VOLUME 19 NO.10 OCTOBER 2019 JOURNAL The Association of Jewish Refugees

Where Are They SHANA TOVAH We start October in the middle of the high holy days and with our Now? wishes that all our readers have a very happy and healthy new year. Where did Jewish refugees come from and where did they settle in The next few weeks are very busy Britain? This may seem obvious but in fact is a little complicated. for us and we particularly ask you to mark your diaries for the annual Kristallnacht commemorations early next month.

In the meantime we hope you find our October magazine interesting and, as always, we welcome any feedback.

News...... 3 Gift for a lifetime...... 4 Letter from Israel...... 5 Letters to the Editor...... 6-7 Art Notes...... 8 Leopoldstadt on stage...... 9 A story of survival...... 10-11 Roma victims and review...... 12-13 Looking for...... 14 From Trotsky to Chagall...... 15 The Great Court surrounding the Reading Room at the British Museum where several of the Jewish refugees liked to work (copyright VisitLondon) Around the AJR...... 16-17 Obituaries...... 18 It is obvious because we all know series, Rise of the Nazis, in September? Transit on screen...... 19 that most Jewish refugees came from There was surprisingly little archive film. Events and exhibitions...... 20 German-speaking central Europe to Most of the programmes consisted of Britain. Of course, there were many interviews, the best being interviews Italians and even more from east with leading historians, and beautifully Please note that the views expressed Europe: Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia filmed dramatised sequences. But the throughout this publication are not and the Soviet Union, especially if we archive film was particularly interesting. necessarily the views of the AJR. include those who fled from the Russian There was one sequence just before Revolution after 1917, others who the 1932 election in Germany. The clip AJR Team left Hungary after 1956 and Poland was chosen to show the middle German Chief Executive Michael Newman after the war and then after successive heartland that Hitler claimed to speak Finance Director David Kaye waves of antisemitism, especially in for: rural, Aryan, mostly women and Heads of Department Community & Volunteer Services Carol Hart 1968. These east European and Soviet children. What was interesting, though, HR & Administration Karen Markham refugees are often treated as a marginal was who was missing: Jews, of course, Educational Grants & Projects Alex Maws part of the story, even in the histories Communists, intellectuals, and, above Social Work Nicole Valens of these countries, but they were all, people from big cities. AJR Journal important. Editor Jo Briggs The point is that most Jewish refugees Editorial Assistant Lilian Levy So, what is the complication? Did you came from cities. Of course, the Contributing Editor David Herman Secretarial/Advertisements Karin Pereira happen to see the BBC2 documentary Continued on page 2

1 AJR Journal | October 2019

Where are they now? by a Jewish refugee fund, worked on his he would play chess with visitors like masterpiece, The Civilising Process and George Steiner and Julian Barnes. (cont.) where Paul Hirsch donated his collection Jewish population throughout Europe of almost twenty thousand volumes on Helen Lewis, a Czech who was sent was largely urban, many working as music in 1946. Stefan Zweig worked to Terezin and Auschwitz, founded lawyers, doctors, university teachers regularly in the famous British Museum the Belfast Modern Dance Group. The and businessmen. They didn’t just come Reading Room when he first arrived in Dundee University Archives are now from cities but, crucially, from very Britain in 1933 and it was where Emeric home to more than 100,000 prints particular neighbourhoods in Berlin, Pressburger did the research for the and negatives of the great Jewish Vienna, Budapest and Prague. famous duel in the film, The Life and Hungarian photographer, Michael Peto, Death of Colonel Blimp. Just round after his son settled there. The great When they fled from Germany and the corner is Birkbeck, where Pevsner medieval historian, Walter Ullmann, Austria many initially settled in was professor of the History of Art and taught history and modern languages other large cities, including Prague, EJ Hobsbawm taught for more than at Ratcliffe College, Leicester, before he Amsterdam (like Anne Frank’s family) thirty years. moved to Cambridge where he spent and Paris (like Judith Kerr’s family), and the rest of his life. Kurt Hahn, a German then when they came to Britain, they At UCL on Gower Street, Hugh Blaschko refugee, founded Gordonstoun School came to London, Glasgow, Manchester, and Sir Bernard Katz both worked in in Scotland in 1934. Its alumni included Liverpool and university towns such as AV Hill’s lab, Armando Momigliano, Prince Philip (who loved his time there) Oxford, Cambridge and Bristol. was professor of Ancient History from and Prince Charles (who didn’t, as 1951-75, the poet Michael Hamburger viewers of The Crown may recall). My own family was typical. My was assistant lecturer in German in the maternal grandmother and her 1950s and the great Chimen Abramsky, In almost every part of Britain refugees two children were from west Berlin antiquarian bookseller and scholar, from Nazism found sanctuary and made and came to Oxford, where my was reader in Jewish history and later their mark. The AJR has placed blue grandmother lived for the rest of her head of the department of Hebrew and plaques of remembrance from Kitchener life. My uncle, a psychologist, worked Jewish Studies. Camp in Sandwich, Kent, in the south, at various hospitals in London, my to Whitehaven, in Cumbria, and north mother was a GP in London and later Go south to Holborn and the LSE, to Edinburgh, where Rudolf Bing also worked mostly at various London onetime home to Hersch Lauterpacht, founded the Edinburgh Festival. hospitals. My father came from Warsaw one of the two heroes of Philippe to Britain via Brussels and Paris, arrived Sands’s terrific book, East West This range is an important part of in Liverpool, spent the war in Glasgow Street, Friedrich Hayek, professor of the history. But so is the pattern. Yes, and most of the rest of his life in economics for almost twenty years, refugees settled in Wales, Scotland, London. and the philosophers, Karl Popper and Northern Ireland and many parts of Ernest Gellner, who both taught there England. But their greatest impact In short, the great modern Jewish for many years. Lauterpacht studied was in a small handful of cities and migration was not a movement from law at the University of Lviv, Hayek university towns. They were far more European countries to Britain so much and Popper were from Vienna and concentrated than earlier Jewish as from particular neighbourhoods Gellner was brought up in Prague. immigrants. And this largely explains in central and east European cities LSE undergraduates included the their extraordinary impact on postwar to particular areas in a few British famous financier, George Soros, born British culture, from small shops to cities: north Oxford, a handful of in Budapest. concert halls and theatres, from physics streets in Cambridge, the area around labs to the BBC. Finchleystrasse. It is as if the great cultural centres of early 20th century Europe were tipped David Herman For example, take Bloomsbury. There up and their contents poured into the was the famous Dillon’s University lecture rooms and libraries of central Bookshop on Malet Street where Eva London. Look at the current issue of the Dworetzki moved its German section in magazine, Jewish Renaissance, and you 1959 from the well-known bookshop can see the same is true of Oxford. Bumpus. Breslauer & Meyer, the Berlin Outstanding live-in and hourly care in bookshop, was restarted in Bloomsbury Of course, there are exceptions. The your home at flexible, affordable rates. by Martin Breslauer in 1937, later run artist Kurt Schwitters lived in obscurity by his son. There is the famous Warburg in Ambleside in the Lake District after Library, home to so many distinguished the war. There was an interesting group art historians, and now the Wiener of refugee artists who were drawn to Library has made the move to Russell Wales, including Martin Bloch and Heinz Square. Koppel, who taught painting for many years at the Merthyr Tydfil Educational Nearby is the British Museum, where Settlement. The writer Arthur Koestler 020 7482 2188 pillarcare.co.uk the great historian Norbert Elias, helped lived for some time in Suffolk, where

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OUR KITCHENER PLAQUE On Monday 2 September AJR our commemorative plaque scheme. unveiled a plaque in Sandwich, Kent, Guests included several Kitchener Camp commemorating the 80th anniversary descendants and the Mayor of Sandwich. of the Kitchener Camp - one of the lesser known acts of rescue of Britain’s More information about the Kitchener WW2 history. Camp, which saved the life of approximately 4,000 refugees from From L-R Adrienne Harris, Robert The plaque was unveiled on the wall Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and May, Frank Harding of the Bell Hotel – a popular meeting Poland, can be found on place for the refugees - by Robert www.kitchenercamp.co.uk. from the Holocaust were welcomed May and Adrienne Harris, whose and those who made an everlasting fathers were brothers and were both The plaque is the 11th in AJR’s scheme, contribution and the local community Directors at the camp, along with AJR which helps to form a tangible link as well as fascinating residents and Trustee, Frank Harding, who devised between key locations where refugees visitors.

RESTORING GERMAN CITIZENSHIP

AJR warmly welcomes the recent Additionally, the decrees now permit Eligible persons will also not be required announcement by the German citizenship applications from children (and to give up other nationalities they may government of two decrees that simplify their descendants) born before 1 April possess and will be naturalised free of the process and widen the eligibility 1953 to foreign fathers married to German charge. criteria for those descendants of victims of mothers who had been victims of National National Socialist oppression applying for Socialist oppression and lost their citizenship The new rules apply to all those born the restoration of German citizenship. due to their marriage. The decrees also up to 1 January 2000 while there is also provide for certain children born out of a process for naturalising a descendant This simplified path to citizenship was wedlock to foreign mothers and German born after this date as German. previously restricted to a time window fathers suffering from National Socialist from 1957 to 1970. It is now open to oppression. Under the former rules these Full details of the announcement of the all children (and their descendants) children could not become German citizens. decrees is available at whose German parents acquired foreign https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/ citizenship due to National Socialist Applicants will also need to demonstrate pressemitteilungen/EN/2019/08/ persecution and consequently lost their basic knowledge of the German language wiedergutmachung-ns-verbrechen-en. German citizenship. and the German social and political order. html

A Journey of Zeitzeugen

AJR’s Rosemary Peters recently They also attended meetings with, among wrote how privileged she feels to escorted four AJR members to Berlin, others, the Federal Agency for Civic have a Jewish heritage, believing that who had been invited to take part as Education and Holocaust Remembrance, adaptability, survivor instinct and the ‘contemporary witnesses’ in a special Centropa (an organisation which records transmission of solid values provide the four-day programme organised by the Jewish memories), and Heimatsucher, a key to Jewish survival. She also told us German government and the Goethe group of second generation survivors, how the trip has made her “cherish our Institute. and addressed a very large audience of Judeo-Christian values, which many teachers and schoolchildren, which was UK laws and institutions are based Among the group was 94 year old Alice well attended by the media. Alice said on. I commit to challenge any threats Alexander, who since wrote a detailed there was sadness on the trip, for obvious to the freedoms which these values report for East London and Essex Liberal reasons, but that it was very well-planned bring, such as discrimination, including Synagogue. Their itinerary included the and reassured her that “present-day antisemitism and sexism. I commit Foundation Exile Museum – due to be Germany is doing everything possible to to being an Upstander rather than a completed in 2025 – and the Wannsee ensure there will never be a repetition of Bystander, whenever these values are district, where Alice found it “difficult the past”. threatened. I hope always to be brave to associate the large and elegant villa, and take risks, rather than play too surrounded by a beautiful garden, with Also among the group was Tania Barnett, safe, if my conscience and integrity are the unspeakable evil planned there”. daughter of Ruth, who afterwards challenged.”

3 AJR Journal | October 2019 GIFT FOR A LIFETIME Can you remember when refugeenglish was the order of the day? When you might have overheard a Hampstead mother call out to her son in the street below: “Humphrey, schtop playing mit dirt!” exposing in one soundbite the generational predicament? When jokes based on misunderstood idiom and literal translation were passed round in Swiss Cottage every day, like the one about the wife sitting downstairs in a double-decker, telling the conductor “The lord above will pay”? You could call it Dorice-speak.

It’s all about language, isn’t it? The Spiel, Robert Neumann, Heinrich Mann simple and stately, reflecting Germanic generation that arrived before the war made the transition to writing in English; and Norman roots. And they do not had to learn quickly; speaking deutsch Friedrich Torberg, Ferenc Molnar, Thomas shrink from creating turbulence by in public was not on. The passengers Mann and many others didn’t. Some changing nouns into verbs (to transition), on that bus would have been treated to ended up speaking and writing mishmash. plurals into singulars (data, media), some choice dialogue: “We steig out at singulars into gender-neutral plurals (his the next station.” An entire generation First-generation survivors who have to their), dear sir/madam into hi ,”see- had to go back to school, gaining a new mastered English the hard way tend to you-later” from a promise into goodbye, language but never losing their accents. hold on to their version of it. They do not “calling out” from vocal into moral, Indeed, accent became the indicator see the irony of playing keepers of the the principle being that language is of age at the time of immigration. The Queen’s English when their offspring are constantly evolving and this is the day of critical point lay somewhere between 14 at ease in the language that is spoken wokabulary. and 16. Over-sixteens rarely lost their out there. It can make for strange accents; under-fourteens usually managed conversations over dinner. Confusing? Maybe. But on arrival in it, sometimes acquiring the tone of foster their new-found land every immigrant parents or locality. The natives have always sought to baffle is handed a gift voucher redeemable in newcomers by turning language into sublime poetry and prose, in a licence to The best of the bunch became highly a code. Sport makes a big contribution engage and to contribute, in a challenge articulate, making English their instrument through phrases borrowed from football, to break the code and ultimately to of choice as authors, editors, publishers. golf, snooker, even hunting to hounds attempt a joke. A stake in the culture of Michael Hamburger, poet and supreme and shove ha’penny (e.g.”streets the country gives one strength. translator of Rilke and Hölderlin, was ahead”). The most insidious source may equally at home in English and German. well be cricket as a metaphor - sticky It is a treasure that lasts a lifetime. Arthur Koestler, novelist and polemicist, wicket, knocked for six, that sort of thing. fired words from a flamethrower; his Silly mid-on is quite a stretch if you were Victor Ross accent left scorch marks. His friend born in Vienna. George Mikes knew enough English to make millions laugh with How to be an Love, however, was around before tennis. Write Your Life Story Alien which was published by André On top of that there is jargon from the Record a Family History Deutsch, another Hungarian Brit. wonderful world of woke (“how to pivot Whether you have begun writing, from a perspective of frustration...”), researched your ancestors, or A Berlin-born member of that gifted rhyming slang, limericks, clerihews, cryptic never put pen to paper, we offer generation, Judith Kerr, author of The crosswords and other verbal pranks. a personalised service to help Tiger Who Came to Tea, illustrated her you preserve your precious own books and won the hearts of English Our English neighbours are often accused memories for future generations. children. She came to this country aged of being unreconstructed monoglots. www.wordsbydesign.co.uk 13. For her language was the soil in Not really; they speak in many tongues: [email protected] which one grew roots. Hans Habe, Hilde private and official, demotic and posh, 01869 327548

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LETTER FROM ISRAEL BY DOROTHEA SHEFER-VANSON

SPEAKING GERMAN not wise to speak German at that time and vignettes of outstanding Jewish women, place, and luckily both my parents spoke and these were published in Austria IN ISRAEL good English (albeit with an accent). Since and Germany. Under her supervision, learning German and joining German- I translated her thoroughly-researched My desire to learn speaking groups here in Israel, I have book of vignettes, Zeit der Heldinnen German came found that people here spoke German (The Time of Heroines) into English, late in my life. In relatively freely in the early days of Israel’s but haven’t yet found a publisher for fact, I had always existence. Thus, the members of the it. When Gerda died in 2012, aged shied away from German-speaking groups I attend today 93, friends of all ages and from a wide the sound of the learned German as a living language and variety of backgrounds came together language. It was not, as I did, as a foreign tongue. to honour her memory, and a plaque the language of the nation that had commemorating her was put up in the caused so much suffering to my family My first German teacher was Gerda garden of one of them. and my people. But when my parents Hoffer. Originally from Austria, she fled moved to Israel in 1983 they brought to England and worked as a German I have continued to pursue my studies of with them folders full of documents, teacher in a Berlitz language school. After German, managing somehow to stumble letters and family correspondence from the premature death of her husband she along in a German-speaking group which their past, and I was curious to find out moved to Israel. They were childless, by meets twice a month in Jerusalem, under what they contained. design, or so she maintained, but her life the auspices of the Association of Former was full with meeting friends, playing Residents of Central Europe, to meet, So I resolved to learn German. As a bridge, writing books and attending chat or discuss a given topic. I also attend result, some of the contents of those meetings of the German-speaking lodge a weekly German class run by the local folders were eventually published in one of B’nai Brith, where she often gave pensioners club near my home. We have form or another (The Tobacco Road, lectures. a delightful young teacher, Heike, who an English version of the letters sent was born in Germany and came to live in by my 20-year-old uncle in the USA to I found her at the recommendation of a Israel after marrying an Israeli. She is full his family in Hamburg in 1928 before colleague, and though I hardly knew a of lively and original ideas to keep our his untimely and tragic death a year word of German, she soon had me forming ancient brains active, getting us to play later in Shanghai; and Aber Seid Alle sentences and increasing my vocabulary games, act out scenes, prepare little talks, Beruhigt, containing the letters sent in at our weekly meetings in her comfortable improve our grammar and even enjoy a German by my paternal grandmother Jerusalem flat. Soon our lessons developed picnic – all in German. from Hamburg and Theresienstadt in into political discussions, which sometimes 1940-42). Some of the documents also became quite heated as Gerda had very It seems that there are quite a few constituted the basis for my novel, Time definite views on everything. Aged sixteen Israelis who yearn to hear and speak the Out of Joint, in which I attempted to she had been imprisoned as a Communist language of their youth. And although reconstruct the world that was lost. in her native Vienna, although over the I don’t quite fit that mould, and even years her views moderated. Still, whatever used to recoil from the language, I’m I grew up in post-war London, and she did she did wholeheartedly. glad that I manage to converse relatively although the mother-tongue of both freely and make myself understood in my parents was German, I hardly heard She had written several novels in German, German, though I can’t guarantee that the language in my childhood. It was as well as a volume containing a series of my grammar is flawless.

ANNUAL JACKMAN . ELECTION MEETING SILVERMAN COMMERCIAL PROPERTY CONSULTANTS The Annual Election Meeting of the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) will take place at 3pm on 5 December 2019 at Winston House, 2 Dollis Park, London N3 1HF.

All questions for the chair should be submitted by Friday 29 November to the Chief Executive at the same postal address, or by email to [email protected]. Telephone: 020 7209 5532 uk. If you wish to attend please contact Karin Pereira on 020 8385 3070 or at [email protected]. [email protected]

5 AJR Journal | October 2019 Letters to the Editor The Editor reserves the right to shorten correspondence submitted for publication and respectfully points out that the views expressed in the letters published are not necessarily the views of the AJR.

ARE WE KOSHER? KINDERTRANSPORT SANCTUARY AT LABOUR REALITY? One of the very few advantages of WADDESDON MANOR M David and G Weiner (September) getting older is that it appears easier The articles in recent AJR Journals about express great surprise that their Labour to become more quickly irritated. This the blue plaques were of great interest. party could be antisemitic. Could they happened to me when I read the I would just like to mention a plaque have convinced themselves there was handout for the AJR annual tea which which, though not blue, is sometimes nothing to see during that notorious accompanied your August issue. overlooked by Jewish visiting parties to conference with the Soviet hammer Waddesdon Manor. It is situated in the and sickle on show and Palestinian flags I tried to deconstruct the sentence which grounds at the back of the Manor, by abundant but not one Union Jack? Maybe was prominently displayed as part of the the Lion Steps and says “This plaque is they failed to detect the exodus of party event heading. It read ‘Tea will be strictly dedicated to the memory of Mr and Mrs activists, MPs and Peers - both Jews and Kosher under the London Beth Din’ de Rothschild in gratitude for providing non-Jews – who have left the Labour sanctuary to The Cedars boys and girls party, citing anti-Jewish racism as their It is probably sensible to have a kosher in 1939” (not the exact words). I am the primary reason? tea as this means that some people sole survivor in this country and a group will attend who may not have done of us were accommodated in a house David and Weiner focus on defending so otherwise. However I failed to called “The Cedars” on the Waddesdon a trivial and brief charge sheet against understand the necessity for including Estate and well-looked after by the Corbyn. By contrast, many former the word ‘strictly’ in this context. Perhaps Rothschild family. Labour figures know what to make of the reference was to ‘Strictly dancing’ – Helga Brown (née Steinhardt), Corbyn and his advisors. John Mann but this is apparently the combination of Abingdon, Oxon MP, who is being made the antisemitism Strictly Ballroom and Come Dancing. It tsar by the Conservative government, would be an interesting exercise to see is unequivocal about the blame for what two phrases could be combined to AJR’s EASTBOURNE HOLIDAY the horrendous transformation of the form Strictly Kosher. This year’s trip to Eastbourne in July governing institutions of the Labour Party was, once again, much enjoyed by lying with Corbyn. Mann (Sunday Times Having failed to understand what the participating members. Mr Abraham 8 September) says: “The party will not alternative might be (perhaps ‘deceptively David writes “It was very well organised survive the erosion of its principles and Kosher’, or ‘carelessly Kosher’ – but and we were well looked after: I would its soul by racist infiltration. Corbyn has certainly not ‘leniently kosher’) I am recommend this holiday to everyone”. given the green light to the antisemites.” concerned that the AJR is heading into Mrs Anne Goodwin writes “I particularly dangerous uncharted territory. Humour appreciated that everyone was so Luciana Berger MP, in the same Sunday aside, this is a plea that the AJR should friendly and welcoming as it was the Times, says: “(Labour’s leaders) have a not become embroiled in the endless first time I was on holiday without my hierarchy of racism where antisemitism discussion about what is the strictest, husband whom I lost last year”. Mr is deemed less bad than other forms of best, or most rigid kashrut. Solly and Mrs Bertha Ohayon invited prejudice…(they) have betrayed its history Arthur Oppenheimer, Hove, Sussex relatives to accompany them who as an anti-racist party” wrote enthusiastically that “the whole week was a great success and it was These, decent Labour members have The SS WARSZAWA interesting for us to meet other AJR nailed the reality of what Corbynite As an AJR member and child refugee I was members, all of whom had a story to Labour means and what it would mean saddened by the article (August) regarding tell”. for Jews should it ever succeed to become the attempt to rescue Polish Jewish the government of the UK. children on the SS Warszawa. In spite of Greg Lubinsky, London NW6 their best efforts the two men in England SAILING WITHOUT A RUDDER were not able to secure enough sponsors The mother of Parliament has caught to rescue all the children. What an an incurable disease, which keeps her WONDERFUL SUPPORT indictment of the English Jewish population family and former friends from her My mother Rose Coten z’l recently that relatively few people financially bedside. There is no precedent, but passed away and I wanted to express my sponsored the 10,000 Kinder into England numerous disagreeing doctors offer appreciation to the AJR who were with or took them into their homes. It was their advice. Yet, her disease has been me during a very difficult time. It is a left to the Quakers and many other non- forecast in these pages long ago. It is wonderful, supportive organisation which Jewish organisations to provide the money likened to a ship without a rudder which is there when you need it most. Thank and shelter, leaving so many to die. causes her to capsize. you to all those who helped me during Bob Norton, Nottingham Fred Stern, Wembley Middx a difficult time both recently and over

6 AJR Journal | October 2019

the years: Sandie Myers, a wonderful contributed on panels in one or two like AA Milne’s Tigger, nor on the other Social Worker; Sharon and Dipti in forward looking schools moving in this hand does he have the fearful symmetry administration; David Kaye, Finance direction and the effect on the student of William Blake’s Tyger, stalking the Director, who gave me advice. Everyone audience is awesome and inspires the forests of our nights. Judith Kerr’s tiger was so kind and helpful. will for action. Action then needs to is not overtly threatening; he knocks Rabbi Stanley Coten, Ruislip be initiated to find ways of using the politely at the door of Sophie’s family’s UN Associates to support and use the home and displays his manners as he international laws we already have for sits down at table. But he devours all QUALITY NOT QUANTITY the protection of Human Rights and the food in the house ravenously and Thank you for devoting your first Prevention of Crimes Against Humanity. drinks the water tank dry, so Sophie two pages to Holocaust education Ruth Barnett, London NW6 cannot have her evening bath - whether (September), the importance of which to her regret or her relief we are not cannot be over-rated. I do not see the told. Finally, although Sophie’s mother crucial element being with ‘quality or WHO WAS THE TIGER? lays in a stock of tiger food, he never quantity’ but rather the creeping negative I would like to take issue with David returns. The tiger remains a mystery, effect of denial on any progress made. Wirth’s claim to detect in the enigmatic his story an indication to children that tiger in The Tiger Who Came to Tea a there may exist a world beyond the Holocaust remembrance, hint of the terror inspired by the Nazis in mundane world of adults, a world that commemoration and education are those who fled from them (September). can be approached through the power positive and essential but not sufficient of a child’s imagination, a world where to overcome the negativity of denial On 18 March 2019, not long before her the normal rules of everyday life are without serious action. Overt Holocaust death, the Gesellschaft für Exilforschung suspended in playful wonder. After all, denial is only the pinnacle of the iceberg (Society for Exile Studies), the leading if one can have cat food or dog food, that is visible and can be easily countered academic organisation concerned with why should there not be an imaginative if the will is there. The enemy is the emigration from Nazi Germany, awarded space for tiger food?’ insidious denial that is normalised in honorary membership to Judith Kerr. I our institutions and particularly in our had the honour of delivering the formal Wirth claims that Judith Kerr was ‘told approach to current ongoing genocides. address at the award ceremony at the as a young child that her father could Wiener Library. be grabbed at any moment by either Holocaust commemoration and the Gestapo or the SS’. Yet the young education is not taken seriously enough I see Judith Kerr’s tiger as standing more Judith Kerr knew nothing about the to inspire action, while genocide in the tradition of British children’s stories threat to her father, as her parents kept predating the Holocaust is air-brushed where animals act almost like humans, it from her during the brief period that out and countries that we have a vested appearing so to speak as half walrus, they spent in Germany under Nazi rule. political and economic interest in are not half carpenter. That tradition goes back The first thing she knew was that her held to account for the current Crimes to Beatrix Potter, to Jemima Puddle- father, the renowned theatre critic Alfred Against Humanity they commit against Duck and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, as well Kerr, had disappeared overnight on 14 their own people. as to Lewis Carroll, encompassing AA February 1933. He had fled to Prague, Milne’s Winnie the Pooh and Michael where it was impossible for the Gestapo Until this deep and largely unconscious Bond’s Paddington Bear. In an article in to ‘grab’ him. The rest of the Kerr family conflict between remembrance and February 1954 in the monthly journal of slipped across the border to Switzerland denial is exposed and understood, the AJR, Kenneth Ambrose (born Kurt on 5 March 1933. I also find David neither quality nor quantity of Holocaust Abrahamsohn in Stettin) pointed to the Wirth’s arguments based on the similarity education is likely to make any serious gentle, humane quality of the books between the words ‘Tiger’ and ‘Hitler’ inroad against the currently intensifying that he was reading to his British-born unconvincing. One can easily play word antisemitism and racism in general. We children, by contrast with their gory games to come to completely different need discussion panels run by every German counterparts recounting the conclusions: what about ‘Gestapo’ and local authority and also televised, grisly fates of Struwwelpeter (Shock- ‘Guest’, for example, or ‘Hitler’ and consisting of four representative Headed Peter) and Max and Moritz, to ‘Butler’, which have in common the same speakers: representing Holocaust say nothing of the Grimms. combination of letters as that cited by survivors, survivors of genocide since Wirth. As for his attempt to compare the the Holocaust, genocide prior to the Judith Kerr’s tiger has just that hint of empty taps in little Sophie’s home to the Holocaust, and current on-going mystery, that frisson of the unknown shower heads in the Nazi gas chambers, genocide, together with plenty of to appeal to young children; he is not words fail me. time for audience participation. I have merely a bouncing bundle of energy, Anthony Grenville, London

7 AJR Journal | October 2019 ART NOTES: by Gloria Tessler

Last month Yad Vashem commemorated the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of The Great the Second World War with a new online Disaster, Felix exhibition featuring the final days of Jewish Nussbaum family life in Europe. 1939

1939: Jewish Families on the Brink of the lucky ones who managed to escape the older family members were reassured War looks at the life and times of a dozen Poland and return to Israel. Her father died by the German courtesy that had been Jewish families as the Holocaust begins in July 1940 in Warsaw and her mother extended towards them during WW1. to take its inexorable toll. Documents, was murdered in Treblinka. But in fact most of the Jews of Belgrade photographs and artefacts from the were murdered less than a year after the Yad Vashem archives, many donated Pre-war photographs show the German invasion. by survivors and their families, form the 21-member Majer family from Belgrade, basis of this powerful and tragic personal including eight children and numerous None of this is new to Holocaust history. grandchildren, happily posing in survivors. But the graphic importance of holiday attire, unaware of the coming this exhibition, which includes a darkly A 56-page diary, written In September devastation. Only one of them survived; prophetic sketch by the artist Felix 1939 by Mira Zabludowski, describes one died before the war and the rest were Nussbaum, is the way it captures a sense the terror of machine gun-fire and the murdered. of Europe’s Jews pitched between innocent thunder of overhead planes as she visits joy and the coming horror as the Nazis her parents in the first months of the Nazi It is a typically nostalgic family photo; tightened their grip on the jugular vein of occupation of Warsaw. She was one of far from any sense of impending doom, Europe, destroying centuries of Jewish life.

“Even 80 years on it is still hard to understand the huge discrepancy between Jewish life before the war and their tragic fate during the Holocaust,” said Yona Kobo, researcher and curator of the online exhibition. “We see families from Yugoslavia, Germany, Austria, Poland, Romania, Greece and Czechoslovakia in their happiest days – weddings, births and other joyous events – but also in hard financial times, searching for escape These pages are from an album that up surrounded by love. His grandpa and routes, struggling to cope with their Jiri Bader’s friends made for him on the grandma delight in his talking about worsening daily lives – and in the end, occasion of his Bar Mitzvah, which he “Gaga” (the ducks) and his discovery the mass murder of the Jews without celebrated in the Theresienstadt ghetto. that the nanny waits for the “mail”. distinction between men, women and The album was illustrated by caricaturist children.” Max Placek, a relative of Jiri’s, who “Soon he will be a sportsman in body came from Jiri’s home town of Kyjov, in and soul. His favourite pastime is the car. https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/ Czechoslovakia. After that, school, where he behaves exhibitions/1939/index.asp well, but he likes the store more. The In October 1944, Jiri Bader and wagons that come and go – he has to Annely Juda Fine Art his father Pavel were deported to know everything and see everything. Auschwitz, where they were murdered. Years come, years pass, and the future 23 Dering Street Jiri’s mother Grete and his sister Vera looks secure and rosy. But things are (off New Bond Street) survived. Vera Bader donated the album turning out differently… because in our Tel: 020 7629 7578 and other artifacts to Yad Vashem. good old house – which stands firm as Fax: 020 7491 2139 in days gone by – many things have CONTEMPORARY The extracts show how Jiri was growing changed: the Aryan landlord is busy.” PAINTING AND SCULPTURE

8 AJR Journal | October 2019 LEOPOLDSTADT ON STAGE Alert AJR readers have probably booked their seats already for Tom Stoppard’s new play, Leopoldstadt, which will have its world première in London’s West End next year. Martin Mauthner shares a few insights about the work. Orthodox Jews on Karmeliterplatz in Late in his career, Sir Tom, who was born Vienna’s Leopoldstadt in 1937, has chosen to work his own district in 1915 background as a Czech Jewish refugee into a generational drama set in what was once Vienna’s most distinct Jewish area, wouldn’t seem to be about me.’ But it was the emperor Franz Joseph who the ‘Zweiter Bezirk’ - ‘second municipal emancipated the Jews by granting them district’ - or 1020 Wien (also home to the His father, Eugen Sträussler, worked as a equal rights in 1867. That encouraged Prater park and its iconic giant wheel). doctor in Zlin, Moravia - where Stoppard was persecuted Jews fleeing Russian pogroms Located near the Danube, Leopoldstadt’s born - for the progressive Bata shoe factory, a in the 19th century to head for Vienna, crowded tenements traditionally housed family concern that grew into a multinational arriving at the Nordbahnhof, the railway the thousands of mostly orthodox Jews enterprise during the glory days of the station near Leopoldstadt that opened in fleeing poverty and persecution in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With the Nazis 1865 to improve links between Prague empire and beyond. Ironically, the district about to pounce on Czechoslovakia in 1939, and Warsaw. is named after an Austrian emperor who the firm transferred its Jewish employees to expelled its Jews in the seventeenth branches further afield. During and after WW1 some 350,000 century. refugees transited the station, fleeing war A few years later the Sträussler family found and destitution in Galicia and Bukovina. Stoppard’s play is about the evolution of themselves in Singapore, where Bata had Between 50,000 - 70,000 of them were such a family: Hermann’s grandfather, a factory, facing the threat of Japanese impoverished and mostly orthodox who wore a caftan; his father, who went occupation. Tom, his brother Peter and their ‘Ostjuden’, to be disparaged not only by to the opera in a top hat; and Hermann mother Martha set out for Australia but Austria’s ‘Aryans’ but also by many of its himself, a factory owner, who has the were diverted to India. Eugen stayed behind assimilated and increasingly secular Jews. opera singers to dinner. Needless to say, but did not survive either Japanese captivity The door opened to the rapid growth of the play focuses on the tragic fate of the or the bombing of a ship on which he was virulent antisemitism in Austria. family, which mirrored that of millions of trying to flee. Stoppard’s grandparents others, including that of Sigmund Freud, and several other relatives in Europe also Tom Stoppard’s new play is sure to who went to school in Leopoldstadt. perished. provide audiences with much food for thought, especially as immigration Stoppard told The Guardian that his Having started his schooling in Darjeeling, remains a highly controversial topic on new play ‘took a year to write but the Stoppard came to Britain with Peter and both sides of the Atlantic. With what the gestation was much longer,’ adding that their mother in 1946; she had married a New York Times calls his ‘deep humanistic ‘quite a lot of it is personal to me but I British major, Kenneth Stoppard, who was commitment to civil liberties’, we surely made it about a Viennese family so that it returning home. know where Stoppard stands.

Various reasons explain why Leopoldstadt Leopoldstadt will première at the became Vienna’s main Jewish zone. Jews Wyndham Theatre in February but have lived in the capital at least since the there will be a special performance 12th century, with all the familiar ups and around Holocaust Memorial day downs, but in the 17th century a ghetto in January, to which all former was set up in Leopoldstadt. Gradually ‘Leopoldstadters’ are invited. Please conditions improved: religious restrictions on contact Peter Phillips at the address the empire’s Jews were partly lifted during below if you are a refugee from the Enlightenment by Joseph II, eldest son Leopoldstadt and would like to attend. Sir Tom Stoppard of the antisemitic empress Maria Theresa. [email protected]

9 AJR Journal | October 2019

We are grateful to AJR member Erica A Story of Survival Matthews for sharing this moving story of her father’s cousin Liz Brodie.

Liz Brodie was born Lisbeth make young people realise the greatest Decades passed, until I happened on Dan Judelowitsch in Poznan, Poland, danger comes from indifference. Many Kurtzman’s description of the Warsaw of us want to forget the past, while Ghetto uprising in his book The Bravest in May 1911 to Rabbi Nathan and the wrong people remember it: those Battle. There, he mentions one name, Martha Judelowitsch. Lisbeth was who hate the Jews and deny that the Leon Wanat, with whom I worked in the an only child and worked briefly Holocaust happened. Pawiak, and this ripped off the veil of my silence. as a journalist before she and her I should explain why I came to be in mother were sent to the Warsaw the Warsaw Ghetto. Before I came to My life in that fortress of evil was Ghetto in 1942. Warsaw, I lived in the beautiful and horrifying. Even though I had an isolated cultured city of Poznan, which had a very existence there, I was surrounded by rich Jewish past. We Jews were deported danger and atrocities. I heard screams, After the war she came to in December of 1939 to a small Jewish horrible laughter, heard dogs snarling village near Lublin. and saw the dead faces of human beings England. She spent time in a being led to their execution. An iron nursing home recovering from her Friends in Warsaw advised me to come armour grew around my soul. This is ordeal. She wanted to teach as there, where I could teach languages to what I still carry around with me; the people hoping to get away to foreign inability to feel deeply, to cry freely. she could speak five languages, countries. So this is what I did. My friends Whatever dreadful events I had seen, I but was only allowed to work as had connections with Germans, who was left without tears. I hate the things a cleaner. She decided to go to the were smuggling food into the ghetto that happened around me because they in exchange for valuables. One of the robbed me of the ability to mourn. USA where she could start afresh Germans asked them if they knew doing what she was educated to someone who could translate Polish But I want to speak of the events do. She went to Westfield, NJ, pamphlets into German and my friends surrounding the uprising. Even though, mentioned me. because of my imprisonment, I have only and with wonderful help from a limited knowledge. At first I saw the the American Rabbi and others The German commandant came to rely Germans bombing and burning buildings she founded a Hebrew School in on these translations. When the ghetto in the distance. Soon they burned liquidation and the transports to the buildings closer and closer. The smell the local synagogue where she extermination camps began on a large sickened me. I saw flames and smoke was revered and she taught many scale, he put me into the only safe place cover the sky. generations of children till her he knew: a walled former monastery which had been turned into a prison, Large groups of Jewish people were death at 90 in 2001. After a time where the Germans captured the Polish herded into the prison yard and driven she felt she should tell her story resistance fighters. It was called the away. Shots rang out everywhere, but I and did speak to audiences. Her ‘Pawiak’. There, right inside the lion’s had only a partial understanding of the den, I continued to do translations and situation. I was never allowed to walk by fiancé with other males were all clerical work as one of the Jewish working myself. There was always a guard with murdered in a Polish village by prisoners. And all around me the ghetto me and contact with the other prisoners the Nazis. She never married. This became a slaughter house. Probably was difficult. would have lost my mind, were it not is her story as written by herself. for the fact that I worked 16 hours a day On the second day of Easter, 59 Jewish under unbelievable tensions. Twice, I saw men and two women were led into my own death warrant. the Pawiak courtyard. This group was My name is Liz Brodie. Early in 1940 in composed of the Jewish ghetto police the Warsaw ghetto a few heroes rose to My driving ambition was to tell the world in their blue caps. Lieutenant Brandt, defend the ghetto and to resist the Nazis what had happened. But when the end the Gestapo specialist on Jewish affairs, to their death. I was there and I was came, I was all alone with an immensity ordered the guards to make sure that all witness. of memories that no one wanted to prisoners in the Pawiak were confined to believe. I was regarded with suspicion. their cells for the next hours. Only a handful of us are still alive to pass “How was it that you survived?” “What on a warning to a young generation who did you do to stay alive?” I fell into The Jewish policemen were ordered to have grown up in a comfortable life that silence, alone with my nightmares. lie down; a guard motioned to the first they take for granted. We must try to one and he was led out of the prison

10 AJR Journal | October 2019

Nazi soldiers marching Jews out of the Warsaw ghetto in April 1943

Liz Brodie gates. Then another and another. A shot rang out every time they went outside. They had worked for the Gestapo and this was their reward. All the bodies were piled up in the buildings across the street. Warsaw Ghetto wall and footbridge The Nazis set the buildings ablaze and over Chlodna Street in 1942 watched the smoke curl into the sky.

Leon Wanat wrote about this in his book Behind the Walls of the Pawiak. Kurtzman has repeated them in his book The Brave Battle. And I too watched the same scene out of my prison window.

The ghetto was now completely liquidated. On the spot where life had been teeming, only burned and broken walls were left, along with scattered bricks, piles of rubble and, here and there, some iron bits and pieces. The ghetto ruins now became the place for the execution of prisoners from the Pawiak. The search for Jews in hiding went on relentlessly. With the execution of the prisoners and the Jewish police, the liquidation of the ghetto was complete. extraordinary and historic. And the January I came to Berlin and was taken During the uprising I had seen the Germans were silent. to a prison on the Alexanderplatz, a Germans running into the Pawiak place of horror, even for the Germans. courtyard for shelter. I had heard them What happened later? The Russian troops speak. They could not believe the bravery were coming closer - the Nazis were I was sent to the collection place for of the few Jews. They were afraid of planning their retreat. It was now late Jews on their way to Buchenwald. these Jews and some of them were in summer of 1944. The prison was emptied While on the train, the news came awe of such heroic resistance. and I was left alone, locked up in my cell. that the Russians had taken over I did not know if they would they take the camp and we were deflected to Another example: one day I was me with them or let me perish with the Theresienstadt. There on 8 May I working in one of the buildings by the building. But they dragged me along, realised that I had survived the war. Umschlagplatz, the railway station, where together with a typewriter and paper, to Jews were rounded up for deportation do whatever office work they needed. to the death camps. Suddenly everybody Such decisions by the Germans saved rushed to the windows. There was human lives more than once. JOSEPH PEREIRA silence. We were watching Janusz (ex-AJR caretaker over 22 years) Korcza, a world-renowned educator, The retreat during the fall and long winter is now available for DIY repairs leading an orderly line of children from was another miserable event in my life. I and general maintenance. his orphanage to the station. One little got a high fever and still dragged along to No job too small, child was in his arms. Although I did not the West. Somehow - from a Czech with very reasonable rates. know it then, I was seeing something a conscience - I had got false papers. In Please telephone 07966 887 485.

11 AJR Journal | October 2019

Margarethe Kraus, a Czech Roma, Forgotten photographed after the war by Reimar Gilsenbach © Wiener Library Victims Collections

This Autumn The Wiener 31 July – 2 August 1944, the Nazis liquidated the Zigeunerlager and killed Holocaust Library is staging over 4,000 men, women and children a special exhibition on the After the war, survivors and relatives genocide of the Roma and Sinti, of victims struggled to gain recognition entitled Forgotten Victims: The and compensation for the persecution and losses they had suffered. Even in Nazi Genocide of the Roma Britain and Europe today, prejudice and discrimination against Roma and Sinti and Sinti. The team at the remain common. Library have written this article The exhibition tells the stories of a number The Wiener Holocaust Library’s Autumn of individuals, including Margarethe Kraus. especially for our readers. 2019 exhibition draws upon the Library’s Originally from Czechoslovakia, Kraus collections to uncover the story of this was deported to Auschwitz sometime in The genocide carried out against the Roma little known aspect of Nazi persecution. It 1943, along with her family, when she and Sinti communities of Europe by the explores Roma and Sinti life in Germany was just a teenage. Whilst imprisoned in Nazis and their collaborators during WW2 and Austria prior to WW2, and the the concentration camp she was forced – the persecution and murder of as many genocidal policies that started in German- to endure maltreatment and extreme as 500,000 people – has been referred to occupied Poland in 1940. It also examines privations, and she contracted typhus. as ‘the forgotten Holocaust’ by Professor the post-war lives and legacies of Roma Kraus was also subjected to medical Eve Rosenhaft. and Sinti. The exhibition reflects on the experiments in Auschwitz. Her parents situation in Britain and Europe today did not survive the Holocaust. In this From 1933 the Nazis built on historical and explores why the Roma and Sinti photograph, taken by Reimar Gilsenbach prejudices to label the Roma and Sinti communities are still ‘forgotten’ victims of in the 1960s in East Germany, her communities as ‘anti-social’ and ‘racially genocide. Auschwitz camp number tattoo is visible inferior’. They enacted discriminatory on her left forearm. measures against Roma and Sinti, Forming the backbone of this exhibition including confinement in special camps are testimonies from victims and survivors. The Wiener Holocaust Library is one of and a massive programme of pseudo racial During the 1950s, researchers at The the world’s leading and most extensive science investigation. Many Roma and Wiener Holocaust Library gathered over archives on the Holocaust and Nazi era. Sinti were forcibly sterilised. Alongside 1,000 accounts from witnesses to Nazi Formed in 1933, the Library’s unique Jews, the Roma and Sinti people faced persecution and genocide, which included collection of over one million items violence, deportations to ghettos and a number of testimonies from Roma includes published and unpublished camps and then genocide as the German and Sinti survivors. The Library also has works, press cuttings, photographs and army invaded Poland (1939), the Low possession of the Kenrick Collection, which eyewitness testimony. The Library provides Countries and France (1940), and the contains a wealth of material relating to a resource to oppose antisemitism and Soviet Union (1941). In the Soviet the persecution of the Roma and Sinti other forms of prejudice and intolerance territories, the Nazis and their collaborators under the Nazis, collected and compiled by being a living memorial to the evils of massacred thousands of Roma and Sinti in 1968. Both of these collections sought the past. in mass shootings. The genocide also to gather and preserve testimonies from occurred in pro-Nazi states, such as the marginalised Roma and Sinti people Forgotten Victims: The Genocide of Croatia. soon after the end of the Second World the Roma and Sinti will run from the War. The Library is committed to ensuring 30 October 2019 until 11 March 2020. From January 1943, all Roma and Sinti that the suffering and injustices that these Admission is free and is open from Mon- from across Europe were deported to communities endured are not forgotten. Fri 10.00 – 17.30, Tues 10.00 – 19.30. the Zigeunerlager (‘Gypsy camp’) at These unique collections are available for For more information on The Wiener Auschwitz-Birkenau, where it is estimated users to access digitally in the Library’s Holocaust Library, and where to find it, that 21,000 people were murdered. On Wolfson Reading Room. visit www.wienerlibrary.co.uk.

12 AJR Journal | October 2019

A ROMA REVIEW

LEAVES IN A HOLOCAUST WIND by Robert Dawson Austin Macauley Publishers ISBN 978-1786937179

Three generations ago little children ‘gypsies’. Dawson was able to tap were expected to be ‘seen and in to their oral culture to write not heard’, but today’s children testimonies for those who were unable are considered people in their own to write. Zuzzi, in France, and Foxy, right. Sadly, not so for Roma/Gypsy/ in Slovakia, are fictional characters Travellers. Even today many people based on the oral testimonies Dawson wish neither to see them nor allow absorbed. Sole survivors of their large them a voice in the community. And families caught up in Nazi purges, this goes for Holocaust testimony too, they give statements to the Allied War of which Romany ones, like this book, Crimes Commission after the war. The are rare. reader is immediately drawn into the two teenagers’ situation of awe and For decades the Roma part of the anxiety but also their determination Holocaust was air-brushed out of the at taking on such a task so soon after Jewish narrative of the Holocaust, in the massive trauma and grief they spite of documented evidence of Roma have suffered. They feel they must The theme of leaves appears in all the main concentration camps tell the world what happened to their repeatedly, first introduced in the and killing fields of Eastern Europe, families and themselves. Dawson has passionate dancing of Zuzzi as a even in the same barracks as Jews. The them choosing to do this by first Foxy happy little girl, and later in more narrative kept them invisible just as and then Zuzzi telling their own family sombre tones representing the fate of local planning laws try to do today. So story up to the point where they first Romanies scattered like leaves in the it is very important that Dawson, who meet. After that they tell their joint wind and the bitter-sweet music of has been seeped in Romany culture story alternately, chapter by chapter. their guitars. Both the title of the book since he was a small boy, exposes and the cover design magnificently the truth about this much maligned Just as in so many Jewish survivor capture this essence of Romany being. people. testimonies, the reader is taken to The leaves that city dwellers sweep meet the people in each of the two away as rubbish are the fundamental Why, when an international day of families and is introduced to the pillar of survival skills of those who remembrance, commemoration and traditions, beliefs and mores of two live with nature in the countryside. Holocaust education was eventually variations of the gentle, self-sustaining founded in 2001, was it a ‘Jewish and very rich culture of the Romanies. The end of the story will come as a only’ narrative? The devastation and The appearance of the Nazis brings shock to many readers but, sadly, demoralisation of six years of war all the horror and destruction intrinsic true to the still pervasive attitude to was on such a scale that those who in any Jewish Holocaust testimony, gypsies today - that they are often survived had little energy or appetite yet from an interestingly different not taken seriously and ‘don’t count’. for anything more than picking up the angle. The Romany deep respect for As I read the story I wondered, like in shattered pieces of their lives to adjust all life is an antidote diametrically so many Holocaust testimonies, what and start anew. Avoidance, lethargy, opposite to the Nazi disregard for justice would there be for Zuzzi and indifference and denial set in. The all life they deem ‘unworthy of Foxy? How much justice was even very first memorial to the Holocaust living’. Roma and Jews have thrived possible after WW2? And how little victims, Yad Vashem, was opened in persecution, not by aggression but of what might have been possible was Jerusalem in 1963. Because the rest of by developing skills that help them to actualised! Dawson’s story captures the world was not ready to face the adapt. Romanies adapt through their this well. past, Yad Vashem’s narrative spread closeness to nature in the countryside. through the Jewish diaspora as ‘Jewish Dawson’s story introduces us to many Dawson offers 21 books for further property’. of their skills in utilising the bounty reading for those who have been of nature for food, healing, hiding, inspired by this book to learn more Leaves in a Holocaust Wind introduces communication and many other ways about Roma as an interesting human readers to the richness of the Romany vital to survival and radically different people like any other. culture and the humanity behind to Jewish adaptation mainly within the usual negative stereotypes of urban living. Ruth Barnett

13 AJR Journal | October 2019 LOOKING FOR?

The AJR regularly receives messages from our members and others looking for people or for help in particular subjects. Here are some of the most recent requests – please get in touch directly with the person concerned if you can help.

Passengers on board the MS St. Louis KINDER HOSTEL IN TWICKENHAM Andy Lawrence, a History teacher at MS ST LOUIS REUNION ENFIELD KINDER Hampton School, wishes to incorporate In the December 1983 AJR Journal Hans Henry Jacobs is hoping to find former more about the Kindertransport into his Kupsch asked about a possible reunion of refugees who were cared for in 1939 at teaching of the Holocaust and is seeking “MS St. Louis Survivors”. Michigan-based Enfield and Winchmore Hill Synagogue, information on a former hostel for Kinder Shailesh Saigal, who has Hans Kupsch’s 53 Wellington Road, EN1 2PG, and who at 52 Lebanon Park Road, Twickenham. travel documents, would love to know can recall Reverend Abraham Lewin. He [email protected] whether a reunion ever took place. particularly wishes to find the families of [email protected] Hanan (Hans) Waizner and Max Pais. [email protected] FINCHLEY STRASSE Playwright Amy Rosenthal, currently under BABY BRODIE FROM COLOGNE commission to the Hampstead Theatre, is Information is sought about the case of a NON-ARYAN CHRISTIANS FROM interested in the history of Swiss Cottage/ baby girl from Cologne who was brought to BERLIN Finchley Road as a post-war base for Jewish the UK in September 1938 and subsequently Roland Dunn is looking for descendants refugees. She wishes to talk to anyone with adopted by Margaret & Benjamin Brodie of refugees who came from Berlin in memories of the area, particularly the Cosmo of Cooden Road, Bexhill, and later of Farm June 1938 with the help of Miss Laura Café. Avenue, NW2. Livingstone - Bishop Bell’s representative [email protected] [email protected] in Berlin – and the Church of England Committee for Non-Aryan Christians. [email protected] REICHENHEIMSCHES WAISENHAUS, BRITISH LIBRARY KINDER PROJECT BERLIN The British Library is aiming to preserve Information, photos or other materials digitally the UK’s most at-risk audio KINDER AND THEIR DESCENDANTS are sought on/from Kindertransportees recordings through the Unlocking Our Carmen-Francesca Banciu, a Berlin- and refugees who used to live in the Sound Heritage Project, making them based German writer of Romanian origin Reichenheimsche Waisenhaus, an freely available to the public. One of the (and with long hidden Jewish roots) is orphanage of the Jewish Community in collections selected for this project is a seeking for her new novel the answer Berlin. A publication is planned for the 150th series of oral history interviews made in to the questions of forgiveness and anniversary of the opening of the orphanage 1989 by the Central British Fund / World reconciliation and their possible limits. in 2022. Jewish Relief with over 100 individuals who She is particularly interested to interview [email protected] came to Britain on the Kindertransports. Kindertransportees and their descendants This collection, which commemorates the about their attitudes to these subjects. 50th anniversary of the Kindertransport, [email protected] Books Bought was deposited at the British Library Sound Archive in 1991. Josie Wales, Data Modern and Old Protection and Rights Clearance Officer for FELICITAS HAUSEN/BLUM Eric Levene the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage Project, Jeanne Kortz is looking for her long lost aunt, is seeking to contact the 100+ participants Felicitas Hausen, now Mrs. Ernst Heinz Blum, 020 8364 3554 / 07855387574 or their families to ask permission to publicly who came via a Kindertransport from Berlin [email protected] share the interviews. and settled in London. [email protected] [email protected]

14 AJR Journal | October 2019 From Trotsky to Chagall THE ROLE OF JEWS IN THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky Onward, Onward by Marc Chagall

Russian Jews played a very order for the execution of the Tsar and Moshe Neppelbaum was the most his family was given by Sverdlov and prominent exponent of photography important part in the October then approved by Lenin. The execution before the Revolution and ended 1917 revolution. One of the squad was a mixed bunch with a variety up photographing all the famous of weapons. The squad of six had one politicians and artists of the time. most notable was Trotsky. Jewish member, Yurovsky, who always He was the first Jew since boasted that he fired the first shot. One of the best films of all times is The Battleship Potemkin, made by ancient times to become the Two assassination attempts were made Sergei Eisenstein. Other important film commander of an army. His real on leaders of the revolution, both carried makers were: Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid out by Jews. The first one, by a man Trauberg, Sergei Yutkevich, Mikhail name was Bronstein, but after called Kanigesser, was on the head of Romm, Iofitz Kheifitz, Alexander Zrkhi, the local Cheka, Ulitsky, another Jew. Fridrikh Elmer. escaping from a tsarist prison The attempt in front of the Mikhelson he took on the name of his Factory on Lenin, was by Fanny Kaplan, Jews in Russia were teachers, doctors, who considered Lenin a traitor to the engineers, artists, and they now prison warden. His role in the revolution because he was not extreme became comrades sharing Bolshevik revolution can be said to have enough. Lenin was hit, but survived. values and ideology. The country saw Both Kanigesser and Kaplan were them as the builders of socialism and been as important as Lenin’s. subsequently shot. To revenge Ulitsky’s they were much appreciated - but of death 500 people, mainly from the course this then did not last too long. Trotsky’s army marched to the aristocracy, were then executed. music of Samuel Pokrass with Janos Fisher Chagall studied painting in St words by Pavel Gorinstein. Petersburg and Paris; when he returned home he became Commissar Another important personality with a for the Arts. After the revolution WHY NOT CONVERT prominent role was Sverdlov: he was many murals of his were hung in St YOUR OLD CINE president for two years and academies Petersburg. They were signed: “From FILMS were set up in his name to train a new Chagall to Vitebsk”, the town where AND PUT THEM generation of commissars. He never he was born and which was the ON DVDS wore a uniform, but sported a short subject of many of his works. The new FREE OF CHARGE? leather jacket which then became avant-garde style became the official Contact Alf Buechler at [email protected] very fashionable for a time. The art form for Russia after the revolution. or tel 020 8554 5635 or 07488 774 414

15 AJR Journal | October 2019

‘Royal’ cake maker Dawn Around Blundell created this amazing cake, which is a replica of The Walled Garden at Highgrove, in the AJR November 2008 for HRH The Prince of Wales’ 60th These are just a few of the many recent birthday. On 29 October AJR events around the country. Dawn will talk to the AJR’s North West London group. NORTH LONDON Following our delicious annual Celebratory Lunch we were regaled by “CJ” with a wonderful medley of songs from various decades, with keyboard accompaniment. CONTACTS It was a most professional and successful event, thoroughly enjoyed by all. Susan Harrod Gordon Spencer PLEASE JOIN US AT OUR NEW Events and Outreach Manager HAMPSTEAD GROUP 020 8385 3070 ILFORD [email protected] IN CONJUNCTION WITH Nick Dobson took us through Swinging SOUTH HAMPSTEAD SYNAGOGUE Wendy Bott London in the Sixties: the Beatles came on Northern Outreach Co-ordinator stream, the Clean Air Act came into force, 07908 156 365 England won the World Cup, Dr Who [email protected] started and trolley buses were phased out. Agnes Isaacs Meta Roseneil Northern Outreach Co-ordinator Monday 11 November 2019 07908 156 361 [email protected] GLASGOW 2pm-4pm Ros Hart at South Hampstead Synagogue, Southern Outreach Co-ordinator 3 Eton Road, London, Nw3 4AY 07966 969 951 [email protected] Rabbi Shlomo Levin will be our guest Karen Diamond speaker at this inaugural meeting. Southern Outreach Co-ordinator We will then continue to meet on the second 07966 631 778 Monday of each month. [email protected] KT-AJR (Kindertransport) Please contact Ros Hart on Susan Harrod Over 40 first and second generation [email protected] 020 8385 3070 members of Glasgow’s AJR ‘family’ or 07966 969 951 [email protected] enjoyed a very special lunch in the Reform Child Survivors’ Association-AJR Synagogue to mark the 80th anniversary Henri Obstfeld of the Kindertransport. Henry Wuga spoke 020 8954 5298 of arriving in Glasgow at the age of 15 in switch on electrics [email protected] 1939, thanks to the massive co-ordination Rewires and all household effort involving the Quakers, not really electrical work understanding why he and the other PHONE PAUL: 020 8200 3518 children had had to leave their homes. He Mobile: 0795 614 8566 spring grove left us with many questions, time too short London’s Most Luxurious and full of praise for AJR. The group also RETIREMENT HOME celebrated Alice Malcolm’s 95th birthday. 214 Finchley Road www.fishburnbooks.com London NW3 Ruth Ramsay Jonathan Fishburn buys and sells Jewish and Hebrew books,  Entertainment PINNER ephemera and items of  Activities Dan Fox gave us an insight into the Jewish interest.  Stress Free Living experiences of a Jewish ‘volunteer’, He is a member of the Antiquarian  24 House Staffing Excellent Cuisine  Full En-Suite Facilities later a ‘regular’, in the British Army’s Booksellers Association. intelligence battalion and his deployment Contact Jonathan on Call for more information or a personal tour 020 8455 9139 in Afghanistan. A subject with a difference, 020 8446 2117 or 07813 803 889 or 020 7794 4455 and very well presented. for more information [email protected] Henri Obstfeld

16 AJR Journal | October 2019

FORTHCOMING AJR EVENTS

TITLE DATE VENUE DETAILS CONTACT

KT LUNCH 2 October North Western Reform Dr Bea Lewkowicz, Director of Refugee Voices – Susan Harrod Synagogue the AJR’s ground breaking Holocaust testimony Alyth Gardens of over 200 filmed interviews. Dr Lewkowicz will talk about Kinder who have taken part in the project.

CARDS & 7 October North Western Reform Bridge, Backgammon, Scrabble, Rumikub, Games Ros Hart GAMES Synagogue dependent on numbers being sufficient. Light lunch served before games commence. Booking essential

KRISTALLNACHT 5 November Prestwich Hebrew This special event will begin with lunch, followed Wendy Bott SERVICE 12.30pm Congregation by our keynote speaker, Dr Bea Lewkowicz, (Shrubberies) Director of Refugee Voices. The event will end with Rabbi Eisenberg reciting the Memorial Prayer for Victims of the Holocaust and Kaddish, together with a candle lighting ceremony.

ANNUAL 7 November Belsize Square Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg will officiate the Karin Pereira KRISTALLNACHT 2pm Synagogue service, which will include a testimony from SERVICE AJR member Eli Abt and an address by Clare Weissenberg of the Kitchener Descendants Group.

REGIONAL MEETINGS The AJR operates a nationwide network of Regional Groups that offer our members a unique opportunity to socialise with friends of similar backgrounds. There will be an interesting programme of speakers, plus the opportunity to meet up with old friends and make new friends. There will always be the opportunity for socialising at each meeting, plus a cup of tea or coffee and some cake in true AJR style. All AJR members are welcome at any of these events; you do not have to be affiliated to that particular group. Please contact the relevant regional contact for full details.

GROUP CO-ORDINATOR AUGUST EVENT Ilford Karen Diamond 2 October Susan Kikoler – The History of the Jews of Italy

Cheshire Wendy Bott 2 October Social get-together

Edinburgh Agnes Isaacs 3 October Sharon Mail – Co-ordinator for ‘My Story’ project

Glasgow Book Club Agnes Isaacs 10 October Book Club meeting

Hertfordshire Ros Hart 16 October Jonathan Sumberg – BBC News Cameraman & Producer

Glasgow Agnes Isaacs 24 October Lunch at the Corinthian Club

North West London Karen Diamond 29 October Dawn Blundell – Baking Cakes for the Royal Family Ros Hart

Book Club Karen Diamond 30 October Book Club

Muswell Hill Ros Hart 31 October Andrew Leigh, Nightingale Hammerson – Making the right choices

North London Ros Hart 31 October Judy Karbitz – Behind the Camera

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OBITUARIES

STEPHEN LITCHFIELD STEPHEN LITCHFIELD (formerly Siegfried Lichtigfeld) (formerly Siegfried Lichtigfeld) joined by their parents in August 1939. Born: 21 December 1924, Düsseldorf Born: 21 December 1924, Düsseldorf Died: 9 April 2019, London NW11 Died: 9 April 2019, London NW11 In England, Simon started a successful food business, which assisted the Food Ministry supply Siegfried Lichtigfeld (later known as Stephen rations during WWII. Litchfield for professional reasons) was the eldest The boys studied at Welwyn Garden City Grammar School and of twins born in Düsseldorf to Matilda (née law at University College, London. Landau) and Simon Lichtigfeld. He died on 9 April Siegfried remained close to his family, in America, Europe, Israel 2019. His twin, Paul, died in 1981. and South Africa. His uncles were rabbis, lawyers, or judges. I met Siegfried through his cousin Freddie Lichtigfeld and uncle Simon was a successful factory owner who was awarded the Iron Adolph (then a South African rabbi). Cross in WWI. Initially, the boys were educated in Germany, until state education was banned for Jews. Siegfried exemplified the traits of his South African relatives: All were self-effacing, learned, humane, and humble. They Shortly before Kristallnacht (9-10 November, 1938), Simon came to showed inexhaustible tolerance, well-illustrated by the fact England to arrange to immigrate to Britain. His family remained in that although I knew them for many years, I never heard them Düsseldorf and were given refuge by a gentile employee of Simon’s. criticise anyone. It was the latter trait that made them all so special to me. Returning to Germany, Simon eventually found his family at their refuge. The Nazis had vandalised their home, including the boys’ The many tributes received on Siegfried’s death all noted that toys. Siegfried was ‘a true gentleman, and a very private person.’ He is survived by his wife Betty (née Rose). They had no children. In April 1939 the twins were sent to their uncle Adolph in London and therefore did not form part of the Kindertransport. They were Prof. Mark A. Gillman, South Africa

ALBERT WAXMAN After release he joined his Born: 26 November 1924, Alsace parents in Paris where they had Died: 20 August 2019, Bradford miraculously survived, later moving back to Saarbrucken to resume Albert’s parents Samuel and Lipka Wachsmann their cloth business. During a kept a draper’s shop in Saarbrucken. His father was buying trip to Bradford in 1949 a learned Talmudic scholar who instructed rabbis he met Lilly Sobol. They married a year later and Albert moved back and served as the local cantor. to Bradford to work for his father in law, Adolph Sobol. After six years After living through a terrifying Kristallnacht - their flat was he started his own textile business and later bought and expanded ransacked by the SS and the family fled in their nightclothes – Sobol’s mill in Elland. Albert and his three brothers were dispersed overseas. Idush and Isaac went to Palestine, Phillips - the youngest - to a farm in France His hobby was golf and he later became President of his club. He and Albert on the Kindertransport to the UK. was also President of the JIA and the Bradford Jewish Benevolent Society. Later he took over the Presidency of the failing Bradford He was sent to a Jewish hostel in Bradford, learned English for three Hebrew Congregation, his acumen keeping it going for a further months, then set to work in a comb factory. He opened a Post 25 years. Office account with seven shillings and later said “my bank book was the book that changed my life.” Albert Waxman was a prominent industrialist and philanthropist, highly respected for his modesty, sincerity, generosity and integrity. He joined an engineering company, but quit at 18 to join up. With Many benefited from his advice, warmth, and kindness. He is almost no education, he passed his pilot’s exam and joined the RAF, survived by Lilly, their children Susan, Richard and Alan, their where he was recognised as ‘an excellent Ace’. grandsons Samuel and Joshua and great-granddaughter Willow.

18 AJR Journal | October 2019 TRANSIT ON SCREEN

British cinemas this summer screened a new adaptation of Transit, Anna Seghers’ classic novel about desperate refugees – stranded in wartime Marseille, and frantically seeking a ship’s passage to America.

Seghers wrote the novel during her Mexican exile and based it on her own experiences. First issued during the war in Spanish and English, the original German version was published in book form in 1948. It has been filmed at least twice before, in 1977 and 1991. Transit is now Co-produced by ARTE and ZDF, available in French and German television DVD format stations, Transit was first released in 2018 and received favourable reviews. It is available as a DVD.

Germany’s Christian Petzold, Transit’s director, has previously made films in 1900, Netty Reiling adopted the secure a passage to New York, but linked to an Auschwitz survivor and pen-name Anna Seghers, possibly they were turned back on Ellis Island to the Stasi (East Germany’s secret because she was familiar with the and ended up in Mexico City; the police). While following Transit’s work of the painter Hercules Seghers, Mexican government accepted the storyline, he intentionally sets it in a contemporary of Rembrandt – the family as part of its programme to today’s Marseille. That may have subject of Seghers’ thesis. Seghers allow entry to anti-Franco veterans of confused some viewers, but his joined the Communist Party in 1928 the Spanish civil war. - purpose is clear: he wants to draw and formally gave up her Jewish attention to the migration drama affiliation in 1932. Her Hungarian After the war, Seghers settled in on our doorstep that we have been husband László Rádvanyi was also a what became East Berlin. Much fêted living through these past years. The communist. Briefly arrested after the and awarded several literary prizes, Guardian referred to its ‘chilling Nazis came to power, Seghers, with Seghers remained a steadfastly loyal topicality.’ her husband and their two children, communist to the end, allowing escaped via Switzerland from Germany the German Democratic Republic Seghers described the refugees – to Paris. There she became active in to exploit her fame. She clouded Spanish civil war veterans, Jews the émigré opposition to Hitler and her reputation, however, by not and opponents of the Nazis fleeing completed her novel about fugitives openly taking a stand on popular persecution and others – drifting in from a concentration camp, Das Siebte uprisings in East Berlin, Hungary and the cafés of the Vichy-administered Kreuz (The Seventh Cross). The English Czechoslovakia, or criticising the port as they struggle to get a place translation became a bestseller and in regime when it persecuted intellectual on a boat and obtain the documents 1944 the basis of the Austro-American and artistic personalities such as the they need, false or genuine – job Fred Zinnemann’s first movie hit. chansonnier Wolf Biermann and the offers, guarantors, exit, transit and publisher Walter Janka. Seghers died entry visas. -Transit was seen as a Fleeing Paris, Seghers managed to in 1983. Her son Peter described her situation ‘where you can’t stay where free her husband from detention in novel Transit as a topical story for the you are, and you can’t go elsewhere.’ Le Vernet, a camp in the Pyrenees. whole world. In Marseille the Quakers and other Born into a Jewish family in Mainz organisations helped the Seghers family Martin Mauthner

19 AJR Journal | October 2019

IHRA GRANTS Events and Exhibitions The International BEYOND BAUHAUS session is specifically for the Second Generation Holocaust Remembrance This new exhibition revisits the impact of and involves personal participation. Alliance (IHRA) has announced that three notable Bauhaus émigrés: Walter 3 November at 11.00am the grant call for 2020 applications Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy- JW3 is now open. The IHRA will consider Nagy, centreing on the brief period of www.jw3.org.uk grant applications from non-profit 1934-37 when they came to live and work organisations and institutions in the in Britain. THIRD GENERATION: HOLOCAUST AND ME field of education, remembrance, 1 October – 1 February 2020 Grandchildren of survivors and refugees can join and research for programmes Architecture Gallery, RIBA, W1B 1AD a discussion group to explore the significance that meet one of the IHRA’s www.architecture.com of the Holocaust in their own lives. It will be core objectives, ie safeguarding facilitated by David Polak, a psychotherapist the record of the Holocaust and BEING SECOND GENERATION and grandchild of survivors who has led the genocide of the Roma, and Children of Holocaust survivors and groups, given talks and radio interviews about countering distortion. refugees will explore together how it has the concept of holocaust trauma transmission affected their lives. The workshop will be through the generations. This session is Full information on the IHRA’s grant led by Gaby Glassman, a psychologist and specifically for the Third Generation. strategy and the application process psychotherapist who has facilitated second 3 November at 2.00pm can be found on generation and intergenerational groups in JW3 https://holocaustremembrance. the UK and abroad since the 1980s. This www.jw3.org.uk com/funding

AWARDS FOR AJR MEMBERS SONIA STRONG Honorary Life Vice President, an honour The Merseyside Jewish Representative richly deserved and one which we all hope Council has appointed Sonia Strong as the she will enjoy in good health and for a long first recipient of its highest honour, the time to come.” Honorary Life Vice-President award. VERA SCHAUFELD During a presentation on 3 September, The University of Roehampton has awarded Rep Council chairman Howard Winik an honorary doctorate to AJR member Vera said: “Sonia is the doyenne of Merseyside Schaufeld MBE, who came to England in WIZO and her work for that organisation is 1939 on the Kindertransport. She trained to Sonia Strong being presented with her legendary”. be a teacher, moved to Israel and lived on a award. kibbutz where she met her husband Avram - Sonia was born in Magdeburg and with also a Holocaust survivor - and together they her family had to flee Germany in 1934. moved back to London where she taught Since arriving in Liverpool after her English to recently arrived Asian immigrants. marriage to Gerald, a well-known Liverpool solicitor who died in 1990, she has been At a Festival Hall ceremony in July, University active in a wide range of community Vice-Chancellor Professor Jean-Noël life, including the 35s Group and Wizo. Ezingeard said “Vera is a truly inspirational She is a regular attender at Merseyside person, whose suffering created in her a Jewish Representative Council meetings drive to support others. She has dedicated and Mr Winik said: “her often powerful her life to upholding those values which contributions to our debates have reflected our institution holds most dear and to Vera Schaufeld, together with Dr a richness of experience and a passion combatting those actions and attitudes Christopher Stephens, Head of for Israel and her fellow Jews that is an which we most abhor. We are honoured to Southlands College, and Professor Jean- example to us all. . . it is fitting that we call her a member of Southlands College and Noël Ezingeard, Vice Chancellor of the should choose Sonia as the council’s first an honorary graduate of the University.” University of Roehampton.

Published by The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR), a company limited by guarantee. Registered office: Winston House, 2 Dollis Park, Finchley, London N3 1HF Registered in England and Wales with charity number: 1149882 and company number: 8220991 Telephone 020 8385 3070 e-mail [email protected] AssociationofJewishRefugees @TheAJR_ For the latest AJR news, including details of forthcoming events and information about our services, visit www.ajr.org.uk Printed by FBprinters, Unit 5, St Albans House, St Albans Lane, London NW11 7QB Tel: 020 8458 3220 Email: [email protected] The AJR Journal is printed on 100% recycled material and posted out in fully recyclable plastic mailing envelopes.

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