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n C/ rnuL^cn Volume LVNo. 6 June 2000 I i £3 (to non-members) Don't miss... Fathers and sons Uncivil civil warriors Richard Grunberger p3 Studies of exile Edgar Feuchtwanger p4 country is more than a mere agglomeration even bleaker picture. This was a Mea She'arim street of people speaking the same language and scene at 10am on last month's Yom Hashoah: All Remembering occupying the same space; its inhabitants the traffic stopped dead. Most pedestrians around victims of the Shoah A Chief Rabbi are also bound together by a set of shared values. me also stood still in the sunshine in mute, sad Or Jonathan Sacks pl4 When agreement on what constitutes those core silence. But it was brief, incomplete and interrupted. values breaks down a society begins to drift Dozens of ultra-Orthodox men carried on with towards civil war. their business as usual... One strode through the Projection This happened in Stuart England where the King's halted traffic planting anti-Zionist leaflets on wind­ Jew's sins assertion of divine right clashed with the aspirations screens. Another ran up to a car flying a Star of can be of parliament. In France serial revolutions (1789, David from the roof, ripped it off, flung it to the Aritually 1830, 1848) didn't settle related issues; it was only ground and stamped on it'. (The Independent, 3 transferred to an with de Gaulle's triumph over Petain that the long- May 2000). expendable fowl. smouldering civil war touched off by the Dreyfus Thus did the haredim observe Holocaust Martyrs Even now, more Trial finally came, to an end. In Lincoln's day Ameri­ and Heroes Remembrance Day. They disrupted the paranoid tribes' cans fought a bloody civil war over slavery. A heartrending moment when the entire nation comes project their own century later the issue of Vietnam provoked a to a halt to focus its thoughts on the indescribable shortcomings on to (largely) bloodless civil war within the USA, in the sufferings of all Israel's next-of-kin; not content outgroups. course of which one side dissented so violently with which one also defiled the symbol of the state The 1930s from shared values that it took to burning the which protects them and guarantees their rights. catchphrase 'It's all national flag. What distinguishes those uncivil warriors from the the fault of Jews' - However radicalised those flag burners were, it mad mullahs of Teheran is not their mindset, but with the jokey would not have occurred to them to vandalise the fact that they have little access to the levers of addendum and the Washington's Arlington cemetery, the country's state power. Besides which haredim 'only' want to cyclists' - has lately memorial to its war dead. That type of gut­ impose their way of life on co-religionists, whereas been updated to wrenching desecration was left to our homegrown Islamic fundamentalism dreams of spreading the 'It's all the fault of anarchists, who on May Day defaced the Cenotaph 'true faith' by force across the entire globe D the Jews and gays'. and the statue of Churchill on In the Russian Parliament Square. (Fortunately presidential the bronze of the statue proved elections the as resistant to aerosol spray Liberal candidate damage as Churchill's reputation Yavlinsky was did to the mudslinging of the re­ dubbed a creature visionists Charmley and Alan of the Jews and Clark.) What the anarcho-yobs homosexuals'. in their delusion-fuelled frenzy Louis Farrakhan chose to overlook was that if it targets the same hadn't been for Churchill each two groups. Robert of them would have been born Mugabe sees the with the Nazi jackboot on their Blair cabinet as necks. dominated by an Modern Britain is, alas, not the epicene' - in place only society whose extremists of Old Labour's feel a spiritually justified need for 'niilitant' - desecrating national symbols. If tendency'; his Jews London outdoes Washington in are, of course, the the ignominy heaped on its war Survivors light memorial candles to the six million victims of the Shoah during commemoration ceremonies held in central London. (See page 16) Whites D dead, Jerusalem presents an AJR INFORMATION JUNE 2000 her only surviving relative - an aunt mar­ Profile ried to a Christian - and to "see what it was like." On entering the local super­ Diminutive market in Beuel, she was recognised instantly, but met the defensive attitude action-woman familiar to visiting and returning Jews. argot Barnard, nee Kober, was Living in Germany with her British family born in 1919 in the Rhineland in the late 1950s, Margot became con­ M town of Beuel. Her action-packed vinced that Nazis had not disappeared life can be said to be in inverse overnight. proportion to her size - she is 4'11"! After her husband's untimely death in Margot was a founder member of the 1964, Margot began making contact with Bonn left-wing Zionist Youth Movement German youngsters, travelling to Ger­ Hashomer Hatzair. Faced with her parents' many to talk to them about the Holocaust disapproval of her Zionist activities, she and from 1983 her visits were put on aO ran away from home at the age of 14 to official footing. Now Margot visits Bonn live with an uncle in Hamburg. Her at least three times a year to speak to Margot Barnard parents eventually supported her appli­ schools, universities and inter-faith or­ cation for Jugend Aliyah and, at just three BBC Radio Palestine comedy programme. ganisations. Her work also takes her to days notice, she emigrated to Palestine in Despite having pacifist convictions, in Israel and to France. 1936, knowing she would never see her 1942 she joined the Women's Auxiliary Passionate about the importance of parents again. They were deported in Air Force and was stationed in the Egyp­ what she is doing, Margot, an AJR mem­ 1942 and did not survive. tian desert. ber, feels that those with a life story like Margot arrived in Palestine on the Margot and Ted arrived in England as hers must look forward and use those ex­ notorious Patria and started her new life war ended May 1945. After the birth of periences for the benefit of future working in the fields of Kibbutz Beth their first son they quit military life for a generations. "It is important to tell the Sera, later moving to Haifa in a vain while to entertain theatre audiences, but young people of Germany that they are attempt to obtain immigration certificates he signed on once again and the family not to blame for the Holocaust, but that for her parents. In 1941 she moved to was posted to Gibraltar, Nigeria and - in they must be on their guard to prevent it Jerusalem where she met her husband to 1955 - to northern Germany. In prepara­ recurring", she asserts. be, Ted, a British soldier with his own tion, Margot first returned alone to visit D Marion Koebner THOSE f^"*"' Holocaust Exhibition ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING of the opening at Imperial ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH REFUGEES War Museum will be held on ritain's first permanent Holocaust SUNDAY 25 June 2000 Museum opens this month in a 3 pm at 15 Cleve Road, London NW6 specially created wing of the B Agenda:- Imperial War Museum. Video-taped Annual Report 1999 testimony of Holocaust survivors in each Hon.Treasurer's Report section of the exhibition, as well as black Discussion and white newsreel footage, brings to life Gina Tessler, who lived in Prague, recalling how she Election of Committee of Managemenf^ the exhibits and explanatory commen­ obtained refuge in Britain. taries which chart the rise of National Guest speaker: Socialism and the fate of Jews (and other wanting to leave Nazi-occupied coun­ Dr Elisabeth Maxwell victims) in Hitler's Germany. tries). Liberation and the subsequent war * No person other than a committee member retiring by rotation sho// be elected or re-elected " The social and economic exclusion of crimes tribunals end the sequence. committee member at any general meeting Germany's Jews from 1933 onwards, the The exhibition will be a magnet for unless:- Nazi propaganda machine, the difficulties schools; interactive screens referring to {a) he or she is recommended by the Committee of Management, or of emigration/immigration in the late the different sections of the exhibition (b) not less than twenty one clear dap before the 1930s (the Evian conference. Kinder- are available at the end of the Holocaust date appointed for the meeting, notice executed transport), outbreak of war, ghettoisation, journey' for those who wish to deepen by ten members qualified to vote at the meeting has been given to the Association of the intenoon deportations and the camps all form indi­ their knowledge of the events between to propose ^at person for election or re-electjor^ vidual sections in a carefully constructed I933-I945. As well as being a strong edu­ together with notice executed by that person of story. Some space is devoted to aspects cational tool, the exhibition also serves as his or her willingness to be elected or re-elected. of resistance (escape, fighting with the a tribute and memorial to the millions of Management Committee Election partisans) and rescue (hiding Jews, diplo­ victims of National Socialism. mats using their powers to assist Jews D Marion Koebner Nomination received: Katherine Klinger A)R INFORMATION JUNE 2000 at the end of the war (and later became Fathers and sons Secretary of the Second, or Socialist, In­ ternational). NEWTONS ew people, I imagine, remember the Postwar Austria was a small country, Leading Hampstead Solicitors novel Strike the Father Dead by which young men with ambition left for FJohn Wain, sometime Professor of Germany.

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