VOLUME 21 NO.2 FEBRUARY 2021 JOURNAL The Association of Jewish Refugees

FEBRUARY Should we FORWARDS The first few weeks of 2021 have certainly brought some challenges but there are glimpses of light at the end of rebuild the past? the tunnel. Here at the AJR we have started our The great British historian AJP Taylor once wrote that the western 80th year with good news, in the form of honours for some of our colleagues, allies betrayed Czechoslovakia but Prague survived the war and also some fabulous online events, intact. On the other hand, the allies went to war to defend Poland with many more coming up - see the list on the back page. and Warsaw was almost completely destroyed. It was not just As the days continue to lengthen we these two capitals, of course. Riga and Tallinn were also almost will be doing everything in our power untouched, whereas Danzig and Berlin were devastated by war. to make your days as bright as possible. In the meantime we hope you enjoy reading this issue of the AJR Journal and look forward to receiving any feedback.

AJR News...... 3 The children of the SS Manhattan...... 4 Letter from Israel...... 5 Letters to the Editor/Looking For...... 6 – 7 Art Notes...... 8 The Jews of Hungary...... 9 One ‘HMD’ opinion...... 10 Introducing the Brady Archive...... 11 An Addiction...... 12 Proud to be German...... 13 A ‘Bounced Czech’...... 14 Memories of a refugee childhood...... 15 Reviews...... 16 – 17 Obituaries...... 18 – 19 Events...... 20

Please note that the views expressed Gedächtniskirche, Berlin - before the War Gedächtniskirche - today throughout this publication are not necessarily the views of the AJR. In December, The Jewish Chronicle a dedication to the synagogue’s first published an article by Toby Axelrod rabbi, led to the campaign. “The town AJR Team about a campaign which had just square has been empty ever since,” said Chief Executive Michael Newman been launched in Germany to raise Hamburg’s mayor Katharina Fegebank, Finance Director David Kaye 65 million Euros to pay for the first in a statement of support. “We now Heads of Department Community & Volunteer Services Carol Hart full reconstruction of the Bornplatz have a moral obligation to try to heal HR & Administration Karen Markham Synagogue in Hamburg, largely that wound.” Educational Grants & Projects Alex Maws destroyed during Kristallnacht. “There Social Services Nicole Valens are virtually no traces of the synagogue Her statement raises an important AJR Journal on the spot where it stood,” wrote question. Undoubtedly, there is a Editor Jo Briggs Axelrod. But the recent discovery of “wound”. The question is: Is it obvious Editorial Assistant Lilian Levy an old Torah crown, engraved with Continued on page 2 Contributing Editor David Herman

1 AJR Journal | February 2021

Should we rebuild the Yesterday the very furniture seemed to memory or absence, the meaning of reproach you. buildings or whether we should rebuild past? (cont.) Today you take your place in the ruins or keep them as a form of silent that should we try to heal it? Could Widow’s Shuttle.” testimony. it be possible that the best way to preserve the memories of the war and It is a brilliant evocation of the Another great historian who was much the Holocaust are to be confronted importance of “the spaces in between more interested in these questions with emptiness, to face up to the many the houses”, “the streets that no longer was the German-born historian Peter wounds and the devastation they have exist”, “what you have forgotten, what Gay, Freud’s biographer and a leading left? you must forget.” Or perhaps the best historian of 19th and 20th century way to remember is by being confronted Europe. In a fascinating memoir, My One of my favourite buildings in Berlin, by what remains, whether it is partly German Question (1998), Gay (né which I visit every time I go there, is destroyed like the Gedächtniskirche or Fröhlich) describes returning to the the Gedächtniskirche or Kaiser Wilhelm whether it no longer exists at all, but is city where he spent his early childhood Memorial Church. Following allied just an absence. before his family fled from the Nazis. bombing during the war, the original He had returned to Europe three times west Tower has remained standing as a There is somewhere else I always visit before, but couldn’t face going back ruin and is hauntingly named “der hohle when I go to Berlin. My favourite to Germany. Then in 1961 he returns Zahn”, “the hollow tooth”, a mutilated street is Fasanenstrasse, also in west to his childhood homes (none of which remnant of what was once a beautiful Berlin. There is my favourite German have survived). What he expects is church on the Ku’damm. The original café, Café im Literaturhaus, beautiful a kind of Proustian moment, that he church was built in the 1890s, just a few in summer or winter, a converted belle will be flooded by memories of his years before the Bornplatz Synagogue in époque villa, one of Berlin’s loveliest childhood. But instead, there is a kind Hamburg. spots for Kaffee and Kuchen. A few of anaesthesia, a lack of memory. “My buildings along is the Käthe-Kollwitz- past,” he writes, “was proving to be a The church was badly damaged in Museum, home to one of Germany’s mosaic with central pieces missing.” 1943. A debate about what should be greatest modern artists. But these done with the remains of the church are not the only reason I always go A mosaic is a picture made up of ran on until the late 1950s. Following to Fasanenstrasse. It was where my fragments and as he describes the few pressure from the public, it was decided mother and uncle grew up before they memories that come back to him, they to incorporate the ruined tower into fled to Britain with their mother as are all of fragments, of things broken, the new design. The new church was refugees in 1938. Now nothing remains wounded or grotesque: an “idiot who consecrated in December 1961, largely of the once beautiful house. It was wandered the streets of northern Berlin restored but also still partly mutilated, completely destroyed during the war. …. A stunted creature with a gigantic a reminder of what had happened It has now been replaced by the truly head, awkward gait, and slavering during the war. There was no attempt to hideous Börse Berlin AG (or Berlin Stock mouth”, “the torso of a headless pretend the church had not been badly Exchange), one of the ugliest modern chicken”, a photograph of “a German damaged. It was party restored but not buildings in Berlin, which conveys no soldier dreadfully wounded in the First completely. The ruins were part of its sense of the extraordinary history of the World War but still living even though history, symbolising the larger history of city, let alone of my family’s history. half of his face had been shot away.” Berlin and Germany. He then goes on to describe “the ruin of As AJP Taylor pointed out, much of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Church, a “torso”, In his great poem, A German Requiem, Warsaw was destroyed during the war, “fragmentary remains”. Everywhere, published twenty years later, in 1981, including the neighbourhood where my Gay’s imagery is of fragments, James Fenton wrote, father grew up. Nothing remains from mutilation, things broken. his childhood. None of the buildings “It is not what they built. It is what they he knew, none of the people he knew, What draws Gay to these images? knocked down. not one member of his family. Much Perhaps it is something about his It is not the houses. It is the spaces in of central Warsaw has been beautifully childhood which was irreparably broken, between the houses. restored, but not the Jewish quarter. A despite his hugely successful career. It is not the streets that exist. It is the few places remain: The Jewish Cemetery How true is this for other refugees? streets that no longer exist. at Okopowa Street, some blocks of flats Is there something profoundly untrue It is not your memories which haunt you. near Waliców Street, Z’elazna Street and about rebuilding synagogues, churches, It is not what you have written down. Grzybowski Square, and a synagogue whole neighbourhoods which were once It is what you have forgotten, what you near Grzybowski Square. destroyed? Perhaps we should face up must forget. to a painful truth, that the past was What you must go on forgetting all your See: http://upload.wikimedia.org/ broken and destroyed, and shouldn’t be life. wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Warsaw_ rebuilt in its entirety. “It is not the streets And with any luck oblivion should that exist. It is the streets that no longer discover a ritual. Taylor was interested in the ironies of exist.” You will find out that you are not alone modern history. He was a great historian in the enterprise. but he was not terribly interested in David Herman

2 AJR Journal | February 2021

AJR HONOURS The AJR is delighted to congratulate two colleagues who have received awards in the Carol Hart Anthony Spiro Queen’s New Year Honours.

Carol Hart, AJR’s Head of Volunteer and Anthony Spiro, AJR Trustee and Joint Germany, while the AJR provides Community Services, receives an MBE President of The Wiener Holocaust Library, comfort, friendship, social care for services to the Jewish community is awarded an OBE for services to Holocaust and financial support to its refugee during the Covid-19 pandemic. Carol remembrance. Anthony, a long-serving AJR membership.” has worked for the AJR for 15 years trustee said, “I am enormously honoured to managing a team of coordinators and receive this award, which I dedicate to the AJR Chairman Andrew Kaufman over 350 volunteers. Since the beginning memory of my parents, Anna and Ludwig MBE and Chief Executive Michael of lockdown Carol has put in place new Spiro, who fled Germany to make a new Newman said: “We send our warmest services to ensure the well-being of AJR’s life in the United Kingdom. They took an congratulations to Anthony and Carol. members including regular phone-calls, active role as volunteers at The Wiener This is wonderful news and truly letter writing, socially-distanced garden Holocaust Library and The Association reflects and rightly recognises how visits and online support groups for carers. of Jewish Refugees. I am proud to have devoted they both are to the AJR’s followed their example. mission. Anthony continues to be a Carol said, “After the shock of hearing source of great wisdom and good about the Honour, my feeling is of “The Wiener and the AJR are counsel, helping to ensure the AJR is immense gratitude that I have the independent charities yet their work in the best possible shape to carry out opportunity to work for a superb charity overlaps and they are both particularly our services, while Carol has earned her which supports inspirational members relevant today. The Library is the glowing reputation as a conscientious, alongside a team of dedicated staff, world’s oldest institution for the study thoughtful and caring senior manager volunteers and trustees.” of antisemitism and the crimes of Nazi of the AJR.”

from Margaret Thatcher to James Callaghan. some exciting ambitions for marking this THE AJR @ 80 tremendous milestone and look forward to While the current climate makes it sharing more details as our plans develop.” This summer will mark the 80th impossible for us to plan, let alone sell, anniversary of the AJR and, social tickets for, any major gatherings in the circumstances permitting, we are near future we hope to make it possible for every AJR member to join in the 80th CALLING ALL hoping to be able to mark this anniversary celebrations in a safe, yet milestone in style. significant way. Our online programming FAMILY CARERS will play a major role of course, and we AJR is running three ‘Winter Wellbeing’ Long-serving members may remember look forward to sharing more details in due workshops especially for anyone who high profile celebrations for previous course. is caring for others, to help them make milestones. In 2011, for example, members time for themselves: were invited to attend a reception at the We are also hoping to find a way of Emotional resilience and wellbeing Austrian Ambassador’s London residence physically honouring some of the people 4 February at 11.30am as well as a series of lunches and teas and places who symbolise the enormous Mindfulness around the country. In 2001 there was contribution of Jewish refugees. This is 18 February at 11.30am a celebration cabaret at the Grosvenor an exciting project which will involve a Creative Writing House Hotel, to mark the 60th anniversary, number of partners and we hope to give 4 March at 11.30 while activities for our Golden Anniversary many individual AJR members and their in 1991 included a gala dinner as well as a families the opportunity to get involved. All workshops will last approximately very special commemorative issue of the one hour and are free to join – please AJR Journal containing messages from As AJR Chief Executive Michael Newman contact our Family Carers Service HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, Chief Rabbi says: “The AJR’s 80-year heritage and that Coordinator Caryn Bentley on Lord Jakobovits, and politicans ranging of our members is remarkable. We have [email protected] or 07951 796 202

3 AJR Journal | February 2021 The children on the S.S. Manhattan Berlin radio journalist Matthias Schirmer recently set out to explore the fate of Jewish children who went on a kindertransport on 16 January 1939. His research yielded so much more information than he could have ever thought possible.

The postcard of the ocean liner, the SS Manhattan is now quite yellow with age – it is over 80 years old. The ship regularly sailed between Hamburg and New York. On the back Ruth wrote: “…..And I had a cabin!” Postcard of the SS Manhattan Ruth lived in Berlin 82 years ago, in the apartment directly below the one that I now occupy on the second floor of Marianne lived only five minutes away, At the harbour the children stood in our building. On 16 January 1939 Ruth on Kurfürstendamm. Her father hid in the front of the Nazi officials who barked was just 10 years old when she kissed attic in November 1938, and her mother orders at them. Then they climbed up her granny Jacoby goodbye forever told her, “Come away from the window”. the gangway of that huge steel colossus, and boarded a train to Hamburg with Ruth cannot remember Wolfgang from the SS Manhattan. They knew that the other children. Her granny died in the Schoeneberg either. He thought it was ship would bring them to safety. But they Jewish hospital a little later, her Opi cool that school was cancelled on 10 left so much behind. Via Le Havre to died in Theresienstadt and her mother November. His mother almost fainted Southampton. It is the longer of the two was gassed in the so-called “euthanasia with anger and relief when he came kindertransport routes. Ruth still raves action”. Ruth survived thanks to her home from playing late in the afternoon. about her cabin. And about the steward aunts, who later watched over her in Wolfgang’s father was taken to who treated her like a lady, not like a England. Today at the age of 92 she lives Sachsenhausen that night. He even wrote Jewish kid. Wolfgang was happy to see in Wolverhampton. a postcard from there: “The children must England on the horizon – “das Land der go to England!” Engel” - the land of angels, he thinks. Aunt Kaethe only went as far as the train station on that January morning in Berlin. Ulla, Wolfgang’s sister, was also at the In Southampton a rabbi was waiting She had given Ruth English lessons: “… train station. And Marianne. And Irene at the harbour: a friend of Marianne’s especially one address in London NW3 from the Dahlem district. Irene has left grandfather. He telegraphed to Berlin: which I had to repeat endlessly. I was the most accurate report: how they ‘Marianne arrived safely’. Her grandfather told, ‘If you get lost, ask an English met up with other Jewish children in was probably the most famous Jew in policeman.’” Ruth can remember some Hamburg, in a house with a kindergarten Nazi Germany: Leo Baeck. things very well: the Hitler-Jugend boy belonging to the Jewish community. who warned her on 10 November 1938: There they met Hildegard. At almost Many children’s memories on this trip “Don’t go to school, it’s burning“. Had 17, Hildegard was one of the oldest revolve around food. The ice cream for the boy been among the arsonists? girls, and she remembers that she had the older girls, the cocoa spilled out Ruth remembers the shaved heads of to look after the younger children on of fear. And the fact that people here her uncles who lived around the corner. the trip. She now lives in Canada. The eat something very, very strange called They returned from Sachsenhausen, the children also met Irma Zancker. She was “porridge”. concentration camp north of Berlin, after an educator by profession, one of five the night of terror. adult Jewish escorts. She was banned Let us honour those who helped these from her profession, just like the Berlin child survivors: people like Dr. Erna I found traces of some of the 15 boys and paediatrician Dr. Erna Davidsohn next Davidsohn and Irma Zancker, who went 73 girls who were on board with Ruth to her. Irma’s son was celebrating his back to help the next children escape. on 16 January 1939. But Ruth cannot 10th birthday at home that very day. Both died in Auschwitz. Let us honour remember Marianne, who travelled Without his mother. Because she was them. And let us tell their very individual with her on the train. And vice versa. accompanying other children to freedom. stories.

4 AJR Journal | February 2021

LETTER FROM ISRAEL BY DOROTHEA SHEFER-VANSON

EDUCATION Secondary-modern schools were mostly that secondary education should be co-educational and were considered co-educational. After all, the basic FOR GIRLS inferior. principle underlying society as a whole was that of equality, and only the My Secondary education for girls had not educational institutions allied with the grandchildren, been widely available for as long as it had orthodox Jewish population maintained who have grown been for boys. Even in secular England, separation of the sexes. In the 1960s the up in a secular for hundreds of years education had been British education system was radically environment considered suitable only for boys. If a girl overhauled, and many of the single-sex in Israel, find could read and write that was fine, but secondary schools were dissolved or it odd that more important was her ability to maintain converted into mixed-gender schools. I, their (hopefully) broad-minded a home, sew, cook, embroider and fulfil grandmother, should have gone to a the requirements of the male-dominated The question remains whether either of secondary school for girls. In Israel it is society. That was the way society was run, the two systems yields better academic only those segments of the population and there were no religious associations results and psychological benefits. which adhere to ancient tenets of involved, to the best of my knowledge. Studies have shown that girls tend to gender identification that maintain perform better academically in single- gender-segregated schools for their After all, women were considered inferior sex schools, though it’s not clear what offspring. In England, where I grew up, intellectually and were not given the effect co-education has on boys. the situation was similar but the ideas vote until 1918 in England, with most behind it were different. European countries following suit soon Teenage years are difficult enough at the afterwards. Early in the twentieth century best of times, but it seems to me that Those were different times when exceptional Englishwomen such as restricting youngsters to an environment I began attending school, back in Henrietta Barnett and Philippa Fawcett that bears no correspondence with the 1940s and 1950s. England was campaigned for secondary education to general society deprives them of the recovering from the war and struggling be extended to girls, organised financial ability to learn to cope with real life. So to maintain its place in the world. To and moral support and established the probably the sooner youngsters learn my generation of children it seemed first high schools for girls in London that the world consists of both boys and the most natural thing in the world to and elsewhere. They may have been girls the healthier it is for all concerned. take the eleven-plus exam and be sent influenced by the system prevailing in the according to one’s result to either a USA, but they were certainly pioneers in grammar school or a secondary-modern the context of Britain. (comprehensive) school. Naturally, WHY NOT CONVERT the aspiration of my refugee parents Since Israel’s foundation – and even YOUR OLD CINE was that I should be accepted by one beforehand – the concept of segregation FILMS of the grammar schools, and that of the sexes was rejected, and most AND PUT THEM was what indeed happened. I passed of the country’s institutions, including ON DVDS the exam and was given a place at a schools, were based on the principle of FREE OF CHARGE? nearby grammar school for girls, the gender equality. Thus, the age-cohort that Contact Alf Buechler at [email protected] Brondesbury and Kilburn High School. parallels mine took it quite for granted or tel 020 8554 5635 or 07488 774 414

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5 AJR Journal | February 2021 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.

BREXIT ‘GOT DONE’ and European institutions is widely I have attended has been stimulating, Now that Brexit has finally “got done” in misunderstood in Britain. This is well moving and full of interest, and the ones principle, I should like to wonder, through illustrated by Greg Lubinsky (January), I missed provide a resource of riches on your pages, whether refugees other than when he claims that Brussels’s greatest the AJR YouTube channel. My reading myself, have thoughts regarding the UK mistake was the decision by Germany has been extended to books I might separating from the most historically to admit one million refugees, many of otherwise have missed, including Thomas antisemitic continent in the world. This them Syrian. This was a decision made Harding’s wonderful Legacy, Gaby is, of course, quite apart from political unilaterally in Berlin, a decision in which Koppel’s excellent Reparation and Bryan considerations as outlined by your Brussels played no part and which was Cheyette’s informative, The Ghetto. correspondent Greg Lubinsky in the followed by no other European state. January edition of the AJR Journal. Apart from its lack of logic, it saddens me However – and equally important – Emil Landes, London N6 to see a letter so devoid of compassion participation in these AJR events has for those fleeing the slaughter in Syria made me feel a welcomed part of a published in a journal founded for community, for which I am so very EU REALITY those fortunate enough to escape the grateful. George Donath (January) is mistaken Holocaust. when he states that the European Anthony Grenville, London NW6 I am attaching a recently found Commission ‘rules Europe by default photograph of my late mother as a except on the very few occasions when small child, caught breaking curfew in member states agree’. The Commission, THANK YOU AJR Germany. I now understand much more like the British civil service, only I am a newcomer to the AJR, having about her life. has the power to propose, whereas joined only a couple of years ago. Since Jacqueline Hopson, North Devon political decisions are made by the that time, I have come to appreciate the Council of Ministers. This is the most Association more and more and am very powerful European institution; it is glad indeed I made contact and heard entirely composed of democratically back from Michael Newman. elected politicians, accountable to their electorates, and Mr Donath fails to My initial desire was to find advice about mention it even once. reinstatement of German citizenship, my mother having left Germany for Palestine To overcome the problem of slow decision- at age 6, with her parents and sister. (I making by the Council, the charge levelled have applied and am now awaiting a by Mr Donath, the EU instituted, back decision on my German naturalisation in the 1990s, the system of qualified application). However, the AJR provided Betty Langer, Jacqueline Hopson’s mother majority voting, whereby it was no longer me with surprisingly rich resources necessary for every state to consent to which have proved of immense value every decision. Brexiteers then shifted in this year of Covid-19. The printed their ground and castigated what they AJR Journal has been of considerable SILENCE BETWEEN GENERATIONS had asked for as an attack on ‘national interest; and the AJR e-newsletter has I read with interest David Busse’s article sovereignty’. Mr Donath is also mistaken become the major focus of my social in the January edition of the AJR Journal. when he calls the European Parliament life during 2020. I have much enjoyed He wrote about his parents who came to ‘toothless’. Since the first elections to many online events organised by the live in England escaping the Nazis. The the Parliament some forty years ago, it Association and am repeatedly impressed sentence that resonated for me was “.... has acquired considerable powers. The by the range and quality of these until the age of eight I had very little notion Brexit agreement, for example, could not offerings. Noteworthy among the online of being Jewish”. My own parents narrowly come into effect unless it was ratified groups have been Rebecca Clifford’s missed the camps, arriving here in London by the Parliament. Nor is it possible for appearance discussing her very impressive in 1939. For years I wondered why they the executive to try and remove the book, Survivors: Children’s Lives After never spoke about their parents and siblings European Parliament from the decision- the Holocaust; Selma Van de Perre’s - many of them were imprisoned and killed. making process for weeks on end, as the wonderful presentation of My Name is My parents settled eventually in Cumbria, Johnson-Cummings cabal did in autumn Selma; Gabriel Josipovici’s discussion of where I was born. Surrounded by non-Jews 2019 by having the monarch prorogue the his work; the Kristallnacht Service; and allowed them superficially to escape their Westminster parliament. Deborah Barnes’ inspiring talk about profoundly tragic history and so bury the her novel, The Young Survivors. Having past. This silence on the subject meant I too The relationship between member states started that list, I find that every event had no sense of my Jewish roots. It raises

6 AJR Journal | February 2021 LOOKING FOR? the question: do we gain something by came originally from Breslau and had VIENNESE MANCHESTER speaking about our painful memories? emigrated in 1936 to Austria after they Julian Borger seeks information about any They carried their pain nobly but I suspect were forced to sell their farm because Viennese Jews who (like his own father) they were never able to catch up with their they were, as Jews, no longer welcome secured escape in 1938-39 by advertising inner world. I am convinced it is better in Hitler’s Germany. In November 1938, in the Manchester Guardian for tuition or to face the pain and work through it. It is following Kristallnacht, they were employment. only now, many years later, am I able to expelled and had to leave their farm in [email protected] see the broader picture and consequently Carinthia. understand my dear departed parents. Yvonne Saville, London NW7 Since Berlin had been their last German MADELEINE WHITELAW address and also because I met my husband Jane Aspden is seeking links to Madeleine in 1957 at the Free University, Berlin has a Whitelaw, b.1940-42. Madeleine was WHAT’S IN A NAME? very special significance for us. We feel that a professional violinist/possibly pianist, The telephone directory was perhaps a we are ‘guest-Berliners’. It makes us very playing with various ensembles and popular resource for refugees who either happy that our grandson Josh has chosen occasionally giving concerts for the AJR. needed or wanted to change their names Berlin as his residence and that he feels [email protected] (Audrey Rosney - January). at home there. So his decision to visit the Stolpersteine and thus to connect with his My father was born Heinz Gelb and came Jewish past is very gratifying. HEDI DAVIS / POMPAN / REICHLER from Berlin in 1939. After a period in an Keiron Pim seeks information on Hedi internment camp on the Isle of Man he We think that some of you will have come Davis (previously Hedi Pompan, née joined the Pioneer Corps but was told to from Berlin and have Stolpersteine there. Reichler.) Her sister Friederike (Friedl) was change his name beforehand. If you would like Josh to visit them please married to Austro-Hungarian novelist email me ([email protected]) and and journalist Joseph Roth (1894-1939). He used the telephone directory and went I will pass your message on. Friedl died in the Shoah, Hedi escaped to to the “G”s - he wanted to keep his initials Ruth Schwiening, Market Bosworth London as a refugee. as he had a number of handkerchiefs with [email protected] the initials H.G. on them. The first H.G. he came to was Harold Gordon and he looked BEN HUR no further. The article about Miklos Rosza and the film GERMAN HANDWRITING Peter Gordon, Nottingham Ben Hur (October 2020) reminds me of Can you read Kurrentschrift? Simon the story that, as the famous chariot race Steyne’s father fled Prague in March 1939; would be very difficult to film, there would by 1941 he had received 50 letters from STOLPERSTEIN-RUN IN BERLIN be no rehearsal so the race would only be his grandmother. Simon can read German, run once and so become the substantive but not the handwriting, and is happy to one. After the race the director went from pay for assistance or make a donation. one cameraman to the next to enquire if [email protected] everything had gone according to plan. As he ascended the ladder of one, the cameraman shouted down: ‘ready when RABBI SCHMUCKLER you are.’ Keith Graham is looking for any Rudi Leavor BEM, Bradford information about his Great-Grandfather, Rabbi Schmuckler, who lived at Humboldstrasse 24, Leipzig, and was the LONDON CLUBS Rabbi at Chevrah Mishnayoth Shul. One of our grandsons now lives in Berlin, In response to your article about [email protected] in the district of Prenzlauer Berg. He is very Stammtische (January) there used to be athletic and has, together with a friend, set a club nearly next door to Finchley Road himself the goal of visiting all Stolpersteine tube station and there was also the Jewish BOURNEMOUTH HOTELS in Berlin by running to them and taking Ex-Service Club down the road from Swiss For her new book on Jewish hotels photos of them. Cottage towards town. I do not remember Pam Fox seeks information on Mr E. the street names as I am 94 years old and Rubinstein (‘Ruby’), manager of the I came to England in 1939 on a it was a long time ago! Does anyone else Ambassador Hotel during the late 1940s/ Kindertransport from Berlin. My parents also recall these clubs? early 1950s. succeeded in getting visas to England. They Sonja Sternberg, Manchester pamfoxvirginmedia.com

7 AJR Journal | February 2021 ART NOTES: by Gloria Tessler

It is like a love letter written and anguish, just as hers does, but she if they are there at all. Munch can across 100 years of mutual personally does not find the creator of portray individual isolation even in group the famous Scream dark and moody, but portraits. He presents death in a face solitude – the young acolyte and “fluorescent”. She admires the colour, as though it has already left this earth. the great Master. Tracey Emin not the gloom in his work, the “real You immerse yourself in these works and emotion” in his paintings and sees him as they can break your heart. But Emin has pairs 25 of her own paintings, a “friend in art.” not picked any of these. She has chosen some seen for the first time, with sketchier, scratchier versions, almost as 19 oil and water colour paintings So in this unusual pairing across the though she is not looking at him but at century, I wonder whether it is a question herself. Of course Munch’s presentation by her hero-mentor, the sensitive of the Emperor’s new clothes. Not that of life’s dark side is present in her and withdrawn Norwegian artist Emin’s subjects wear any; her defiant and choices; for instance she has matched his tortured nudes are just that, scratchy, Crouching Nude, 1917 with her 2019 Edvard Munch. Speaking about louche versions of herself; a massive orgasmic version: It didn’t stop – I didn’t him at the opening of the show vagina, huge smudges of red, words on stop. canvas, scrawled female bodies, some not Tracey Emin/Edvard Munch: The recognisable as such. But the difference is that his nude has the Loneliness of the Soul, at the actuality – the ‘thereness’ of pain, sketchy Royal Academy, Emin reveals She chose Munch’s work to accompany as it may be, in both face and body. her own – and we are asked to read Emin’s version has shape, movement her passion for the Expressionist the empathy between the two as they and raw energy, but the emotion is painter since she was 17. explore their mutual themes of grief, sexual, shouty and self-regarding. His loss and yearning. What links them is two figures, the man and the woman probably Munch’s blatant expression of in Consolation, her head in her hands, What drew them together? How far sorrow and lack stemming from the death his demeanour, gentle with masculine is Emin truly influenced by Munch’s of his mother when he was only five, concern, contrasts with one of her better work – or does she simply see her own followed by that of his adored sister. Such works, You Kept it Coming, in which reflection in his personal expression of early trauma was intensified by a series the male figure seems to be crushing the pain? And what would Munch have of doomed love affairs. It was as though female. made of his effect on one of the most Munch was forced into an unstoppable controversial figures on the contemporary cycle of love turning to sorrow. Some of her work, including You were artistic landscape? In her own words, here like the ground underneath my Emin describes Munch as “pioneering, The subjects in his late art after The feet, and Because you left, both 2016, innovative and skilful at an emotional Scream are often solitary and evasive; remind us of Emin’s use of art to express level”. His work involves loneliness some with a look of death upon them, her inner psychological life. Although the RA claims that the two artists – ‘”though separated by time and history, explore the same emotional landscape in their works with remarkable intensity,” it left me feeling that Emin was defining herself through sexual trauma, while Munch was exploring the trauma of grief itself. Until February 28

Annely Juda Fine Art 23 Dering Street (off New Bond Street) Tel: 020 7629 7578 Fax: 020 7491 2139 CONTEMPORARY Tracey Emin-Edvard Munch exhibition at the Royal Academy PAINTING AND SCULPTURE

8 AJR Journal | February 2021 TRIANON AND THE JEWS OF HUNGARY

It’s now over 100 years since the This map shows Treaty of Trianon was concluded how Hungary was broken up between Hungary and the as a result of the Allies. But although it helped to Treaty of Trianon. bring an end to World War 1, the Treaty has had long lasting Serb or Slovak. A good example of this is The total number of Jews in the “lost effects on Hungarian Jews, as Transylvania: in Cluj, Kolozsvar even today, territories” was put at 460,000. even after the efforts of the Ceausescu Janos Fisher explains. regime, there is a very active Hungarian As for the wish of Jews living in these theatre and cultural life. The Hungarians lost territories, a good example was the Trianon resulted in a huge reduction in living in Romania and, undoubtedly, also the proclamation of the Budapest Izraelita the size of Hungary. The hurt caused to Jews living there, would still prefer to live in Hitkozseg, addressed to Jews the world Hungarians by this loss led to revisionism Hungary. The Orban government of today over. It was a cry for help: Don’t let in Hungary, which to some degree is actively helping Jewish life in Serbia; (for Hungary lose what the Trianon Peace is still present today. In the hope of example a large part of the cost of restoring Agreement decrees. Help to save it! regaining the lost territories, Hungarians the magnificent Subotica synagogue was cooperated with the Nazis which, in turn, provided by Hungary). This then will, in The help did not materialise, the made the always present antisemitism in a roundabout way, stoke the Hungarian minorities of Hungary got their Hungary really come to the fore: Trianon minorities’ wish to re-join Hungary. independent states and Hungary shrank was often blamed on the Jews. by two thirds. The consequence of this Jews made up a sizable percentage of the was the ever-present nationalistic wish The lost territories had large communities population in some of the “lost” towns at to regain all that was lost; this, in turn, of Jews. Most of them considered the time: led to an alignment with Germany which themselves Hungarians: their culture Munkacs 45%, Beregszasz 28%, then led to the near annihilation of was Hungarian not Romanian, Croat, Nagyvarad 25%, Ungvar 31% Hungary’s Jews in the Holocaust.

May Festival

A Hungarian A daffodil sings in the grass And, breath catching, gasps like a fugitive, But no pursuers follow, only girls Poem Who, like fiery flowers, encircle it. In 1957 AJR member Janos Fisher spent six months in One girl falls to her knees, Shoulders brown, but legs still winter white, a refugee camp for 750 men, in Skegness. As part of his And on cheap music her naïve soul floats up, English lessons there he helped to translate this poem, Grey like the clouds above. written by Miklos Radnoti, whom he describes as one of the Boys crouch and glow like embers, greatest Hungarian poets of the 20th century. Lips mouthing awkward words of love, And small success conceit of manhood brings; Miklos Radnoti was born in 1909. Many of his poems were written But, if they must, with ease they kill. against war, expressing bewilderment at the causes and reasons for it, yet still displaying an undefeated optimism. He spent four years Perhaps they can be human, in labour camps before being killed by the Nazis on a death march Because humanity is in them; only in 1944. His body was exhumed from a common grave and in his The mind worthy of mankind is slumbering. But say pocket they found his last poems. That all is not without some hope.

9 AJR Journal | February 2021 ONE ‘HMD’ OPINION As this issue of the AJR Journal went to print final preparations were being made for the 2021 Holocaust Memorial Day, using the theme Be the Light in the Darkness. We will invite the HMD Trust to review the full programme of activities in our The HMD theme for 2021 was Be the light in the darkness March issue. In the meantime we provide food for thought camp’s dreadful medical experiments, its with this opinion piece by one Jews who had no team mates to hide them, including over 434,000 shipped to brothel, the presence of a gas chamber of our regular contributors, Auschwitz. Likewise the Danish girl who, and crematorium (operated by male Frank Bright. together with her parents, was taken prisoners), the brutality of female by Danish fishermen to Sweden. There SS-women, the daily death toll by Three years ago I went to an HMD she continued her education while their suicide, execution, weakness through event at Suffolk University where the Danish neighbours looked after the home malnutrition, punishments, and slave main speaker was Sudanese, who to which the entire family ultimately labour for Siemens. Eighty inmates concentrated on the help he had returned. To her it was just a matter of died each day, not to mention their received in Ipswich. He was the product an inconvenience and not of wasted children. Because schools had depended of the HMDT’s programme of foisting years. Good luck to her but she never on the HMDT resource pack, all such on us “subsequent genocides” which even saw the inside of a ghetto, never information eluded them. That is not have nothing to do with us, which starved in a slave labour camp. How the way to teach students, or anybody should have a day of their own, not the can she possibly make a contribution to else, about the Holocaust. It is an insult day reserved for our dead, persecuted Holocaust education? She is surely a very to the 50,000 who died there. and robbed. exceptional case who can only foster the belief in any newcomer to the subject We know from research that the state In 2019 the HMDT’s theme was Torn that the Holocaust has been exaggerated. of Holocaust education is poor. In the from Home. The Trust offered plenty of US it is even worse, but let us start examples of “subsequent genocides” Particularly annoying to me is the here and one of the first steps I suggest but nothing about the Jews from inclusion of Bosniaks into the HMDT list is either to ignore HMDT because Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, of “subsequent genocides” because the it has been a bad influence, or offer Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran and as far as Bosniak converts to Islam fought against something better before Cambodia, Afghanistan, who numbered c.850,000 the Allies and in so doing killed both Serb the Sudan and Rwanda are considered until 1948, when the whole area was and Jewish civilians. There is no denying equal to Germany’s persecution, made judenrein. They were forced to that Srebenica was horrific, but it was a robbery and annihilation of European flee in what they stood up in and to massacre, a retribution - not a genocide. Jewry. It is one of those institutions of leave everything behind, were never It is an abuse of language and diminishes which it has been said that no people allowed to return and were never paid a the meaning we righty attribute to our do so much harm as those who go penny in compensation. dead. about doing good. If we have the facts of the Jewish Holocaust at heart we just Our Holocaust lasted for over 12 years In January 2020 I went to the University cannot afford their mixed-up, confusing and cost the lives of six million Jewish of Essex to play a small part in the annual and superficial messages which corrupt men, women and children, let alone Dora Love Prize Competition, which is young minds. all the other Jews who were robbed awarded to the best school project that of all of their livelihoods, homes and links learning about the Holocaust to Prefer to make up your own mind? See possessions. How do the people of the world we live in today. The HMDT’s the full range of HMD 2021 resources Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur and Bosnia theme for that year was Stand Together and activities on www.hmd.org.uk. You fit into that? (although it should be noted that could also join the University of Sussex Holocaust deniers also stand together) at 2pm on Wednesday 3 February for The HMDT’s list of prominent survivors and over 30 schools were represented, its very special HMD event - a live Q&A includes a Hungarian footballer who a record number. The winning school session, with Holocaust survivors, Peter survived because his club hid him. But had focused on female discrimination, Summerfield BEM and his twin brother he is a completely unrepresentative using KZ Ravensbrück as an example. George https://alumni.sussex.ac.uk/ example of the 564,000 Hungarian However there was no mention of the hmd-booking

10 AJR Journal | February 2021 INTRODUCING THE BRADY PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE The Brady Club for Working retirement beckoned she signed up for Lads was founded in 1896 in the League of Jewish Women (LJW), volunteering as a hospital visitor and in Whitechapel, London E1. The a local Jewish Care home. From 2013- project was driven by Lady 16 she served as national President of LJW, is currently Chair of the Rothschild and several other Executive, and also UK Vice President wealthy West End Jews who of the International Council of Jewish wanted to improve the social Women. Miriam Moses during the War quality of life and help to In 2016 a cache of photographs anglicise the East End boys from relating to the members and premises of the Brady Clubs between 1940 and East European refugee families, the mid-1970s were discovered in whose lingua franca was Yiddish. an attic. They were passed to Susan Andrews, Reader in Photography In 1925, Miriam Moses OBE at London Metropolitan University. established the Brady Girls Susan realised that there was an Club, which occupied the same historical value to the collection but she knew little about the Brady Clubs. Frank Bernard, Laurie Bloom, Phil Emden, Joe building until 1935 when the She decided to organise an exhibition Lazarus & Charles Spencer on the winning girls moved to a building in entitled Nostalgia is Not Enough to ‘pirate ship’ at a local carnival during Brady’s raise some public awareness. The 1950 camping trip to Dymchurch in Kent. The Hanbury Street, London E1. exhibition was visited by a number of ‘ship’ was the camp luggage cart adorned with old Bradians, who approached Susan some spare canvas and tent rigging. In 1946 the Primrose Jewish Youth Club to find out more about the collection was founded by some of the young and add greatly to their history. survivors of the Holocaust who settled Subsequently, students, staff and old in Britain. These youngsters forged close Bradians worked together to archive bonds, based on their shared histories and the photographs and record the Brady called themselves “The Boys” (only about story. 80 of them were girls, as survival for Jewish girls under the Nazis had been almost This led to the formation of the Brady impossible). Photographic Archive Committee (BPAC), culminating in a second, The link between these clubs was P. Yogi larger exhibition of the photos and Basil Marcusson and friends Mayer MBE who, in April 1939, had memorabilia in May 2018 at the escaped Nazi Germany to the UK. He London Metropolitan building in enlisted in the army and served in the Aldgate with the support of the University, service for Club members killed in action, Special Operations Executive (SOE). After its students and Susan Andrews. BPAC which was held at Sandys Row Synagogue, the war he was appointed leader of the subsequently obtained funding to build a where the Kindertransport children where Primrose Club and then, in 1951, club website to make some of the newly found first taken after arriving at Liverpool Street leader at Brady, amalgamating the Brady photographs and memorabilia available to Station. Boys and Girls Clubs in Hanbury Street in the Brady diaspora around the world. 1960 to create an environment where all The website can be found at members were encouraged to participate in While there are currently no photographs www.bradyarchive.co.uk, and BPAC is sport, art and social activities. of Club members from the pre-war era, building a list of email addresses to keep many of the current archive’s photos and members informed of further events and Yvonne Brent, an AJR volunteer, whose memorabilia will undoubtedly include initiatives to keep the memory of Brady mother arrived in England in 1938 from the parents and grandparents of second alive. Please get in touch with us at Poland, joined Brady in the 1960s. She and third generation AJR members. In [email protected] remembers being encouraged by Yogi to addition to the photographic archive, for more information or to join our regularly visit a local elderly lady for tea BPAC arranged a banner to march under mailing list. and a chat and then, building on this first at the 2019 AJEX commemoration service stimulation of her social conscience, as at the Cenotaph followed by a memorial Anna Perceval

11 AJR Journal | February 2021 An

Addiction

A framed handwritten letter from Sigmund Freud to my father hangs in my study, writes Victor Ross. It is a request to check a quotation from one of Goethe’s plays.

My father was known as a collector of books and manuscripts by and about Goethe. He was also known for defending social democrats and Sigmund communists in Vienna’s High Court Freud - the which earned him a place on a Gestapo exemplary list. They came for him the day German collector troops marched into Austria. Finding him gone they vented their frustration by making a bonfire of his books and using inscription in her copy of a catalogue he really is”). This is Wells’ skilful pen manuscripts as lavatory paper. My father raisonné listing his prodigious output of delivering its devastating judgment in wondered what Goethe would have said. operettas, plays, films, songs, stories, a book worth a few thousand pounds performances. And in her copy of Alice but in my eyes priceless as a supreme My mother was no collector (busy in Wonderland he wrote “So that you example of the genre. people rarely are) but when I tidied her can have a thorough grounding in the bookshelves after her death I found a classics – Love, Noël”, thus inadvertently “I must always have an object to cache of books that came from Sigmund echoing Shaw’s mission. love.” - Sigmund Freud Freud’s private library, a bit like finding This desire makes Freud the exemplary gold among pebbles. There were 27 Although I have been a collector all my collector, famously pictured at his desk, volumes in all, many of them in English life, from minerals, marbles, stamps, surrounded by his books, his favourite with Freud’s ownership signature, others watches - really of everything except antiquities lined up before him. Freud were gifts from admirers such as H.G. rents - I came late to books. I started kept no record of his acquisitions. They Wells and Artur Schnitzler with fulsome by looking for inscriptions that revealed follow no discernible plan and look for dedications. character, relationships, possibly secrets. all the world like happy impulse buys. Noël doesn’t leave you in any doubt He called it his addiction. How did my mother come by such about his self-confidence. Or does he? treasures? She was a friend of the family, They say that collecting is a sublimated a psychoanalyst and former patient of The fun lies in the chase: visiting charity form of hoarding and that philately the Professor (as we called him). Perhaps shops and spending 75p on what may be gets you nowhere (my wife collected there is a clue in three volumes of essays an unrecognised treasure, or thousands scissors, which I found worrying). A by, respectively, Adam Smith, David at auction on an unexpurgated first correspondent in the November issue Hume and Sydney Smith - a suitable edition of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’. I’ve of the Journal confessed to collecting gift for a friend about to emigrate to done both. empty envelopes! That makes me feel England, offering a taste of English a lot better. I am at ease going with culture. But what about the other D.H. Lawrence’s phallus Goethe, who said that “Collectors are books? My mother never mentioned any What a collector like me aspires to happy people.” of this; an air of mystery persists as of a is to own a truly unique item, an secret transaction. astonishingly revealing one-off. If you want to see an intimate caricature of “I really am quite talented Lawrence you have to come to me. In Books Bought - Noël” my copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Modern and Old There is no mystery about my wife’s signed by the author and inscribed by Coward connection and her Noël H.G. Wells, I found two sketches, one Eric Levene Coward-iana. She appeared in his shows showing Lawrence with a giant phallus 020 8364 3554 / 07855387574 and became something of a protégée. (“as he sees himself”), the other of a [email protected] The above quote is from Coward’s diminished and shrunken Lawrence (“as

12 AJR Journal | February 2021 Proud to be German

Peter Gumbel is the author of Believed to have a new book entitled Citizens been taken in 1934 in Cottbus, Germany, of Everywhere, which is this photo shows currently being reviewed for Peter’s maternal a forthcoming issue of the grandfather Ernst Frank, his wife Carla, AJR Journal. In this article he and her mother, explains why his grandparents, Carolin Grua, with Peter’s mother who fled Nazi Germany for Ellen, her twin sister Britain, would be heartbroken to Marion, and their see our country today. brother Maxi, who was killed on D-Day fighting in his British My grandparents arrived on the eve of Army Commando WW2 as stateless refugees. They felt unit. gratitude for their immediate safety and a deep attachment to the values of openness, decency and tolerance they 3.5 million European Union nationals I can never forget what happened to found in their adopted homeland. As soon in the country. Such people make a big my family; my great-aunt perished in as the war ended, they became naturalised contribution to British life and without Auschwitz and several other cousins British citizens. In a letter to a friend, them, the country would be greatly died in the Holocaust. But I can also my grandfather praised the “generous diminished. Alarmingly, large numbers recognise how much Germany has hospitality and nearly unrestricted appear to have left in 2020 while political changed and the lengths to which it freedom” they enjoyed as migrants. They rot has set in. When Moody’s Investors has gone to atone for the atrocities of never shed their German accents but Service downgraded Britain’s credit rating the Third Reich. Today, it is Germany switched to speaking only in English. last October, it cited the “diminished” that opens its door to refugees and quality of British executive and legislative whose chancellor, Angela Merkel, is My parents’ generation, in turn, gave their institutions. Ethical standards have also outspoken in defence of global values all for the country that took them in. My tumbled, with the government turning and embodies decency and respect. By uncle, who arrived via Kindertransport a blind eye to workplace harassment of contrast, the Britain that sheltered and when he was 15 years old, was killed on civil servants and cronyism creeping into nurtured my family is a sad shadow of a Normandy beach on D-Day, aged 21. the award of public contracts through the its former self. In the 1980s, my father, a businessman, pandemic. and my aunt, a radiographer, were both After 80 years, I feel ready to close a cycle decorated by Queen Elizabeth II for their I take no joy in this state of affairs, and of history. British by birth, I am European contributions to the country. “After all the neither do many fellow Britons. The country by heritage and conviction — and now trauma of leaving Germany I had struck is just as divided as the United States has have an unambiguously European fresh roots in England,” my father wrote in been over President Trump. But unlike in nationality to prove it. I am still proud a private memoir. “We had found a new the United States, where Joe Biden is now to be British, but I am also proud to be home in every sense of the word.” providing a reprieve from Mr. Trump, Brexit German. I think my grandparents and cannot be undone. parents would approve. But the openness and tolerance that made the country a safe haven for them are in My American friends see me as Peter Gumbel’s book Citizens of retreat. The vote to leave the European quintessentially British, a devoted tea Everywhere: Searching for Identity in Union in 2016 and the surge of national drinker and fan of Marmite, Monty Python the Age of Brexit was published last exceptionalism that accompanied it and fair play. Yet I am also strongly pro- November by Haus Curiosities. revealed deeply held prejudices about European, a feeling reinforced by having migrants. Xenophobia and racism, lived in several European countries over the Peter Gumbel will be interviewed by presumed to be banished to the margins years. The two identities always seemed AJR Chief Executive Michael Newman of public life, made an ugly return to the to me to be complementary. But Brexit on Zoom on Wednesday 10 February at mainstream. has made it impossible to be British and 6pm. Book your free ticket on: https:// European at the same time. I therefore took www.eventbrite.com/e/in-conversation- Since the 2016 referendum, the a decision I never dreamed I would even with-peter-gumbel-author-of-citizens-of- government has alienated many of the consider: I applied for German citizenship. everywhere-tickets-135477489819

13 AJR Journal | February 2021 A ‘BOUNCED CZECH’

Like Madeleine Albright, the USA’s first female secretary of state, Sir Tom Stoppard, par excellence Britain’s intellectual playwright, was born in 1937, in what was then Czechoslovakia. And like Albright, he learnt only late in life of his Jewish origins.

Dame Hermione Lee, a prize-winning tell her sons that their father was dead. biographer and retired professor of literature, vividly describes the traumatic and tragic It was at a dinner party that Marta met background in her magisterial Tom Stoppard Major Kenneth Stoppard, a ‘handsome, A Life (published by Faber). Stoppard clean-cut Englishman’ strongly committed was born in Zlín, where his father, Eugen to ‘King and Country.’ On leave from New Sträussler, was a doctor in the hospital of Delhi, he courted her assiduously from the what was an enlightened, multinational start. They were married - in an Anglican shoe-manufacturing company, Bata. The church - in November 1945. The next year Nazis had taken over Czechoslovakia in the the new family sailed to England. spring of 1939 and promptly banned Jewish doctors from practising. Hermione Lee tells us the boys saw ‘their stepfather as a bitter, disappointed man, Bata, with branches in many countries, bigoted, xenophobic and antisemitic.’ In a relatives of both his parents had perished in offered to relocate its Jewish doctors and key passage, she writes: ‘And because of Auschwitz. It emerged that Marta already their families. Tomás or Tomik, his parents his overriding Englishness, from now on knew the appalling details, but had ‘felt it and his elder brother Petr, were evacuated [Marta] would speak only English, discount would be better for the boys if she left the to Singapore. With the Japanese conquest her Jewishness and keep quiet about the past behind.’ of south-east Asia, however, the family in past. If she knew, by the time she left India, early 1942 had to flee once more. (Stoppard what had happened to her family, she said What Tom came to see as his ‘absence of would later write the film script of Empire of nothing…. She never told her sons, either curiosity,’ and ‘an endless willingness not the Sun, the best-selling novel J. G. Ballard that she was Jewish or that most of her to disturb my mother by questioning her,’ wrote around his memories of the fall of family had perished in the Holocaust.’ turned into an ever more insistent self- Shanghai). reproach. Family matters gradually ‘had their Years later, when asked about his harrowing full impact on him and got into his writing.’ As mothers and children received priority, past, Stoppard, witty as ever, would describe In the late 1990s he returned to the place of Stoppard’s father stayed behind when Tom, himself as a ‘bounced Czech’: although his birth, and began to investigate his past. his mother Marta and his brother embarked seemingly assimilated, he still felt Czech. In His plays now dealt with revolution and on a boat that took them to India, not to the 1970s he supported Eastern Europe’s exile; ‘his family’s past … What had once Australia, as Marta had supposed. Her struggle to throw off the Soviet yoke. He been obliterated came back to haunt him.’ husband later managed to get a passage on wrote several plays around that issue, among a boat that was part of a convoy headed them Professional Foul (1977), dedicated to In her brilliant exegesis of Stoppard’s for Australia - but the vessel never reached his friend Václav Havel, the Czech dissident cathartic Leopoldstadt (Covid-19 closed its destination. It presumably sank after writer who became president in 1993, after the play only a month after it opened), Japanese aircraft attacked it. the ‘velvet revolution.’ Hermione Lee outlines how he ‘pillaged from everywhere,’ in his quest for details about Marta was managing Bata’s shoe shop in It was only in 1993, however, that his Viennese Jewry. But he also incorporated Darjeeling, a small town surrounded by mother’s great-niece surprised Tom, by many facts about his own family’s destiny. ‘It British-run tea plantations, and a summer revealing to him that he was ‘completely could be described,’ she writes, ‘as an act of refuge for British officials in the Himalayan Jewish.’ Over lunch at the National Theatre restitution.’ foothills. Having failed to find out the fate of restaurant, in the presence of his ‘uneasy her husband, she asked a woman friend to and distressed’ mother, Sir Tom learned that Martin Mauthner

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14 AJR Journal | February 2021 MEMORIES OF A REFUGEE CHILDHOOD

Christine and her parents Peter de Mendelssohn Hilde Spiel

Christine Shuttleworth is a Maxwell’s Pergamon Press, in Oxford. I My parents associated with other translator and indexer, and the received no training, and found Maxwell émigré writers, artists and publishers, uncongenial. I came back to London such as Oskar Kokoschka and George daughter of two distinguished and worked as an editor for book and Weidenfeld. Hilde interviewed Anna figures of the literary emigration magazine publishers. Since 1982, I have Freud and the philosopher Karl Popper. worked from home, as a freelance indexer, My parents were active in International to London, Hilde Spiel and Peter and translator from German into English. PEN, and took me to PEN meetings in de Mendelssohn. She shared London and other cities. We encountered Who is or was ‘Shuttleworth’? such august literary figures as the novelist her reminiscences with Martin Frank Shuttleworth, my second husband, Alberto Moravia and the historian C. V. Mauthner. ran a steel fabricator business. Despite our Wedgwood. Among our close friends in different backgrounds, our marriage was London were [the writer] Hans Flesch- happy, but he died, aged 56. He was the Brunningen, who became my stepfather Tell me about your early years father of my daughter, Beckie. in 1971, after my parents’ divorce, and My mother, from Vienna, and my father, the Ehrlichs – Georg, a sculptor, and from Munich, were writers of Jewish origin Your memories of your parents? his wife Bettina, a children’s writer and who left their respective countries in 1936 My father was a brilliant but difficult man, illustrator. to escape the Nazi regime. They had met in whose passion for his work was paramount. 1934, in Vienna. They married in London, Our relationship was strained at times. I In 1945, Kingsley Martin, editor of the and settled in Wimbledon, whereas other was closer to my mother, who supported New Statesman and a great friend of émigrés mostly gathered in North London. me in my personal and professional life. Hilde’s, asked her: ‘I expect you will go She asked me to translate her Fanny back to your own country now?’ In her I was born in Cambridge in 1939 – my von Arnstein [a celebrated 18th-century memoirs, she comments: ‘Then we knew, mother was one of the pregnant women personality in Viennese society], and though we did not admit it to ourselves, evacuated from London. My brother, encouraged me to translate other books. that nine years of assimilation into the Anthony Felix, was born in London in English world had been in vain.’ 1944 and became a psychoanalyst in Your reflections on your ‘refugee’ Vienna. In 1945, we moved to Berlin, experience? Is that why your parents went back where my father worked as a press officer I was conscious of being an outsider in to Munich and Vienna? for the Allied forces under Eisenhower. the UK. This may be why I turned to It was a major factor. My parents’ marriage According to his own account, he almost the Catholic Church as a girl. It offered was breaking down, and they decided singlehandedly rebuilt the Berlin newspaper me a feeling of belonging. However, I to separate in 1962. A year later, Hilde industry. My mother enjoyed her job as abandoned the Church at the age of 18. returned to Vienna. My father stayed on in a theatre critic. In 1948, we returned to Wimbledon, but disenchanted with his life Wimbledon. I could not understand why my in the UK, he returned, about 1970-71, to grandfather was interned as an ‘enemy his native Munich. I wasn’t particularly aware of my Jewish alien’, when he was Jewish and fleeing heritage. My mother had been brought from the Nazis. He was a research chemist What do you think about the up as a Catholic; I was sent to a convent and had been offered a job with DuPont post-Brexit trend to (re)acquire school, and my brother to a Jesuit-run in New Jersey. On his release, it was too German/Austrian passports? college. Later, we both went to boarding late to take up his booking on the ocean I am strongly opposed to Brexit. My schools. After graduating from Oxford, I liner, as all non-military sea travel had been daughter is applying for Austrian worked as an editorial trainee for Robert cancelled. citizenship, and I support her in this.

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Bedford changed not only the roof over her family. But as clouds gather Simone is REVIEWS head; she changed her lovers frequently, warned to keep away from her great friend. too. Bedford was publicly reticent about An order she has no intention of following. SYBILLE BEDFORD - AN APPETITE FOR being a lesbian. Selina Hastings, who had LIFE access to Bedford’s diaries and other private Her father already has a lasting disdain for By Selina Hastings papers, has now opened the closet. In Germany. Deeply respected, he fought with Chatto & Windus her new biography, Lady Selina recounts great bravery during the First World War, the arranged marriage in 1935 to Walter sustained a lasting disability to his arm and The writer Sybille Bedford, née Von Bedford, so that Sybille could acquire a won the Croix de Guerre. He was part of Schoenebeck, was twice a refugee or, British passport. the White Lady - “La Dame Blanche” - perhaps more accurately, an émigré. intelligence network and this time he leaves She details almost twenty ‘affairs’ and home the first autumn of the war to join Her German-Jewish mother and ‘relationships,’ stretching into Bedford’s the mysterious Belgian resistance. Simone Bavarian Catholic aristocratic father had extreme old age; there were also visits to a doesn’t see him for four years during divorced when she was a child. She lesbian club in Chelsea, and to ‘a much less which he escapes over the Pyrenees and was a teenager at school in England, sophisticated venue, where the girls made is imprisoned before making his way to when her mother and Italian aristocratic themselves available by the hour.’ Bedford London. stepfather, Norberto Marchesani, left asked one girl where she worked. Told ‘In Mussolini’s fascist Italy in the 1920s and the forecourt,’ Bedford said, ‘Where is that? This mirrors the author’s grandfather, settled in Sanary, near Toulon. In June In the Inns of Court?’ ‘Naah!’ replied the Joseph Henri Kestens, and all unattributed 1940, Bedford secured a berth on the sex-worker, ‘It’s a petrol station.’ epigraphs are either excerpts or memories last United States passenger ship to sail as recorded and shared in his war journal. from Genoa before the outbreak of war. That intimate side of her life does not Interesting headings also quote from Anne On that occasion, it was not only the feature in Bedford’s fiction in the way, Frank, German propaganda, Winston Nazi menace that motivated her; the over and over again, she transformed her Churchill and Theodor Herzl. Both girls stream to France of émigrés from Hitler formative years - in Berlin and a Black – Simone has brown hair and Hava is had provoked a disturbing xenophobic Forest castle, and the pre-war sojourn in blonde –- love literature and books. backlash among French right-wing Italy and France - into the literary works Works and authors such as Gone with the extremists in the region. that ultimately brought her, if not wealth, Wind, Madame Bovary, Black Beauty, certainly wide and well merited recognition. Shakespeare and Dickens are mentioned. Sanary is today associated with several Martin Mauthner There are dreams of Hollywood with Greta German-language writers and their Garbo and Clarke Gable. respective wives who visited or found refuge in the small port, among them ASHES But the story itself is serious with the horrors Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger and By Christopher de Vinck of war and invasion. It narrates an encounter Stefan Zweig. (Bedford’s half-sister also Harper Inspire mentioning the old Jewish saying: “Where lived there, with her German diplomat you have no choice, mobilise the spirit of husband spying on the defence This novel – inspired by true events – is set courage”, and this is clearly demonstrated. installations at Toulon!) Aldous Huxley in WW2 telling the poignant story of two There are vignettes of the unexpected and his Belgian wife were residents young girls who live in Brussels: Simone, kindness of strangers experienced when for many years, and inevitably several the daughter of a famous Belgian national obtaining scarce food, rail tickets or British writers gathered around them. hero, General Joseph Lyon, and her best shelter. There is also a convent sister who The multilingual Bedford had a key role friend, Hava Daniels. helps Jewish children. Deeper and darker as a go-between. She did voluntary themes such as collaboration under enemy work helping hard-up German refugees Despite growing up in different worlds occupation are explored. The casualties in Paris; until the French authorities the friends are inseparable and in spring of the war of people from different walks stopped her, Bedford brought food 1940 escape together when Nazi planes of life are tragically legion and there is to refugees interned by the French in and tanks begin the terrible attack on continual movement and turmoil escaping the notorious Les Milles camp, near the capital. Until then they had led a from the enemy in the maelstrom. Marseilles. fairly charmed existence, having met as volunteers for the Red Cross. Simone – Throughout this moving tale of refugees, Bedford spent the war years in California whose mother died when she was born wartime courage, escape and tragedy a and New York, but did not flourish on – gets to know the Daniels family from light shines through; the reader is taken either coast; she eagerly returned to Poland including Hava’s father Yaakov, effortlessly from chapter to chapter as the France in 1947. Thereafter, she led a mother Avital and little brother Benjamin action moves along. The situation covered nomadic existence, constantly moving whose drawing she keeps. is extremely harrowing yet is told with between Provence, Paris, Rome and a light touch and interestingly the male London, plus trips to Switzerland, Spain Hava is an extrovert who loves show author manages to get inside the mind of and Portugal, and elsewhere. She spent business and the Catholic Simone becomes Simone, the storyteller. her final years in Chelsea. familiar with the life of an observant Jewish Janet Weston

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FINDING RELLY: MY FAMILY, THE to her sexuality as a Lesbian. She sets up a writes to all the Jewish organisations in HOLOCAUST AND ME band and sings with a close friend of hers. Australia she could find addresses for (via By Rosemary Schonfeld The band (Ova) took off, touring Germany the good services of the Wiener Holocaust Vallentine Mitchell and Scandinavia for about thirteen years, Library in London) but draws a blank. but by the end of the 1980s, Schonfeld Eventually, via a circuitous route, her By now there are dozens of Second and felt burnt-out and went into therapy. In search notice does reach the right family Third Generation books written about order to move away from more recent pain, and she receives a letter from Australia retracing one’s family history, but this broken relationships and disappointments saying that her aunt is alive and well, one stands out because of its distinctive with the band, she decides to make a clean living in Sydney. Schonfeld is able to visit character and genre; it reads more like break and move to Devon. her aunt five times from 2000 to 2010, a Bildungsroman; all true, but more establishes a wonderful rapport with her engrossing than much of non-fiction. She embarks on a music degree as a mature aunt, her children and grandchildren. student, renting a flat in the countryside, Rosemary Schonfeld writes candidly about where she stayed for 12 years. And it Not only does Schonfeld find her lost her own experiences and emotions, in a is here that she began her quest to find aunt, but in the process gets to know a style that invites you into her life. It is a very out what had actually happened to her warm-hearted and welcoming family. intimate account of her journey. A journey lost relatives. After watching a couple of She thoroughly enjoyed her trips to visit of discovery, not only about her relatives, Holocaust related TV programmes, she them and, in the process, also found out but also about other people she encounters, contacted one of the films producer’s, the truth about her father’s family, a truth across continents. In the process she who was able to put her in touch with the that had always been hidden from her, or also discovers her own strengths and Association of Children of Jewish Refugees, covered up with half-truths and lies. Her weaknesses. who sent her their newsletter. She was also aunt died in 2010, but she still maintains put in touch with the Second Generation contact with the rest of the family. She describes what afflicts her, at first as a Network group in Bristol, began attending Schonfeld notes that one of the themes of teenager growing up in Canada, haunted their meetings, discovering that she being Second Generation is not belonging by unexplained depressions, dropping out shared many things in common with other anywhere, but in Australia she found a of university and taking on jobs in New members, feeling a special bond with them. family where she felt she did ‘belong’ and Zealand and Australia, arriving in England in felt accepted by them. the mid-1970s. It is through a Czech-born member of the Bristol Second Generation group, There is more to this story too, as In London, she begins to uncover what that Schonfeld finds out about the list of Schonfeld writes: ‘This theme that “I am really lies behind her depressions, a feeling inmates at Theresienstadt (Terezin) and still here” is crucial for the history of the that she is being ‘hit from behind’. She discovers that one of her uncles had died, Holocaust. We of the Second Generation attends a Radical Psychiatry Clinic in but his wife, Relly, had survived. After the are not here merely to sort out our own Kentish Town, with group therapy in a war, the aunt had settled first in Prague, problems. We are what is left. We are supportive group environment, where she but then is said to have left for Australia. evidence’ gains more self-confidence and faces up Desperate to find out more, Schonfeld David Clark benuri.org DISCOVER Ben Uri’s Research Unit studying the Jewish and immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900 at benuri.org THE FIRST FULL SCALE VIRTUAL MUSEUM AND RESEARCH CENTRE

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OBITUARIES

BERTHA LEVERTON Born: 23 January 1923, Munich Died: 1 December 2020, Israel

It all started in 1988 when our Kindertransport for educational purposes. Extract from the July 2009 testimony mother realised that her oldest She compiled a book of stories from the from the then Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Kinder of the Kindertransport entitled I Sacks, on the occasion of Bertha granddaughter, then aged 15, Came Alone, which was swiftly followed by making Aliyah: did not know anything about the a professional Hollywood adaptation, Into harrowing details of how she, the Arms of Strangers, which went on to Bertha Leverton has made an win the prestigious Academy Award for Best outstanding contribution to Anglo at exactly the same age, had left Documentary Feature in the year 2000. Jewry and indeed International Jewry. her parents unaccompanied to Her passion and energy is to be travel to a strange land with a She organised Chanukah and Purim parties, admired….She is a role model for her especially for those Kinder who had been acts of chessed to her colleagues and different language and culture. adopted by non-Jewish families and for she is much loved and respected and whom these festivals were but a vague will be sorely missed in this country. In 1989 it would be the 50th anniversary memory. She also organised bar and bat of the Kindertransport and she came to mitzvahs for fellow Kinder aged 70+ who the conclusion that, after 50 years of not had never had one. talking about what had happened, it was time to finally talk about the past. Thanks to mum’s efforts, hundreds of other Kinder also wrote books about their She decided to take matters in hand and experiences or gave lectures to different put an advertisement in various Jewish audiences. newspapers asking for anyone who had also been on the Kindertransport to contact Mum was the right person at the right time her for a possible reunion. with the right personality for breaking the silence of 50 years. So, we, her daughters She had no idea that from such a modest found ourselves sharing our mother with beginning this would develop into a large another few thousand people! As we were scale international platform of connection already grown up, we found this our privilege and education for former Kinder. It was and honour and we were very proud to especially poignant as the vast majority witness our mother receive the MBE from of these Kinder’s families ended up in the HM The Queen and to be invited along with death camps. This made the desire for fellow Kinder to join HRH Prince Charles for connection between the Kinder, and to supper. So many people wanted to interview hear of how other Kinder had fared, even her and she became a natural and extremely stronger. proficient speaker. Yet she still remained just as modest as she had always been and Our mother devoted herself to the needs continued making kneidlach for pesach for us. of these Kinder, combining her incredible She also loved writing poetry, about anything organisational skills with her understanding and everything. of exactly what would be important, given that she herself was one of them. She accomplished a lot in her life and was It was because of her warm and caring loved and admired by many. She spent the personality that the reunion was such a last 12 years of her life with her family in success. She dedicated herself for over Israel. Her last words were “I want to help 20 years and apart from the reunions, you”. made a connecting newsletter, secured assistance and encouraged archives of the Mirry Reich (Israel) and Shula Kohn (London)

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TRAUDE BOLLAUF ELLY MILLER (née HOROVITZ) Born: 8 December 1941, Vienna Born: 5 March 1928, Vienna Died: 15 October 2020, Vienna Died: 8 August 2020, London

Dr Traude Bollauf was a During a career spanning some Elly returned to England to work at Phaidon journalist, contemporary seven decades, Elly – whose father and in 1950 married Harvey, a Cambridge science graduate who had just returned from historian and highly valued Béla Horovitz founded the Phaidon serving in Israel’s War of Independence as Press - designed and edited a rich a pioneer radar officer in the nascent Israeli member of the Austrian corpus of art books, nurturing Navy. Following the untimely death of Béla Society for Exile Research. in 1955, they took over direction of Phaidon the work of leading scholars and She edited the weekly and expanded its international list. In 1967 art historians, including Sir Ernst Phaidon was sold and Elly and Harvey paper Die Frau and was Gombrich, to whose best-selling launched Harvey Miller Ltd, specialising a frequent broadcaster in Medicine and Art. Elly pursued her The Story of Art Elly had, as a passion for the Mediaeval and Renaissance on Austrian radio. After teenager, given her seal of approval. periods, nurturing young authors in what retirement she took up was a cutting-edge discipline. From 2000, Elly, her older brother Joseph and baby sister in partnership with the Belgian academic German-Jewish Studies Hannah, had lived in Vienna with their parents publisher Brepols, Elly published a number of at the University of Béla and Lotte, and maternal grandparents, major projects. in second-floor apartments overlooking Vienna, specialising in the the Stadtpark, with Phaidon’s grand offices Interviewed in 2001 for the AJR’s emigration of women and occupying the first floor. In the nearby Café ‘Continental Britons’ exhibition at the Prückel my mother would meet her mother Jewish Museum, by Dr. Bea Lewkowicz, children. after school each day, enjoying the traditional her soon-to-be daughter-in-law, Elly Kaffee und Kuchen. described herself as “An Austrian-born, Her doctoral thesis (2009) dealt Jewish, British citizen”. Her Viennese with the option of escape from the In the shadow of the looming Nazi threat, heritage was evident, her joie de vivre, Nazi regime by means of a visa for in 1938 Béla had the foresight to arrange a expressed in songs and poems for special domestic service in England. This transfer of Phaidon to British ownership with occasions which she performed at the pioneering work was published the British publisher Sir Stanley Unwin. He piano, her love for translating Wilhelm in a revised form in 2010 under was away in London when Elly witnessed the Busch, including the classic adventures of the title: Domestic Emigration. events of the Anschluss. Days later Elly and Max and Moritz, published by Canongate The flight of Jewish women from Joseph left Vienna with their grandmother, as ‘Mac and Murray’. Germany and Austria to England aunt and baby cousin, by a dangerous in 1938/39. For this she received train journey to Italy, thence to Zurich and A loyal member of Chelsea Synagogue, and the Bruno Kreisky Political Book Belgium, where the entire family was reunited, former chair (in the 1970s-80s) of the SW Prize. eventually reaching England. London Women’s Group of the Friends of the Hebrew University, Elly’s joyful approach AJR’s former Contributing Editor, Elly and Joseph attended the Regent’s Park to her Jewish identity inspired her children Anthony Grenville, knew her well School known as ‘Schindlers’, after the (my sisters Dorothy, Tamar and myself), and contributed to her obituary, headmistress. In 1939, the family moved grand and great grand-children. Her positive which can be found (in German) to Bath, returning to London briefly before outlook was summed up in the same at: https://exilforschung. moving in autumn 1940 to Oxford, where interview: “I think I have a much broader ac.at/nachruf-wir-trauern- Elly attended Oxford High School, then outlook on the world than I would have um-unsere-kollegin-traude- Somerville College Oxford reading PPE. Upon had if I had remained in Vienna. I regard bollauf-1941-2020 graduating, Elly worked as researcher for The myself as extremely lucky and fortunate; the Times and then for OUP in New York, where emigration certainly enriched me.” Irene Messinger she reconnected with the American wing of University of Vienna her family. Malcolm Miller

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ZOOMS AHEAD Details of all meetings and the links to join will appear in the e-newsletter each Monday.

Tuesday 2 February @ 2.00pm Rabbi Danny Bergson – Live Desert Island Discs from St Anne’s Shul https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81411893512 Tuesday 2 February @ 4.00pm Sandra Silversale & Anthea Berg – Miracle of Targu Mures https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84724216139 Wednesday 3 February @ 2.00pm Nick Dobson – An underground guide to London in the Roaring Twenties https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/88056690860 Thursday 4 February @ 2.00pm Rahima Mahmut – The genocide of Uyghurs https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/81986916472 Tuesday 9 February @ 2.00pm Cllr Caroline Stock – View from the Mayor of Barnet https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/89860384467 Wednesday 10 February @ 2.00pm AJR Book Club discussion https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/82962878789 Wednesday 10 February @ 6.00pm Citizens of Everywhere – Author Peter Gumbel in conversation with Michael Newman Book via: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/in-conversation-with-peter-gumbel-author-of-citizens-of- everywhere-tickets-135477489819 Thursday 11 February @ 2.00pm Graham Perry – Perspectives on China from the son of the first Western businessman ever to visit it, in 1953 https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/81438567188 Monday 15 February @ 2.00pm Alan Forbes – Tinderbox Heroes (the history of firefighters) https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/86564297154 Tuesday 16 February @ 2.00pm Claude Vecht Wolf – The Beatles https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/84171212283 Wednesday 17 February @ 2.00pm Philippa Bernard – The story of the Rescued Scrolls https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/84671468909 Thursday 18 February @ 2.00pm Lynn Bradley – We’re off to see the Wizard: the REAL story https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/89517721773 Monday 22 February @ 2.00pm Nadia Ragozhina – Worlds Apart https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/85490685236 Monday 22 February @ 4.00pm Gathering the Voices – the stories of Holocaust survivors who went to Scotland https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/83238119370 Tuesday 23 February @ 2.00pm Lesley Urbach - Herbert Morrison https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/89634124774 Wednesday 24 February @ 2.00pm Hannah Last – Opening up the Royal Opera House, London https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/83184786469 Thursday 25 February @ 2.00pm Silvia Nacamulli - Cooking for the Soul https://ajr-org-uk.zoom.us/j/89988914343

ONLINE PROGRAMMING FOR ALL often far too cold to go out.

AJR is introducing a series of their carers. Our new series of inclusive Pre-booking is essential, to allow any “dementia friendly” zoom events events can ease isolation and stimulate the necessary resources to be posted out to mind and body, and the team will rotate a participants beforehand. For example, which are for everyone and variety of sessions including poetry, seated the AJR team will be providing a booklet especially for any members living exercise and reading and discussion. of poems, materials to join in our craft with dementia. sessions - not to mention a teabag and The team has already held a pilot poetry biscuits to enjoy with us. Our special Memory Loss team believes event that led to lively conversation, that dementia should not prevent a shared memories and lots of much-missed Look out for details of these inclusive person from enjoying life in the best laughter. They are now working with events in our weekly e-news or way. This is particularly important during Maccabi to provide sessions combining contact either Julia or Naomi on these times, which are especially hard seated exercises with advice on healthy [email protected] / 07985 422 372 or for people living with dementia and living, particularly important when it is [email protected] / 07496 623 537.

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 The AJR Journal is printed by FBprinters, 82b Woodside Park Lane, London N12 8RY Email: [email protected]

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