Fflfl Journal ^^^^1 L^L^L ^ Association of Jewish Refugees
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VOLUME 8 NO. 10 OCTOBER 2008 fflfl journal ^^^^1 l^l^l ^ Association of Jewish Refugees Wartime heroines and celluloid heroines es Femmes de I'ombre, the original Harbours were conceived and constructed French title of the film Female in Britain; credit for this extraordinary feat Agents currently showing in of engineering inventiveness must go to the L London, invites comparison with British. It is true that an American naval Jean-Paul Melville's 1969 classic L'Armee officer, Edward Ellsberg, played a key part des ombres (Army of Shadows), one of the in ensuring that the Phoenixes functioned finest films about the French Resistance, properly, but he was operating under with a superb performance by Lino Ventura British command and was effectively as the principal character and a supporting ignored by his countrymen. Indeed, so cast including Simone Signoret and Jean- careless were the Americans of the Pierre Cassel. But where Melville's film is a Mulberry Harbour that serviced their gripping, realistic portrayal of the beaches that they allowed it to sink in the underground struggle of the Resistance great storm of 19 June 1944, only days after against the Gestapo and its accomplices, it had been set up. The harbour on the Female Agents is an implausible piece of British beaches continued to function for hokum in which a team of suitably gorgeous eight months, and four million tons of Frenchwomen is recruited in Britain by the supplies, 500,000 vehicles and over 2.5 Special Operations Executive (SOE) to carry million men landed through it. out a mission in France on which the success The real stories of SOE's female of the D-Day landings may depend. operatives are in any case more dramatic, Actually, the film reminded me of the more heroic and more heartrending than the Hollywood war movie The Dirty Dozen lip-gloss theatricals of Female Agents. One (1967, with Lee Marvin), a rousing piece of of the most moving is that of Noor Inayat box-office escapism in which a team of Khan (Nora Baker), bom in Russia of Indian Odette Hallowes, G.C. suitably villainous American soldier- Muslim princely descent in 1914 and convicts is recruited in Britain to carry out French films and documentaries. The female educated in France, who was parachuted a mission on which etc etc. agents in this film, though SOE operatives into France in June 1943 as a wireless Female Agents struck me as an example and therefore under British command, are operator and was captured by the Germans. of the reluctance of the French to improbably transported to France from a US When the head of F (for France) Section of acknowledge properly the vital contribution Air Force base on an American plane, not SOE, Vera Atkins, went to Europe after the made by British forces to the liberation of on the usual RAF Lysander. The film's plot war to search for her missing agents, she France. Like other nations, the French prefer revolves around the Mulberry Harbours, the assumed that Noor had shared the fate of to dwell on the heroic role of their own floating harbours that were towed across the Diana Rowden, Vera Leigh and Andree forces, the Free French and the Resistance, Channel to the Normandy beachheads, Borel, agents who after their capture were and they freely recognise the part played where they were used to land the supplies taken to Natzweiler concentration camp in by the Americans in 1944 - there's no shame without which the soldiers could not fight. Alsace, where they were drugged and in being liberated by a transatlantic The name Mulberry Harbour is never shoved, still alive, into a furnace. Only later superpower. But the contrast between the mentioned in the film, though it is obvious did Atkins discover that Noor had survived, humiliated France which was defeated in to anyone familiar with the D-Day landings revealing nothing to her captors, until 1940 and occupied until 1944 and the what the mysterious constructions are. September 1944, when she was taken to victorious Britain which defied Hitler in 1940 Instead, the film refers to 'Phoenixes', the Dachau concentration camp and murdered. and liberated much of North-Western name for the harbours' concrete caissons, The heroic stories of the women agents Europe in 1944-45 is evidently too much for which it claims to have been constructed by of SOE make compelling reading. The most Gallic pride to bear. Americans for the 'American invasion'. But famous was Odette Hallowes (Odette So the British contribution to the as the naval side of the D-Day landings was Churchill), a Frenchwoman married to an Normandy campaign is often minimised in a British responsibility, the two Mulberry continued overleaf AJRJOURNAL OCTOBER 2008 German-Jewish refugees on the BBC 70th Anniversary of ugust 2008 saw two notable members sought urgently to emigrate. the Kindertransport commemorations by the BBC of the Jerry Springer's parents obtained a German-Jewish refugee experience. British visa thanks to a lady who was willing On 21 November 1938 the AOn 27 August, BBC TV devoted a to act as guarantor for them, and arrived in British Parliament made a historic programme in the series 'Who Do You Britain shortly before war broke out. As the decision to allow 10,000 children Think You Are?' to Jerry Springer, bom in programme shows very movingly, the older from Europe entry into the UK. North-West London in 1944 to Jewish generation of the grandparents were unable This decision saved their lives. parents who had fled to Britain from Berlin to emigrate and were left defenceless to face Join the Kinder, 70 years on, to in 1939. The family stayed in London for their fate under the Nazis. Springer's celebrate this unique event ten years before emigrating to the USA. parents, however, were happy in England, Sunday 23 November 2008 As readers who have seen the finding life in Hampstead Garden Suburb JFS School Harrow 10 am - 5 pm programme will know, I made a brief congenial despite the bombing and the in the presence of appearance in it, as the AJR's historical hazards of war. It was only fear of a third The Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks world war empting in Europe that drove expert on the Jewish refugees who settled and them to re-emigrate to the USA; otherwise in Britain after 1933. I filmed with Jerry The Minister for Home Affairs Jerry Springer would have grown up a good Springer for about two hours last autumn The Right Honourable Hampstead Garden Suburb boy. in Golders Hill Park, trying to recreate his Tony McNulty MP family's experiences in London and to relate From Monday 18 August to Friday 22 their story to the general history of the August, Week 5 of BBC Radio 4's 'Writing The keynote address will be given refugees from Hitler in Britain. As the the Century' dramatised two sets of letters, by the eminent historian excellent director of the programme. Sue one of which was the correspondence Sir Martin Gilbert on 'The British Hills, effectively let me interview Jerry between the young Marianne Josephy, a Government, the British People Springer, I found it a nerve-wracking but Jewish girl bom in Rostock in 1923 who had and the Kinder rewarding experience. come to Britain on a Kindertransport in Sir Martin recently visited Lady The Springers were classic German- 1939, and her parents back in Germany. The Thatcher to discuss her recollections Jewish refugees. Originally from what is letters were taken from the collection of the Jewish girl to whom she and now Poland, the family had settled in Berlin, published by Marianne Elsley (the married her family gave a home in 1939. where Jerry Springer's father ran his own Marianne Josephy), Voices in the Night: Other highlights of the day include: business. Though conscious of their Jewish Letters from My Parents: 1939-44 An interview by Edwina Curry origins, they had assimilated culturally and (Deddington, Oxon: The Old House Press, with the founder of the occupationally into the German middle class 1995), and are deeply moving. Franz and Kindertransport Reunion and were probably largely indistinguishable Edith Josephy remained in Berlin until 1943, Bertha Leverton OBE from their gentile environment. They stayed when they were sent to Theresienstadt; they 'Question Time' in Germany after 1933 but, with the were deported to Auschwitz on 28 October with a panel of Kinder! intensification of anti-Semitic measures by 1944. I am pleased to say that I the Nazis after the Kristallnacht pogrom of recommended the letters to the BBC. A Klezmer Concert November 1938, the younger family Anthony Grenville by the amazing Jewish music quartet SHIR WARTIME flEROINES continued from page I Tickets, including lunch, £70 from Andrea Goodmaker Englishman, who worked as a wireless Pearl Witherington, another apparently on 020 8385 3070 operator with Captain Peter Churchill, was ordinary woman from an Anglo-French Closing date for applications arrested near Annecy in April 1943, background who proved capable of to attend: 1 November withstood Gestapo torture and survived remarkable courage and initiative, died only Kinder, their next generations Ravensbruck concentration camp; her story last year. Parachuted into France in 1943 as and families, come and celebrate was told in the film Odette (1950, with Anna a courier aged 27, she took charge of a this special occasion, probably Neagle). The exploits of Violette Szabo, bom thousand Maquisards when her organiser for the last time! in Paris to a British father, who was twice was captured in May 1944, cutting railway sent on missions to France in 1944 at the lines to assist the D-Day landings and age of 23 and helped organise and lead inflicting losses on the Germans that AJR Directors French resistance networks, were com exceeded 1,000 dead.