JOURNAL the Association of Jewish Refugees

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 2 AJR Journal | October 2019 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,

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