to an end and the the teenager that lay just one and a half we all went, to seek out the highest wave boys’ parents returned from their holiday hour’s drive away. and the whitest surf. The little one, for his we packed up the things we had brought Our daughter is a very hardworking part, would get into his football gear, the with us and had barely touched. Once back young woman and had not had time to royal blue kit of Zikhron Ya’akov’s youth home, however, we missed not having to prepare food in advance, so the first task squad, and race around the football pitch look after the youngsters any more. Now in hand was to roll up one’s sleeves and as earnestly as any young Wayne Rooney. we’re looking forward to the next time.

inside the ajr continued from page 13 novelist J. David Simons. It was generally Temple Fortune Jack the Ripper Wembley CF Volunteer from Vienna agreed to be a ‘good read’. As usual, ‘Conspiracy’ Besides discussions of the TV programme proceedings were rounded off by a Myra Sampson told us about the conspiracy ‘Strictly Kosher’, the beginnings of the AJR delightful tea thanks to Anthea, Agnes theory concerning Jack the Ripper. The and the AJR recipe book, we heard from and our hostess Eva. Halina Moss case has an impressive list of characters Julia Ringl, a 17-year-old from Vienna who which includes Prince ‘Eddy’ and Prime has been volunteering at the AJR Centre, Hendon Minister Lord Salisbury. David Lang at Head Office and at group meetings for Jews in Regency London several weeks. David Barnett provided us with a different Book Club French Society in 1939 Myrna Glass view of familiar locations. In 1775 London Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française was was Europe’s foremost shopping location commented on favourably mainly for its North London Second Meeting as tourists were attracted by the numerous fascinating depiction of French society Demanded small specialist shops and coffee rooms in 1939 and the turmoil caused by the David Barnett gave a most interesting lining the roads from Cheapside to Oxford German occupation. Next book: Alison talk on ‘Jewish Trade in Regency London’. Street and surrounding area. A riveting Light’s Mrs Woolf and the Servants. A subject well worth a second meeting. historical survey. Shirley Rodwell Gabriele Weil Herbert Haberberg

Published by the Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain, Jubilee House, Merrion Avenue, Stanmore, Middx HA7 4RL Telephone 020 8385 3070 Fax 020 8385 3080 e-mail [email protected] For the latest AJR news, including details of forthcoming events and information about our services, visit www.ajr.org.uk Printed by FBprinters LLP, 26 St Albans Lane, London NW11 7QB Tel: 020 8458 3220 Email: [email protected]

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