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VOLUME 18 NO.4 APRIL 2018 JOURNAL The Association of Jewish Refugees Poles apart in reality PRESERVING THE PAST For anyone interested in writing their memoirs or safeguarding their archives, the articles on pages 10 & 11 will make a very useful read. We also carry several interesting commentaries on living with and learning from the past, as well as a lovely account of a statuette reunited with its rightful owners. Thank you for all your letters, which include some lively contributions to our monthly debates. Please keep them coming. News & debate .................................................3 Will we ever learn? ............................................4 Living with the past ...........................................5 Letters to the editor ....................................6 & 7 Art Notes ...........................................................8 A story of hope & generosity ............................9 Recording your life story .................................10 Donating your archives ...................................11 Reviews ...........................................................12 Around the AJR ...............................................14 At your service: Communications ...................15 Letter from Israel .............................................16 Refugees by Josef Herman c. 1941 Looking for ......................................................17 In 1938 my father, Josef Herman, left Warsaw. Years later, he Obituaries ........................................................18 described the scene: “On the platform to see me off, besides my Adverts ............................................................19 mother and father, there were only two of my closest friends… Events & exhibitions ........................................20 First my mother, then my father, then my two friends somehow managed to get near my window. Even so, I am sure that they AJR Team Chief Executive Michael Newman did not hear my last good-bye. I did not hear theirs.” He never Finance Director David Kaye returned and never saw any of his family again. Heads of Department HR & Administration Karen Markham A few weeks ago, I went to Warsaw. A Warsaw since he fled eighty years ago. The Social Services Sue Kurlander Community & Volunteer Services Carol Hart painting of my father’s was to be shown at painting is called Refugees. It shows a Jewish The Zacheta, National Gallery of Art in the family fleeing for their lives and was one of AJR Journal centre of Warsaw, just a few minutes from his first paintings after arriving in Britain in Editor Jo Briggs Contributing Editor David Herman the Old Town. It was the first time a painting 1940. The day before the exhibition opened Secretarial/Advertisements Karin Pereira of his had been shown in a major museum in Continued on page 2 1 AJR Journal | April 2018 Poles apart in reality (cont.) kill their neighbours. Poles, he argued, took At the beginning of February, President everything from their Jewish neighbours, Duda approved a bill which outlaws blaming I went to POLIN, the Museum of the History from boots and pillows to their homes. Poland for Holocaust crimes committed by of Polish Jews which opened in 2013. It is Nazi Germany. This may seem reasonable a magnificent museum, dedicated to telling Gross was imprisoned in Poland for five enough. Who could argue that Nazi the thousand-year history of Jews in Poland. months during the antisemitic purges in concentration and death camps in Poland It does not pull its punches when it comes 1968, left with his parents in 1969, and should not be called “Polish camps”? They to covering the terrible Cossacks in the 17th now teaches in America. Since Neighbors were German camps on occupied Polish soil. century to the dark mid-20th century. he has published two further books on As the Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Polish antisemitism: Fear: Antisemitism in Bauer has written, “No serious organisation It bravely chronicles the history of Polish Poland After Auschwitz (2006), in which he or government will disagree with that antisemitism before and after the war. In examined Polish antisemitism after the war, position.” 1934 a Jewish professor at the University in particular the pogrom at Kielce in 1946, of Warsaw was murdered. In 1936 there and Golden Harvest (2011), co-written However, critics argue that the main purpose were more than 150 antisemitic incidents in with his wife, about how Poles looted and of this new law is to stifle debate about Poland and Jewish shops were boycotted. stole from Polish Jews during the war. This Polish atrocities against Jews. The Polish “Ghetto benches” were introduced in wholesale robbery, Gross makes clear, often government, wrote Bauer, is “threatening universities, separate seats for Jewish went hand in hand with violence as Jews freedom of speech, research and students, and the numerus clausus restricted were tortured to reveal where they had publication.” the number of Jewish students. It was hidden their ‘gold’ or were brutally killed by because of this mounting antisemitism that Polish lynch mobs before their belongings In addition to this new legislation there is my father left Warsaw, a year before the were taken and shared out. a growing atmosphere of antisemitism in Nazi invasion. Poland. In a recent article, Algemeiner wrote In 2011, in his book, Hunt for the Jews: on February 26, “Antisemitic images and The exhibition makes clear, however, that Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied cartoons continue to flood the Polish press”. this antisemitism continued after the Nazi Poland, another Polish historian, Jan occupation. From 1944 there were attacks Grabowski, alleged that in one area of rural What surprised me on my visit to Warsaw on Jews by Poles on trains and at railway Poland hundreds of Jews were betrayed and was that a number of young professional stations. Jewish shops were looted. There murdered in direct or indirect ways by their people I spoke to, liberal in every other were numerous pogroms, most famously at Polish neighbours. In an article published in respect, defended their government’s position Kielce in July 1946 when more than forty Ha’aretz in 2017 he told the interviewer that and argued that Poland was under attack Jews were killed. perhaps as many as 200,000 Polish Jews from the west on this issue. Once again, were killed by Poles. Polish Jews are talking of leaving for Israel, a There were further outbreaks of antisemitism fourth wave of emigrants since the war. in the mid-1950s and between 1956-60 This is the background to the current debates around 50,000 Jews left Poland. There about Poles and the Holocaust. For some I was deeply touched to see my father’s was another round of state-sponsored years historians have accused Poles of painting exhibited in the city of his birth. antisemitism in the Sixties and a further antisemitism, during and after the war. At But I am sorry to see the general lack of 13,000 Polish Jews left, mostly for Israel. first, the Polish government faced up to the recognition of a remarkable generation charges. In 2001 Poland’s president and prime of Polish Jewish refugee artists in their In 1985, the French documentary-maker, minister were among 3,000 people who homeland and, more worrying still, signs of Claude Lanzmann, released his masterpiece, attended the unveiling of a monument at the an increase in Polish antisemitism. Shoah, perhaps the greatest film made site of the massacre at Jedwabne. President about the Holocaust. Much of it was Kwasniewski issued an apology: “For this David Herman filmed in Poland and the most controversial crime, we should beg the souls of the dead scenes showed that antisemitism was still and their families for forgiveness. This is why alive among Polish Catholic peasants. This today, as a citizen and as president of the sparked huge controversy in Poland. Republic of Poland, I apologise.” RITA’S BOOK CLUB The issue has not gone away after the But President Duda, elected in 2015, takes fall of Communism. If anything, it has a very different view. He has gone on We are relocating from intensified in recent years. The charge by the offensive and the whole atmosphere Josephs Book Store to some Polish historians has been that not in Poland has changed. A recent poll The Bungalow at Clara Nehab House only were Polish villagers aware of the mass found that Poland has the highest rate of Come and join us for discussion, murder of Jews, but they even participated antisemitism in eastern Europe, with 42% refreshments and good company in it. In 2001 the Polish historian Jan T. saying that Jews have too much control over Gross published his book, Neighbors: The global affairs. In a very short time, Poland 2pm – 3.30pm Destruction of the Jewish Community in has criminalised questioning Polish culpability Wednesday 18th April 2018 Jedwabne, Poland. In 1941, writes Gross, in the Holocaust, restricted recovery of Any queries please speak to about half the men of Jedwabne’s Catholic Holocaust-era property and alleged that Karen Diamond community were involved in the massacre there were “Jewish perpetrators” of the [email protected] of their Jewish neighbours. They didn’t just Holocaust as well as Poles. 2 AJR Journal | April 2018 CROYDON CARED DEBATE OF THE MONTH Croydon in 1938 The AJR has recently been sent a report containing details of approximately 30 Kindertransport children who were educated in the London Borough of Chelsea players Charly Musonda, Eden Hazard and Ross Barkley helped launch the