VOLAJRume JOURNAL 10 NO.5 may 2010

Friends of the ‘enemy aliens’ n all the many obituaries, tributes and Nazism, as was Pressburger) and the other articles in the media devoted young Deborah Kerr. Ito Michael Foot since his death on Low had long been a committed 3 March 2010, hardly any mention has anti-Fascist and an advocate of a more been made of his forthright support robust stance towards Nazi Germany of the refugees from Hitler who were than Chamberlain’s ill-fated policy of interned by the British government in the appeasement. His most famous cartoon early summer of 1940. Though Foot was appeared in the Evening Standard in barely 27 years old at the time, he was a response to the signing on 23 August 1939 prominent feature writer for the London of the pact between Hitler and Stalin, one Evening Standard, thanks to the patronage of the great diplomatic surprise packets of the paper’s owner, Lord Beaverbrook, of modern times, which signalled the who appointed him editor of the paper imminent outbreak of the Second World in 1942. On 23 July 1940, Foot wrote a War and sounded the final death knell for trenchant article attacking the stupidity appeasement. Entitled ‘Rendezvous’, the and injustice of the internment of the cartoon depicts Hitler and Stalin greeting refugees from Nazism, who had every each other with much bowing and reason to hate Hitler and to rally to the scraping over the corpse of a murdered Allied cause. ‘Why not lock up General de Michael Foot, 1913 – 2010 Poland, the pact’s most obvious victim. Gaulle?’, he concluded caustically. this was followed a few days later by ‘The scum of the earth, I believe?’, As is well known, Jewish refugees the internment of men classed by the intones Hitler by way of greeting to his from Germany and Austria fleeing racial tribunals as Category B. On 25 June, fellow dictator, while Stalin responds persecution formed the great majority of the government ordered the internment with the endearing words ‘The bloody those interned, though the detainees also of men in Category C, which entailed assassin of the workers, I presume?’ included non-Jewish political refugees, the rounding up of around 13,000 more Both men carry concealed weapons, as well as Italians and people of other refugees. Some 4,000 women were also and the transparent insincerity of their nationalities suspected of sympathy for detained, before the policy of internment protestations of friendship highlights the the Axis powers. When Britain declared was abandoned. During July 1940, that cynical Realpolitik behind the pact. war on Germany on 3 September 1939, policy was comprehensively discredited Low’s opposition to Fascism, and the Jewish refugees of German nationality in the eyes of the public by events like the his aversion to Stalinist Communism, (who included Austrians after Austria’s sinking of the liner Arandora Star, which was fuelled by an instinctive sense of incorporation into Germany) perforce was carrying internees to Canada, by a justice and a strong feeling of sympathy ­became ‘enemy aliens’. At first, the German U-boat, with heavy loss of life. for its victims. He too did not remain government took no action against them, Contributors to the Evening Standard, inactive in the face of the internment of beyond having them appear before alongside Michael Foot, included the the innocent and defenceless ‘enemy tribunals that assessed the degree of risk great cartoonist David Low, born in New aliens’. The Evening Standard of 19 July they posed to Britain; the overwhelming Zealand and creator of such unforgettable 1940 carried a cartoon by him, divided majority of them were allocated to figures as the dyspeptic and reactionary into two parts by strands of barbed wire. Category C, indicating that they posed Colonel Blimp and the image of the To the left, behind the wire, stand the no danger. stolidly unadventurous Trades Union disconsolate internees, sober, reflective With the Nazi invasion of France and Congress as a carthorse. Blimp was to and sometimes bespectacled men with the Low Countries in May 1940, however, undergo an unexpected transformation in the dark suits and intellectual air that government policy changed, in response Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s characterised the refugees from Hitler in to an increasingly vociferous press unforgettable film The Life and Death the public mind; forlornly, they gaze out campaign that demanded the immediate of Colonel Blimp (1943), where the across the wire towards the freedom of internment of all refugees in the light inimitable Roger Livesey portrayed the which they have been incomprehensibly of Britain’s perilous military position. In reluctant conversion of the old warrior to deprived. The injustice and idiocy of May 1940, male ‘enemy aliens’ living in modern methods of prosecuting the war their internment as supposed enemies of designated ‘protected areas’ on coasts against Hitler, with the able assistance of Britain is underlined by Low’s description exposed to invasion were interned; Anton Walbrook (himself a refugee from continued overleaf

 AJR JOURNAL may 2010

friends of the ‘enemy aliens’ continued from page 1 ANNUAL GENERAL of them as ‘German & Italian enemies of conscience. MEETING Nazism and Fascism’. The Conservative MP for Chippenham, of To the right, outside the wire, appear Major Victor Cazalet, was another out­ the ASSOCIATION OF a number of manic-looking figures who spoken critic of internment; in the House of JEWISH REFUGEES march around in a demented parody of Commons, Cazalet memorably described thursday 17 JUNE 2010 right-wing militarism; Low calls them ‘our internment as ‘a bespattered page of our 11.00 AM own total-minded Little Hitlers’. Clad in history’, thus providing Ronald Stent, a at the Paul Balint AJR Centre trench coats and bowler hats or black top refugee and internee, with the title of his 15 Cleve Road, London NW6 hats and black jackets, they sport placards important study of internment (1980). Lunch, if required, £6 payable in advance bearing such slogans as ‘suppress the But Cazalet came from a very different Agenda press’ and ‘death for fool talk’. One man, political background to Wedgwood; at the Annual Report 2009 Hon. Treasurer’s Report with the regulation clipped military-style time of the Spanish Civil War, he had been Discussion moustache, squats down to squint at the a strong supporter of General Franco, Election of Committee of Management internees through the lower strands of the though he swung behind Churchill in his All questions for the chair should be submitted by Tuesday 1 June to the wire, for all the world like a dog snarling at uncompromising stance against Hitler. In Head of Administration at Jubilee House, its prey. There is even a woman, with the 1938 he had visited Vienna, where he was Merrion Avenue, Stanmore, mountainous bosom and the flat, pill-box moved to action by the desperate situation Middx. HA7 4RL. hat that bespeak the right-wing patriotic ELECTION OF COMMITTEE OF of the Jews trapped there by the Anschluss. MANAGEMENT fanatic, who carries a placard demanding Cazalet died in 1943, in the aircraft crash The following members will be ‘lock up all foreigners’. In the left-hand in Gibraltar that also claimed the life of the proposed for election or re-election to the Committee at the AGM bottom corner of the cartoon, a small girl Polish leader General Sikorski. on Thursday 17 June 2010: looks on in bewilderment. She asks the Commander Oliver Locker-Lamp- Mr A C Kaufman, Chairman, Mr W D Rothenberg, adult accompanying her ‘Which are the son, Conservative MP for Birmingham Vice Chairman & Hon. Treasurer, Mrs E S dangerous ones we have to keep behind Angel, Secretary*, Mr C W Dunston, Trustee*, Handsworth, invited Albert Einstein to Mrs D Franklin, Trustee, Mrs G R Glassman, barbed-wire, uncle?’ Britain in September 1933, following the Trustee*, Ms Karen Goodman, Mrs J Millan, The remarkable change in public Nazi takeover of power in Germany; this Mr E Reich, Mr A Spiro, Mr Tim Schwarz opinion towards the internment of ‘enemy ­enabled Einstein to make a memorable *Committee members retiring by rotation and being proposed for re-election aliens’ that occurred in July/August 1940 speech at an event held at the Royal Albert Anyone wishing to propose any other was largely the achievement of the friends Hall in support of Jewish academics per- member for election as Hon Officer, Trustee, of the refugees in Parliament and the secuted by the Nazis. Locker-Lampson or Committee member must submit to AJR’s Head of Administration such a proposal media. Under wartime conditions, and was at first sight an improbable ally of signed by ten members qualified to vote at especially in the emergency situation of the refugees: he was an outspoken enemy the meeting and with the signed agreement summer 1940, it was far from easy for of ‘Bolshevism’ and a staunchly right- of the person being proposed no later than 1 June. pressure from outside government to wing advocate of ‘cleaning out the Reds’. effect a change in official policy towards ­Nevertheless, he intervened repeatedly a little-regarded group like the refugees in Parliament to press the cause of the ARTS AND EVENTS DIARY from Hitler. But there were in the House ­refugees; it speaks for his humanity that may of Commons a number of determined on 25 July 1940 he questioned the Home supporters of the refugees bent on righting Secretary, Sir John Anderson, over the Mon 3 No lecture Bank Holiday the glaring injustice of internment. Pride case of Professor Fritz Mayer, a refugee Club 43 of place among these fighters for justice who had committed suicide when the Mon 10 Bill Tyler, ‘The Inca Trail (with and liberty must go to Eleanor Rathbone, police arrived to detain him. Along with slides)’ Club 43 the Independent MP who sat for the Henry Graham White, Liberal MP for Mon 17 Irene Lawford-Hinrichsen, Combined Universities. Her contribution Birkenhead East and a close contact of ‘Johann Strauss II and the Last Waltz was so great that it will form the subject the AJR during its earliest years, these of the Habsburgs’ Club 43 of next month’s front-page article. men deserve a place in the memories Mon 24 Dr Fred Rosner, ‘My Years Among the other MPs who supported of the refugees from Hitler and their with the Philharmonia Chorus’ the refugees, three names are most descendants. Club 43 often cited. Particularly impassioned Anthony Grenville as a champion of the refugees was Wed 26 Prof Detlev Claussen, ‘Jews Colonel Josiah Wedgwood, Labour MP AJR Directors in Football: Mediating between Gordon Greenfield the Gentleman’s Sport and the for Newcastle-under-Lyme, who was a Michael Newman Carol Rossen Professional Game’ Wiener Library, consistent supporter of refugee causes, 7.00 pm. Tel 020 7636 7247. In during the period of their immigration into AJR Heads of Department Susie Kaufman Organiser, AJR Centre collaboration with the Leo Baeck Britain before 1939, during the internment Sue Kurlander Social Services Institute crisis, and during the desperate attempts AJR Journal Mon 31 No lecture Bank Holiday to rescue Jews from the Nazis after 1939; Dr Anthony Grenville Consultant Editor Dr Howard Spier Executive Editor Club 43 his death in 1943 was a severe loss. A Andrea Goodmaker Secretarial/Advertisements tireless worker on behalf of the Jews, Club 43 Meetings at Belsize Square Synagogue, 7.45 pm. Tel Ernst Flesch including those seeking entry to Palestine Views expressed in the AJR Journal are not on 020 7624 7740 or Leni Ehrenberg (then under British mandate), Wedgwood necessarily those of the Association of Jewish Refugees and should not be regarded as such. on 020 7286 9698 was a genuine radical with a strong moral

 AJR JOURNAL mAy 200

A head to remember

ur Latin master was examining. in draughty corridors during lessons and His victim, clearly unprepared, that his disapproval had been conveyed Ostood by his desk. A stricken Had he lived to Koja, however tactfully. look of appeal went from her to the another four years, That was at the beginning of 1932 class. ‘Well?’ Deafening silence. Then the when I was 12 years old. Two years later answer came, in a loud, clear voice. My how would this man Kroenig was dead. voice, I realised with horror. I clapped – who always fought The first page of the school’s annual my hands over my mouth but it was too injustice and report for 1933-34 is entirely taken up by late. The ring of that voice lingered on authoritarianism – have Dr Kroenig’s black-rimmed photograph, in the quiet classroom. while the next four pages pay tribute to Professor Koja sent the girl back to fared in the Third Reich? the man. A committed Social Democrat, her place with a ‘Not Satisfactory’, the I like to think he would he had been honoured by Red Vienna, fail grade. Then he turned to me. ‘Do have been a ‘Righteous but was sacked immediately after you remember what I said would hap- Dollfuss’s victory in February 1934. His pen the next time I caught anyone Gentile’. He certainly staff, and many parents, of all political prompting?’ I remembered. But it stood by one distraught persuasions, united to petition for his re- was so obvious that I hadn’t meant Jewish child – who instatement. He was indeed reinstated, to prompt. It would have been sheer will never but too late. Officially, he died of kidney lunacy in that loud voice and in full failure but it was rumoured that he had range of his vision. forget him. committed suicide, which I am inclined ‘I’m going to make an example of you to believe. now. Put your coat on and stand outside He had been head of the school since the classroom.’ ‘Because I prompted. But I didn’t mean 1923, and the school was his life. Despite Outside, in the cold and silent corridor, to.’ Had I really seen the ghost of a his somewhat forbidding appearance, the tears came. Shaken with sobs, I smile on that stern face? I was almost this least pompous and most enlight- washed my face under the single cold sure I had. ened of headmasters, decades ahead of water tap opposite the door that led He straightened and cleared his his time, had done all he could to spread into my classroom. It was so unfair. throat. ‘Hmm … ah, well, you won’t liberalism throughout the school. It had I was so busy washing my tears do it again, will you?’ ‘N-n-no, Herr been an uphill struggle trying to convert away that I had been unaware of the Direktor.’ the older and more conservative teach- approach of a tall, stooping figure. He disappeared hastily into my class- ers to his way of thinking and he never Only when it towered over me did I room. I heard the class rise and sit down sought confrontation, but his favourites look up – to find myself in the august again. He exchanged a few words with had been the young men and women presence of Dr Rudolf Kroenig, the Koja. Again the class rose. Koja must have with progressive ideas and first-class headmaster. That leathery-faced god accompanied him to the door, for quite degrees. The whole school turned out was enthroned in his office, and his close to it I heard Kroenig say in a low for his funeral. younger charges saw him only on the voice ‘I believe your little sinner is repen- Had he lived another four years, how most formal occasions. tant.’ I heard Koja’s short laugh but would this man – who always fought ‘Are you feeling ill?’, he asked abruptly didn’t catch his reply. The headmaster injus tice and authoritarianism – have but with unmistakable concern. I shook came out and, without a further glance fared in the Third Reich? I like to think he my head. ‘Then why, in heaven’s name, in my direction, walked away quickly. A would have been a ‘Righteous Gentile’. are you standing out here instead of few moments later I was readmitted. He certainly stood by one distraught being in your classroom?’ ‘B-b-because,’ I had gained the distinct impression Jewish child – who will never forget I sobbed, ‘Professor Koja sent me out.’ that our headmaster did not approve him. ‘Oh, and why would he do that?’ – for any reason – of children standing Edith Argy

A regular to-do was in hospital recently with a relaxed a little. Senokot in his hand. broken hip but, with all the tsores Soon it was 8.00 pm and the man ‘What’s it got to do with you how Iand pain, I must tell you a very funny who hands out the medicine came often I go?,’ she protested. ‘It’s none thing that happened. around to her bed. He asked if she was of your business!’ She asked me to Round about Xmas time, an old going regularly as he could give her tell him to get away from her – the Jewish lady was wheeled into my ward some Senokot. She answered ‘Yes, I anti-Semite! by the ambulance crew. After she had go regularly.’ He asked: ‘How regularly Had he asked me, I would have told been settled in her bed, she was very do you go?’ ‘I go once a week on him twice a year – on Rosh Hashanah nervous and confused and couldn’t shabbas,’ she replied. and Yom Kippur. I bet he would have find her hearing aid. When I introduced ‘Well,’ he said, ‘That’s not enough!’ given me the entire contents of the myself and told her I was Jewish, she and counted out a double dose of bottle. Judy Benton

3 AJR JOURNAL may 2010

AJR Annual Report 2009

Highlights of the year entertained by Simon Butteriss, Deborah hosted a wonderful event for over 100 Last year was an exceptionally busy time for Crowe and Diana Franklin with music from AJR members from the North when we the AJR as we welcomed a record number the ensemble New World Operetta. presented AJR Holocaust Memorial Books (Leeds, Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, of members to our regional group meetings Personnel and membership and attended to an ever-increasing number South Yorkshire & The Midlands) to the In our Social Services Department, Maxine of our members with urgent medical, social Museum. The books will be used as part of Weber replaced Darren Aaron, who returned and welfare needs. the Museum’s educational programmes. to his home town of Newcastle in October We also made great strides to promote The AJR Northern groups’ visit to London 2009. our Holocaust educational and research in March was much enjoyed – especially the At the end of 2009, AJR membership projects, enabling the public, students and visit to the Houses of Parliament and the stood at 3,081, including 156 new members, scholars to access materials and ground- surprise invitation to 10 Downing Street. of whom 48 were ‘second generation’. breaking resources that will help create the The Northern groups continue to flourish A total of 165 members passed away, 19 legacy of the refugees and survivors who with regular meetings – small Continental cancelled and 42 moved away or their settled in Britain. Friends meetings held in members’ homes subscriptions were unpaid. In January, our Continental Britons in the outlying areas and the meetings with exhibition, created jointly with the Jewish Social and welfare services speakers in the main centres. We organised Museum London, was on display at Burgh several outings to the theatre, interesting Last year, members of staff achieved a higher homes and gardens as well as a day out to House in Hampstead and we were delighted level of professional social work practice with that the well-known comic actor Andrew St Annes-on-Sea to meet AJR members on three members of the Social Services team holiday. Sachs gave a welcoming speech on the achieving N.V.Q. Level 3. opening night. The annual AJR Northern Get-together As our members age, our social care work- was held in Leeds, where over 90 members We were proud to launch our audio- ers are facing complex issues. Consequently, visual testimony collection Refugee Voices met for a day of inter-active discussions members of staff are required to make more and socialising. The lunchtime speaker was at an event at the Wiener Library. We are detailed assessments to ensure that mem- delighted that this remarkable resource, Anita Parmar from the Holocaust Educational bers receive appropriate services such as Trust. running to more than 450 hours of filmed emotional support and financial help from interviews, will be available at the Wiener Members in Glasgow and Newcastle, available social security programmes. We are now supported by the AJR’s Agnes Isaacs, and, following discussions, at the Universities also experiencing a greater need for applica- of Leeds and Leicester and the German also enjoyed a variety of outings and tions to the programmes administered by the entertainment with visits to the Jewish Film Historical Institute London. Members with Claims Conference. access to the internet can read more about Theatre and the Yiddish Song Project. We also We have developed a close working organised a Viennese afternoon with Strauss this project at www.refugeevoices.co.uk relationship with the Manchester Federation Following months of dedicated work, we and Schubert (together with Sachertorte and and, separately, the Leeds Jewish Welfare apple strudel) and ‘The Art of the Cantor’ launched the Kindertransport survey ‘Making Board. We continue to maintain links with the New Lives in Britain’. With first-hand material with members treated to some of the best Holocaust Survivors’ Centre and liaise with chazanot from around the world. collected from more than 1,000 former local authorities and other allied Holocaust Kinder and their families, the information Speakers included Aubrey Pomerance survivor and refugee organisations. To from the Jewish Museum Berlin, Michael gathered covers, for the first time, the improve staff development, we arrange Continental background, journey to Britain, Tobias from Jewish Genealogy, and Edward training courses with partner organisations Green, HM The Queen’s jeweller, at the reception and subsequent experiences and invited to make presentations. lives of the children of the Kindertransport. Scotland Regional meeting. More details of this project are available on Financial assistance Chanukah celebrations were held in the AJR website. Special mention must be As the recipient and custodian of funds Glasgow and Newcastle with entertainers made of Hermann Hirschberger’s great effort from the Claims Conference for Holocaust (and latkes). in leading the team to produce the survey. refugees and survivors living in the UK, the In a new initiative, we held our first AJR is responsible for distributing grants, Southern groups Celebration of Volunteering event with a which for 2009 totalled a record of just over We established a monthly London group in gathering at the House of Lords, hosted by $3.1m. The funds are paid to clients of five Ealing, bringing the total of gatherings every Lord Janner of Braunstone. We are grateful charities and administered from our offices. month to 15, and a new Continental Friends to the actor George Layton, who read In total, we have made some 1,700 grants group in Eastbourne in August. excerpts from his book about volunteering. for emergency purposes. We organised a number of events, inclu­ Our dedicated volunteers were presented Additionally, during the year, 321 survi- ding High Tea in Welwyn Garden City, with with certificates recognising the invaluable vors and refugees (members of these five ­Peter Suchet as speaker in July, while out- role they play. charities) received Homecare grants at a ings included visits to Kew Gardens, Hatfield We are also grateful to Edwina Currie, cost of £846,000. In total, 123,000 hours of House, Rhinefield House (New Forest) and who hosted a magnificent summer regional care have been provided under this scheme, the Freud Museum. We also took groups to get-together for 70 of our members at her which helps us to maintain clients in their Kenwood House and the West Lodge Arbo- home in Surrey in June. Her generosity and own homes for as long as possible. retum and on a special trip to visit the House kindness are much appreciated. Separately, through our Self Aid scheme, of Lords. We repeated our three-day visit to we are pleased to have made grants of Theatre outings were to the New End London, this time for members from the £506,219 to 192 members with the greatest Theatre for American Song Book and Hello South of England, and were delighted to need. Dolly at Regents Park Open Air Theatre. welcome Peter Suchet as our guest speaker Some of the most successful events were at a dinner at the Belsize Square Synagogue. Northern groups the screenings of Churchill’s German Army, The visit included trips to the theatre and In January, we launched the South Yorkshire a documentary film featuring several AJR museums and a tour of the East End. and Midlands Memorial Book, which was on members who served in British forces during The Annual Tea was held at the Hilton in display at Coventry Cathedral and as part the war. Shown first in June at Alyth Gardens Watford in September. Once again, it was a of the national Holocaust Memorial Day and then in October at Tunbridge Wells, we great success, with 300 members attending commemoration in Coventry. plan to show this film at other venues in a delightful afternoon. We were greatly The Imperial War Museum in Manchester the future.

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Sadly, in November, having celebrated 15 This project has proved so popular that we With the unveiling of a statue in Gdansk, years of South London bi-monthly meetings now have a waiting list of clients. there are now permanent commemorations in Streatham, it was agreed that this venue The Department continues to find volun- of the Kindertransport in Britain, Austria, was no longer viable for the aging parti­ teers to help at the regional groups, Head Germany and Poland. cipants. However, the Continental Friends Office and the AJR Centre as well as over 90 The outcome of the survey has proved a meetings in Kingston upon Thames, Bromley befrienders continuing to visit AJR members great success and the Kindertransport contin- and Dulwich have been gaining strength. at home. ues to be active with numerous social events The groups’ successes are due not only and lunches. Following Bertha Leverton’s to the dedication of our staff, but also AJR Journal emigration to Israel, Bernd Koschland took to the support given by members and The Journal featured, as before, articles of over as editor of the Newsletter. volunteers who help by lending their homes outstanding interest by regular contributors. for meetings, finding speakers, helping Consulting Editor Dr Anthony Grenville wrote Child Survivors Association The CSA, which became a special interest with organising refreshments and generally articles of predominantly historical content, group of the AJR in 2007, looks after looking out for each other’s well-being. art critic Gloria Tessler reviewed exhibitions the interests of the child survivors of the Last year, from across the country, more of both general and special interest to Holocaust. With affiliation to the AJR, CSA than two-thirds of our membership attended members, and Dorothea Shefer-Vanson’s membership has increased in recent years. at least one regional group meeting. ‘Letter from Israel’ contained insights on topical affairs from a Jerusalem standpoint. Alongside a programme of social Holidays Humour (not normally a strong point of the gatherings and guest speakers, the summer Members from Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Journal) tinged with nostalgia was provided strawberry tea was very well attended, as Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Hull and mainly by occasional contributors Victor was the splendid Chanukah lunch. London enjoyed a relaxing week in St Ross and Edith Argy. Peter Phillips wrote a Zachor, the book containing episodes Annes-on-Sea. As has become part of the number of provocative articles on present- of several members’ experiences during the programme, the holiday-makers were joined day dilemmas of British Jews. Second World War, continues to be very well on one of the days by members from the Among regular features of the Journal received and is due to be expanded. Northern groups. were reviews of books, theatre, music and The World Federation of Jewish Child There was also the annual trip to exhibitions as well as reports on AJR group Survivors Conference took place near Boston, ­Eastbourne in July, when members enjoyed activities. and the European Association of Survivors a very full week with entertainment, trips Perhaps the most controversial section Conference in Warsaw, with the CSA to the theatre and outings to local places of the Journal remained the correspondence represented at both. of interest. columns. As previously, the Israel-Arab Jewish Refugees Committee In November, we organised a well- conflict proved the most passionate area of The microfilmed archive of the Jewish ­attended trip to Israel. The group was based discussion. Other subjects – for instance, the Refugees Committee (JRC), housed at AJR in Jerusalem and participated in day trips, merits or otherwise of Orthodox and Reform/ Head Office, has proved to be a logical including floating in the Dead Sea, to the Liberal Jewry – were hotly debated. extension of our work. top of Masada (by cable car), and many Not without interest is the geographical The JRC archive receives enquiries from ­interesting sites and museums. There was location of the readership: one issue alone individuals keen to trace family and friends, also time for members to meet up with family included letters from readers in Germany, from German/Austrian pension authorities and friends. Greece, Israel, Switzerland and Venezuela. wishing to confirm a former immigrant’s Claims advice AJR Centre status, from university researchers working We guided members with applications for The Centre continued to provide a welcoming on PhD theses, and from organisations the second and final payments from the setting for members to enjoy delicious kosher tracking down the owners of looted art. On Austrian General Settlement Fund as well as lunches as well as a range of entertainment many occasions, there is a link between the ongoing claims for the Claims Conference- and activities. Alongside the monthly AJR database and the refugees named on operated Hardship and Article II Funds. Luncheon Club and Kindertransport lunches, the JRC files. Following a court ruling in Germany, the we introduced a monthly film matinée Grants AJR assisted with claims for survivors who and arranged farewell lunches for Bertha The AJR Charitable Trust (AJRCT) continued worked in ghettos, with those eligible receiv- Leverton before her emigration to Israel and its support of the AJR Holocaust Memorial ing as much as £45,000 in arrears awards. for Katia Gould’s 90th birthday. Books with a grant towards the production Advice was also provided to some of Members from across the country enjoyed of the Scotland Memorial Book – the sixth in the youngest Austrian Holocaust victims, lunch at the Centre as part of the visit to the series – launched to commemorate Yom who benefited from a new law enabling London in March and the Centre prepared the Hashoah in Glasgow. them to claim a pension from the Austrian refreshments at Belsize Square Synagogue Among other projects, the AJRCT gave government. as part of the AJR’s commemoration of a grant towards the recently reopened Holocaust Memorial Day. Jewish Museum London, the Jewish Film Volunteers The Centre held coffee mornings before Festival and the King Solomon School, to The Volunteers Department has benefited the trips to Israel, St Annes-on-Sea and support their programme of educational from an intern from the Action Reconciliation Eastbourne. Rabbi Steven Katz led our Model trips to Poland. Services for Peace who started work with us Seder and both the Kinder and Chanukah in September for one year. parties were over-subscribed. Conclusion This has enabled the Department to With many members increasingly unable Our members continue to astound us launch a befriender service to our clients in to cook for themselves, the Centre continues with their zest for life and demands for an the Manchester area, where we have worked to arrange for Meals-on-Wheels deliveries ever-increasing programme of events and very closely with the Manchester University in the London area and take-away meals. activities. While we are sadly losing many of Leadership Programme. It is through their These vital services reflect our Homecare our members, we are continuously finding good offices that we have successfully placed programme of ensuring that our members’ and assisting many former refugees and eight volunteers with AJR members. This is lives at home are as comfortable as survivors, some of whom have, surprisingly, the Volunteer Department’s first initiative in possible. never previously heard about the AJR. With the North of England and we are delighted members’ needs changing, our professional at its success. Kindertransport staff continue to help to ensure that they can We also instigated, in London, a programme At the start of the year, we were still enjoy a more comfortable life. that matches 6th-formers from Jewish receiving congratulatory letters following Andrew Kaufman secondary schools with our clients who the Kinderstransport Celebration at the Jews’ Chairman, Association of would like help using their home computers. Free School the previous November. Jewish Refugees

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Treasurer’s Report 2009 Finance Report fter the ravages of falling markets spring grove in 2008, the AJR Charitable Trust AJR – Income and Expenditure Account RETIREMENT HOME A recovered substantially on its Year ended 31st December 2009 214 Finchley Road investment portfolio in 2009 and that Income: 2009 2008 London NW3 improvement has continued in the early £ £ £ £ London’s Most Luxurious part of 2010, although we have not Membership/Donations recovered all our 2008 losses. During and Legacies 73,913 78,600  Entertainment  Activities Other 3,958 4,410  Stress Free Living 2009 we also received some significant 77,871 83,010 legacies, so that our balance sheet at  24 House Staffing Excellent Cuisine Less:  Full En-Suite Facilities the end of 2009 looks rather healthier Overhead Expenses than a year earlier. Meanwhile, our Salary Costs 58,064 56,691 Call for more information or a personal tour expenditure on welfare has continued AJR Journal 53,732 52,704 020 8446 2117 to rise – it is our policy to insulate Administration/ Depreciation 50,694 52,432 or 020 7794 4455 from market fluctuations those of our 162,490 161,827 [email protected] needier members whom we help with (Deficit)/Surplus: -70,112 -78,817 regular allowances, emergency aid or home help. Summary of Balance Sheet Our welfare resources are augmented, at 31st December 2009 as can be seen from the published figures, 2009 2008 NEWTONS by considerable sums received (through £ £ the Umbrella Group of UK agencies) Current Assets 18,118 88,047 Long established from the Claims Conference or, through Less: Current Liabilities 2,179 1,996 Hampstead Solicitors them, from the German Government, 15,939 86,051 the Swiss Banks Compensation scheme and other agencies, and from the Represented by: Personal and Prompt Austrian Government under their General Fund 86,051 164,868 Legal Services Net deficiency for the year -70,112 -78,817 Austrian Holocaust Survivors Emergency 15,939 86,051 Assistance Programme (AHSEAP). We 22 Fitzjohn’s Avenue have to plan for the future when these David Rothenberg, Hon. Treasurer 01/04/2010 London NW3 5NB very welcome funding programmes Tel: 020 7435 5351 might dry up, as, for example, the AJR CHARITABLE TRUST PAUL BALINT AJR DAY CENTRE ICHEIC and Hungarian Gold Train funds Fax: 020 7435 8881 Summary figure for the year ended [email protected] have already done. 31st December 2009 It is always difficult to know for how 2009 2008 long we will have the responsibility of Income: £ £ £ £ helping our aging members - happily a Takings – Day Centre significant number reach very advanced and meals-on-wheels 89,007 80,858 years, with 33 being over 100 years of Less outgoings: JACKMAN . age. Balancing immediate needs, our Salaries 97,870 93,753 known resources and the needs of the Catering costs 189,020 190,285 SILVERMAN next few years is always difficult, but we Sundry expenses 109,847 396,737 81,904 365,942 COMMERCIAL PROPERTY CONSULTANTS anticipate that the bulk of our current Deficit funded from reserves is going to be spent over the Charitable Trust 307,730 285,084 next eight to ten years assuming just our current programmes continue. AJR CHARITABLE TRUST – We also have to take into account Summary Income and Expenditure Accounts Year ended 31st December 2009 the ever-reducing contribution of local authorities to assisting for example with 2009 2008 home care, and we may well be called Income: Gift Aid/Donations/ on to give even greater help in the future Claims Conference 803,953 710,630 Telephone: 020 7209 5532 as government and local authority Investment income 487,355 632,818 [email protected] expenditure is cut back. Sheltered housing 21,843 29,246 Having the resources is only part of 1,313,151 1,372,694 the picture. Without our dedicated team Legacies 1,363,828 607,001 of social workers led by Sue Kurlander, 2,676,979 1,979,695 we would not reach those of our wanted to buy Less outgoings: members who need support and it is in Day Centre 307,730 285,084 helping those members that our money Self Aid, Homecare and German and is applied to such good effect. Emergency Grants 1,005,177 1,008,253 English Books Once again, I would like to thank Other organisations 417,104 283,072 Administration/ Gordon Greenfield, who carries the Depreciation 916,364 968,190 Bookdealer, AJR member, burden not only of looking after our 2,646,375 2,544,599 welcomes invitations to view financial affairs but also manages the and purchase valuable books. financial affairs of the Umbrella Group Surplus/-Deficiency on realised and unrealised and the rigorous reporting requirements investments 2,141,760 -3,945,228 Robert Hornung of the Claims Conference. 10 Mount View, Ealing, Net outgoing David Rothenberg resources for the year -23,779 -579,066 London W5 1PR Honorary Treasurer, Association of Email: [email protected] Jewish Refugees Net movement in funds 2,117,981 -4,524,294 Tel: 020 8998 0546

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journal in June 2009: ‘[A]ny Jew who lived under Nazi occupation during the war and who was still alive at the beginning of 1946’. This excludes Mr Phillips – as it excludes me – because we left Austria or Germany shortly before the outbreak of war. I regard it as a sound and sensible definition. Peter Fraenkel, London EC2

Sir – Yad Vashem defines a survivor simply as one who spent the war years in Europe under the Nazis, irrespective of how he or she managed to survive. No one had it easy ‘HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS’ AND been deprived of their parents and having to – this makes perfect sense to me. A ‘refugee’, ‘REFUGEES’: IN SEARCH OF A adjust to life on their own in a strange country on the other hand, is someone lucky enough DEFINITION often under very difficult circumstances. But to have found a haven in another country. Sir – I am glad Peter Phillips (April) raised the this must not be confused with Holocaust Admittedly, had they not fled they would question of ‘who is a survivor’. survivors’ stories, which are of a totally not have survived – which is some people’s A ‘survivor’ is a member of a group different nature. simplistic idea of a survivor, although they targeted for extermination (in our case Jews) Kitty Hart-Moxon, Harpenden, Herts didn’t experience the suffering or the ordeal in any of the countries where Germans and of having to fight for survival. their supporters were in power and who was Sir – Peter Philips’s letter reminded me of Kindertransportees, however, are in a still alive on the day of the liberation. a visit I made to the museum in Teresin class of their own. They came here as children In other words, the word ‘survivor’ should which had been a school used to house on their own and, in most cases, lost their be used strictly to describe people who 10-15-year-old boys. I realised this was parents, siblings and comfortable homes, ‘remained alive’ (see Oxford Dictionary) in the very place in which I would have been and were, like all survivors, traumatised by spite of the Nazis’ aim to murder all the Jews incarcerated as a 10-year-old in 1941 had their experiences. However, unlike survivors, they could get hold of, i.e. people who had it not been for my father’s courage and their lives were not in danger and they never not managed to flee to the safety of other foresight in getting us out of Czechoslovakia went in fear as Jews. They are therefore countries but had survived in hiding places just in time. not survivors in the strict sense of the word or concentration camps. Am I a survivor? No, of course not – in the but are now widely accepted as such – and A ‘refugee’, on the other hand, is a person sense that I did not experience the horrors of rightly so. who, as the word implies, found ‘refuge’, the camps – but certainly in the sense that I As to who is a survivor, the line has to be i.e. escaped the imminent danger of being managed to escape that fate. drawn somewhere or one could, for instance, killed. I agree with Mr Phillips that Kindertransport refer to oneself as a survivor simply because It goes without saying that the lives of children are entitled to the term ‘survivors’, had one’s great-grandparents not left the those who managed to escape were not but I would certainly not class myself in that Pale of Settlement in the nineteenth century, necessarily a bed of roses. However, unhappy category, having arrived on these shores with they would have perished with the others. and traumatised as no doubt most children the benefit of my parents. We also owe our One could take it even further. At the seder and adults were, no one was in danger lives to sponsorship – that of the late Joe table, we are commanded to believe that of their lives, whilst ‘survivors’ had death and Carmel Gilbert (of Hillel House and Wizo had God not brought our forefathers out staring them in the face on a daily basis. fame), who were related. of Egypt we would not have survived as a Anita Lasker Wallfisch In addition to defining the words, some people. We could take this argument even (69388 Auschwitz/Birkenau), London NW10 of your readers might like to suggest a further still: every one of us can consider suitable category for us which distinguishes himself a survivor for who can deny that Sir – Holocaust survivors are those who ‘survivors’ from ‘refugees’. We were after all Jews are the world’s greatest survivors personally experienced the Holocaust in forcibly exiled and fled for our lives. against all odds throughout their blood- ghettos, concentration camps or in hiding Peter Briess, London NW3 soaked history? in occupied Europe and, despite constant Rubin Katz, London NW11 danger of extermination, managed to stay Sir – The generally accepted definition of a alive. Holocaust survivor is: ‘Anyone who lived in Sir – Jews survived the Holocaust in many Refugees and Kindertransportees do Germany or German occupied or controlled ways. But those who survived the con- not fit the above category. They did not lands between 1933 and 1945 and who was centration camps are the only Holocaust personally experience the constant danger in the target group for extermination, but survivors. to life. They escaped disaster before the still alive shortly after the end of WWII is Clare Parker, London NW3 extermination programme came into being considered a Holocaust survivor.’ Explanation: in 1941. They took refuge in various countries 1933, because that is the year in which the HOLOCAUST AND OTHER GENOCIDES before the outbreak of the war and thus were Nazi Party started to control the German Sir – I sense, and respect, the hurt and fear refugees – or, to be politically correct, asylum government; 1945 because it is the end of behind Rubin Katz’s response (March) to my seekers. Holocaust survivors who came to the WWII; and ‘target group for extermination’ February letter. UK after the war were classed as immigrants consists primarily, but not necessarily The Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ was only part and not asylum seekers. exclusively, of Jews and Gypsies. As such, it of their aim to ‘purify’ Aryan German blood Today, being a Holocaust survivor is more includes those in the above definition who by getting rid of all people with ‘inferior ‘fashionable’ than being termed a refugee were in camps (concentration, labour or blood’. It was not only Jews who were – there is a huge demand on our time. extermination), those in hiding, those with murdered because they were Jews: half a Hence the refugees’ desire to jump on the false identification papers, and those who million Gypsies were slaughtered because bandwagon. There is actually a potential left Germany or the lands legally or illegally they were Gypsies and designated by the danger in their portraying themselves as before or during the war. Nazis as having poisonous blood. ‘survivors’ as this can play into the hands of Hans Weinmann, West Bloomfield, Katz and many others, Jews and non-Jews the Holocaust deniers, whose first question Michigan, USA alike, have been traumatised by living through would be ‘Just how did you survive?’ atrocities and in fear of further attacks. So Kindertransportees and refugees have Sir – Peter Phillips asks ‘Who are Holocaust it is not surprising that he misinterprets my a very important function – telling their survivors?’ The authoritative definition was aim to promote understanding of how all unique stories of arrival in the UK having given by Yad Vashem and reprinted in your continued overleaf

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letters to the editor continued from page 7 prejudice and racism – not only anti-Semitism are condemned to repeat it.’ We have are lording it as they smile all the way to their – led to so many genocides in the twentieth repeatedly allowed too many genocides out discredited banks. It beggars belief that any century. of ignorance, self-interest and cowardice. of the disgraced MPs would offer themselves I believe the only way to achieve Ruth Barnett, Life President, for re-election. Surely this is democracy gone ‘community cohesion’ – in which no one lives Raphael Jewish Counselling Service, mad. Would you voluntarily give a blank in fear of their neighbours – is through bearing London NW6 cheque to a burglar who had taken your car to be open to knowledge and dialogue about and raided your bank account? all atrocities against humanity, not only the SAYING KADDISH Had it not been for the DT letting the Holocaust. The Holocaust is unique but it Sir – My February letter concerning Maly cat out of the bag, the culprits would be may not remain so if we close our minds and Trostinec aroused considerable interest. blissfully basking in their second homes deny other genocides. Apart from letters subsequently published in perpetuity. The next Parliament would That intelligent people like Martin Stern in the Journal, I have had telephone calls embrace the renegade, recycled robbers (also March) and many others deny that from others whose loved ones perished in and a conglomerate of alien cultures, which the slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman that terrible place. Recently, I attended a would not be very sympathetic to Jews or ‘Young Turks’ was genocide illustrates Sheffield Continental Friends meeting and Israel. More of us would leave in droves the efficiency of Turkey’s drive to hide its there too I found a lady whose close relative except the sycophants, do-gooders, human shameful past. Politicians who sacrifice met a fate similar to that of my dear parents rights activists and the politically correct their integrity and humanity in the name and sister. cranks that thankfully represent only a of Realpolitik, and people who focus only On the last national Holocaust Day, I minority. Can they not see how anti-Semitism on the Holocaust, are vulnerable to Turkey’s spoke to a meeting organised by Chelmsford pervades this country? Note the crocodile disinformation. City Council; in the morning, I participated in tears shed for the man responsible for killing Stern seems unaware that Raphael a combined church service in Saffron Walden. Israelis. British hypocrisy knows no bounds. Lemkin coined the term ‘genocide’ in On both occasions, I mentioned Maly Building in Jerusalem is condemned. Did relation to the Ottoman genocide against Trostinec. At Chelmsford, I also expressed not God give eretz to His chosen people in Christian Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians my wish that one day I would be able to perpetuity? On the other hand, who gave under cover of the First World War, well visit the site in order to recite Kaddish. England any part of the globe or which before the Nazi genocide against Jews and Apparently an Anglian TV reporter was righteous people condone fighting unlawful others. It is also not generally known that present and I later received a phone call wars in faraway countries under false the term ‘holocaust’ (Greek: wholly burnt, asking if I would consent to the TV station pretences? God only knows what they are i.e. sacrifice by fire) was first applied to accompanying me if ever I undertook such doing in Northern Ireland. the torching by the Ottomans of an entire a trip. I’m not sure I would be fit enough None of us Kinder chose to come to this Armenian community locked in their church to manage such a long trip, but I haven’t country. However, how many would choose in the 1890s. ruled this out altogether. it now? The country has changed beyond Yes, there were some Armenians who Otto Deutsch, Southend-on-Sea recognition. Of course, we will be forever attempted to defend themselves, although grateful to it for saving our lives, as has been Sir – A few years ago I went to Maly Trostinec most young Armenian men were conscripted expressed repeatedly. Yet, if these matters are with my wife, as my mother, who came from into the Ottoman army in the First World War not aired, they would be buried in the mire Vienna, was transported there just after and shot. Not surprisingly, many Armenians of history. As thousands of new laws and she gave birth to me at the end of 1941. fled to the Armenian community in Russia regulations are proclaimed, scraping away Marianne Egtman (née Schlesinger), your and some fought in the Russian army. at democracy, it is essential that not only correspondent from Denmark, should know This was hardly a reason to arrest all the opinions but facts receive the attention of that I said a few words at the memorial Armenian intellectuals (potential leaders) on the public – facts which are played out on stone there. 24 April 1915 and decapitate them. This was the stage before our eyes! Where obscurity Jackie Young (formerly Jona Spiegel), immediately followed by the death march reigns, freedom vanishes. Let us hang on to London N2 into the desert and the slaughter of all the what little is left! women, children and elderly. Documentation Sir – My mother, Klara Herner, and brother Fred Stern, Wembley Park of the planning and carrying out of this Jiri were shipped to Maly Trostinec via genocide, with eye-witness accounts, is ‘Transport Bn’ in September 1942 from the WOODCRAFT FOLK held in the British government archives – yet Theresienstadt ghetto. The Swiss Red Cross Sir – The daughter of Henry Fair aka ‘Koodoo’, Britain colludes with Turkey in its denial for notified me on 16 December 1996. the organiser of the Woodcraft Folk, recalls reasons of Realpolitik. Henry Herner, Caracas, Venezuela how the organisation was involved in Acknowledgement of genocide, followed assisting Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany by memorialisation and restitution, is TWEEDLEDEE V TWEEDLEDUM and remembers meeting a number in a humanitarian issue that needs to be Sir – Will the people vote for the one or the their house in Wandsworth. Could former separated from political self-interest. other, or will they exercise their democratic refugees who were helped by the Woodcraft Failure to do so creates impunity for future right and stay at home? Should they cast Folk please contact me with their experiences genocide. This becomes only too evident their vote for Tweedledee, the incumbent, of this organisation? in the series of over 50 genocides in the or should they favour Tweedledum, the Howard Falksohn, Archivist, Wiener Library, twentieth century. German officers of the challenger? One could almost forget the 4 Devonshire Street, London W1W 5BH, Austro-Hungarian army were involved in the third hopeful candidate who claimed a liberal tel 020 7636 7247 Armenian genocide and hence able to tell £23,083, the maximum allowable under email [email protected] Hitler how it had been done. the MPs’ own rules. Not only the leaders, The pattern of stages in the development but their whole unscrupulous flock, sitting CAPTAIN KENDRICK and carrying out of genocide is similar in all behind them – though they often barely form Sir – If you ever came across Captain Kendrick genocides. I suggest that Mr Stern might a quorum – quite legally helped themselves of the British Passport Office in Vienna, or he realise this from Greg Stanton’s information to our money. A hung Parliament? Would saved your family, could you please contact in the Genocide Watch website. He might this be the punishment for its members’ me? During the war, Kendrick headed also read the latest report on the Armenian evil deeds? CDSIC back in Britain. I am researching for a genocide by Geoffrey Robertson QC. They all fiddled while Britons got browned book on this subject. As the philosopher Santayana warned, off and while the country was tumbling into (Dr) Helen Fry, tel 0779 6213 217 ‘Those who cannot remember the past bankruptcy. In ‘the other place’, their peers email [email protected]

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in Chillingham Castle until its discovery in 1932. Ketubot, Chanucah lamps, Torah decorations – the whole thing clinks with silver and brass and the collective Family histories Jewish memory down to the celebration THEY CALLED HER CASSANDRA: of Shabbat – there’s even a mock challah A STORY OF SURVIVAL to plait. by Renée Tyack he pièce de résistance of the long- Book Guild, 2008, 146 pp. The writing on the wall includes the hardcover, £16.99 awaited reopening of London’s dates of the 4,000-year-old Jewish people, T Jewish Museum is the mediaeval from birth to exile and return. But the FAMILY CONNECTIONS: mikveh discovered in the home of the GELLES – SHAPIRO – FRIEDMAN stress is on Britain: the Holocaust is seen by Edward Gelles Crespin family in the City of London in through the eyes of the only known Briton 2001. Surrounded by pebbles, backed by Maastricht: Shaker Publishing, 2009, incarcerated in Auschwitz, the late Leon 106 pp. hardcover, £18, from 3 Hyde glass, it has been lovingly restored, stone Greenman. Park Crescent, London W2 2PW by ancient stone. ‘We don’t want the whole thing to end FIVE HUNDRED YEARS TO The Museum’s £10 million redevelop­ with the Holocaust,’ protested one guide. A ment scheme, with a £4.2m Heritage AUSCHWITZ: A FAMILY ODYSSEY valid point because Israel, the chameleon FROM THE INQUISITION TO THE Lottery Fund grant and private donations, from the ashes, is less prominent. ‘This PRESENT has tripled the Museum’s area into a is to do with Anglo-Jewish history,’ she by Irene Lawford-Hinrichsen added. However, from the York London: Edition Press, 2008, 232 pp. massacre to the secret Jews hardback, £21.95 of Tudor Britain, the state of or someone who has not experienced Anglo-Jewry has not always the Holocaust, any story of survival, any been a happy one. Frandom rescue, any kindness of stran- The Execution of Lady Jane gers can make you catch your breath with Grey is one of the most wonder. Renée Tyack’s story, with a fore- word by playwright Ronald Harwood, is of devastating paintings in the her parents, Ruth and Fred Bergmann, who National Gallery (NG). escaped to Britain in 1939 with the help of Created by eighteenth-century the Quakers. Ruth is nicknamed Cassandra French artist Paul Delaroche, because of her premonitions of disaster its poignancy is due not just to but also because she had the intuitive the luminous pallor of this 17- sense to be one step ahead of danger. The book is written partly from her year-old queen of nine days. It’s mother’s written testimony and partly not just because she is in pure from her own, surprisingly vivid childhood white, her golden hair tumbling memories. It is a typical tale of wartime from a blindfold. It’s not even the amnesia. Despite looming war signals, fatherly gesture of the sergeant- Fred, a medical student in Leipzig, was an optimist busy with his work and trying Jewish Museum London: Torah scrolls in silver cases, made at-arms who guides her towards to feed his young family. He paid for his for the Ba’al Shem of London, 1766-67 the block. It is because Jane is student fees by playing in a jazz band and like a little girl playing Blind welcome space for its impressive Judaica, joining a famous football club. But soon Man’s Buff, groping, her pale arms, still ‘Juden verboten’ signs began to loom temple ornaments and historical artefacts. with the fragile plumpness of childhood, and he was prevented from studying his Opened by Nigella Lawson and Alan outstretched in terror. favoured paediatrics. More punitive laws Yentob, enhanced by the smell of fresh Similar themes by Delaroche in the were passed in 1938, but Fred bought a small surgical ward with 20 beds, an oper- wood and coffee, there were earnest – if NG’s new exhibition Painting History: silent – audio-visuals of journalist Jonathan ating theatre which he sent to­Rotterdam Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey (until to be shipped to British Honduras. In Freedland and survivor-luminary Ben 23 May) include Stafford on his Way to 1940 the Germans invaded Holland and Helfgott. Execution, The Princes in the Tower, confiscated it all. Ruth’s younger sister An interactive format will educate and a grim-faced Cromwell peering into disappeared into the gas chambers. children in an ‘innovative and compelling the coffin of the executed Charles I. Renée, born in 1934, wore the yellow star and learned to avoid eye contact. She way’. With 90 per cent non-Jewish visitors, Delaroche’s interest in martyred English Director Rickie Burman anticipates it will and her brother got used to being spat on. royals mirrors post-revolutionary French Told that the Nazis were coming for Jewish be a vibrant museum from the cultural artists’ fascination with English literature doctors, Ruth ran to warn her husband. and educational perspective. There are and history, just years after their own Kristallnacht led to more humiliations for reconstructions of the East End Jewish regicide. Jews and, in her father’s hospital, Renée as rag trade and a dissertation on Shylock a young child faced daily interviews with by Sir Anthony Sher. Synagogue treasures Annely Juda Fine Art the Gestapo. With a mixture of courage are arranged beneath a brass candelabra and audacity, Ruth rescued her father-in- 23 Dering Street (off New Bond Street) law en route to Buchenwald, and there and an Italian walnut ark with Corinthian Tel: 020 7629 7578 Fax: 020 7491 2139 are other, similar examples of her presence pillars and gilded and marbled paintwork, CONTEMPORARY PAINTING of mind. AND SCULPTURE which was used as a steward’s wardrobe continued overleaf

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reviews continued from page 9 Ruth, whose dreams of becoming an his teacher’s daughter and so preserve movement, the disintegration of the Austro- actress were thwarted, was mentored by the highest positions in the seminaries for Hungarian Empire, and the problems facing a leading Berlin actress, through whom the chosen few. One Friedman wedding Russian Jewry generated a battle between she met Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. attracted 600 guests with the grand rabbis Orthodoxy and a burgeoning social and Her elder sister, Leni, became engaged to of the Friedman family seated at the high political life. Zionism represented the new Kurt’s younger brother, Fritz. table, with large sums of money donated face of Judaism, even though that too Armed with an invitation from the to charity. Reading between the lines – and became polarised between Revisionist and Quakers to go to England, Ruth went to we are merely given genetic lines – the Labour factions. Dresden for their visas. Fred was under preservation of this specific Orthodoxy The really interesting question is the house arrest. She was refused, but had an meant that the marriages generated a break-up of a centuries-old rabbinic elite instinct to wait. cultural and religious endogamy. through these external political factors. Life in Britain was no joy ride either. We learn early in the book that the Perhaps in another, more reader-friendly Internment, insecurity and separation importance of ‘yichus’, or family lineage, book, Edward Gelles might analyse how his characterised their first year, while the was embraced by the eighteenth-century family tradition broke down and came to family moved from hostel to hostel in the Chassidic founder Israel Ben Eliezer, the represent more contemporary Jewish atti- north of England, always wondering about Baal Shem Tov. When his ideas were tudes, from modern orthodox to secular. moving on to British Honduras, Australia, challenged by the author’s ancestor, Isaac For anyone seeking a potted history of the USA or South America. Horowitz, Chief Rabbi of Brody, Glogau European Jewry through the experience Despite a rather muddled beginning – it and Hamburg, he retorted, according to of one family, Five Hundred Years to leapfrogs between wartime Germany and Gelles: ‘What can I do? He is of a stock Auschwitz: A Family Odyssey from the internment in Britain – the book settles whose descendants are heard when they Inquisition to the Present is a good read. into a more linear narrative and it is in her weep before the Lord.’ Except there is nothing potted or brief moving descriptions of her mother, and Another ancestor, Moses Gelles, who about this episodic and densely researched later her aunts, their marriages and private probably died in the 1750s, belonged to the volume, which covers five centuries and 14 torments, that Tyack excels. prestigious Brody Talmudic study group, generations. A patrilineal Jew (not recog- Fred is less well-drawn. Though he is of which only skimpy records survive, nised by Orthodox Judaism), the author described in one passage as a remote, ­having been mainly lost in the Holocaust. has taken upon herself the daunting task authoritarian figure, his clear affection A fragment remains in the library of New of exploring her father’s history, which for his children and his sense of mischief York’s Jewish Theological Seminary. But, is the eternal Jewish struggle for emanci­ tend to belie this, coming through the despite the scarcity of records, a ‘miracle’ pation and freedom from persecution. Her precise German vernacular of his dialogue. is quoted in a collection of stories about saga is a tale of trials, tribulations, torture, There are vivid descriptions of wartime the Baal Shem Tov. As he passed a Jewish terror, courage and occasional redemption. Kilburn, of the swimming pools in the cemetery, he saw a pillar of fire over one As she retraces the steps of her forebears, Macclesfield hospital where Fred worked, of the graves. It turned out to be that of from the Spanish Henrique de Milao to of life in various schools, and of the a man described as ‘Moshe the servant of the German Hinrichsens, up to her own humiliating privations endured in Britain God’. Although that very site is now lost time, she reveals the imagination, courage by the internees, and their fears of sudden, to history, the author questions whether it and energy of this remarkable family in forced transportation. This trade in human could have been the grave of his ancestor, escaping their grim destiny. And many of suffering is a shocking indicator of British Moses Gelles. the characters, such as Alvaro Diniz, who insensitivity to Jewish privations under the Edward Gelles traces his descent from escaped to Portugal in the seventeenth cen- Nazis, despite the fact that Britain was this ancestor to his father, Dr David Isaac tury, and her grandfather, Henri Hinrichsen, fighting for its existence. Gelles, whose paternal line was closely in the twentieth, really spring to life. Family Connections: Gelles – Shapiro involved with the Friedman Chassidic The book opens with a graphic descrip- – Friedman cannot quite be described dynasty of Czortkow but who rejected tion of the martyrdom of the author’s as a family history – it is more a highly their Orthodoxy in favour of a more paternal ancestor, Henrique de Milao, researched bibliography of rabbinic line- modern outlook. burned at the stake in Portugal by the age. Carefully indexed and complete with This is clearly not a book concerned Spanish Inquisition in 1492. Fast forward family trees and extracts from Orthodox with personalities, but in one welcome 500 years, invert the number and the year papers like the Jüdische Presse, Gelles extract from the memoir of Florence is 1942, when de Milao’s descendants, traces the genealogical links between Mayer Lieblich, a Holocaust survivor, having fled their enemies across Europe several rabbinic families in Central and there is a vivid description of Rabbi Israel to become successful businessmen, create Eastern Europe who could be described Friedman’s visit to Czortkow, where he a publishing dynasty in Leipzig, about to as the aristocracy of European Jewish was greeted by Chassidim from all over face extinction at the hands of the Nazis. scholarship. Certain Chassidim, Cabbalists Europe. Lieblich retains a moving memory It is not just the protagonists who tell their and Talmudists can be traced, he claims, of this religious gathering, including the story. The growth of the powerful Leipzig back to the priestly or Davidic line, even women’s preparations for the Sabbath. music publishing business CF Peters, in which to prophets like Samuel or priests like Eli. Perhaps the intense interest Edward the author’s grandfather became a partner Whether this is so or not, their inbreeding Gelles had in writing this monograph is in 1894 and which he defended, effectively is clearly part of the elite Ashkenazi tradi- revealed in a chapter on his father, Dr with his life, is a very strong element in tion, almost a form of ancestor worship. David Gelles, in Galicia in 1883, at the the book’s later stages. Due to the author’s In his preface Gelles describes the time of Russian pogroms. David broke with immersion in her subject, the wavering ‘closely woven fabric of the Ashkenazi centuries of Orthodox Judaism in favour of ­fortunes of this company become as much rabbinate’ that flourished in Europe for a modern, mainstream education, a legal a personal story as that of its partners, more than 1,000 years and descended career and a life-long interest in Zionism. many fated to die in the Holocaust. from the eleventh-century scholar Rashi. He and his wife lived in Vienna until the From Henrique de Milao’s first induc- Protective of its rabbinic status, the Anschluss, when they fled to England, but tion into the shipping trade at the age tendency was to marry cousins, thus returned to Vienna for good in 1949. of 13, to the graphic description of his forming newer branches, or ‘sprigs’, of David was not alone in rejecting martyrdom at age 81, to the confiscation that dynasty. Or a student might marry strict family values. The emerging Zionist of Jewish wealth and property in Spain

10 AJR JOURNAL may 2010 and Portugal to finance the great voy- ­Julius’s book, due in February 2010. It ages of discovery, the story becomes one was a mismatch: Julius’s book is ten of endless escape and betrayal, more times as heavy and contains six times as Rescue the Perishing: spine-chilling than many a spy thriller or many words. It is two and a half times as Eleanor Rathbone horror film. But the family demonstrated long as the King James translation of the and the Refugees flair, optimism and commercial acumen in Pentateuch. many business fields. In 2005 MacShane chaired the first- Susan Cohen The Henriques, banished from Spain ever All-Party Parliamentary Commission in 1492, first fled to Portugal as secret of Inquiry into the problem of anti- Special offer Jews or Marranos. Fleeing across Europe, Semitism. Since the first edition of his for AJR readers involved with the lucrative shipping trade, book in 2008, he had heard President they still feared the lengthening tentacles Ahmadinejad rant against Jews and £15 no post and packing of the Inquisition, fuelled by state and Jewishness at the United Nations and order before 30/06/2010 royal interests. Many members of the comments that Hitler, at least, was never quote reference AJRSC family were tortured by the Inquisition. invited to address the League of Nations. Over the next 400 years, the descen­ He admits the technical possibility of anti- Please send your orders to: dants of the martyred Henrique de Milao Zionism differing from anti-Semitism but reached Hamburg, then Glückstadt, Vallentine Mitchell Publishers quotes Martin Luther King that ‘When Schwerin, before returning to Hamburg, 29/45 High Street, Edgware, people criticize Zionism, they mean where their family connections launched Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.’ He Middlesex, HA8 7UU the Hamburg Bank among their business ridicules Arab physician and writer Ghada Tel: 020 8952 9526 ventures. But a change in direction drew the author’s grandfather, Henri Hinrich­ Karmi for claiming ‘Israel is encircling the sen, away from commerce and into Arab world’ and that the Arab world’s the cultural centre of Leipzig, where he backwardness in so many spheres is all not compare it with other racisms. achieved great success with his music Israel’s fault. Yet the trend in Britain is one Remarkably, in a book with over 4,000 publishing dynasty. A wealthy philan- of growing anti-Semitism, even though notes and references, Julius does not thropist honoured by the Kaiser and feted we are threatened almost as much cite Jean-Paul Sartre’s Reflections on with civic honours, his close friend was by extreme Islam as is Israel. The first the Jewish Question (1946), in which he the composer Edvard Grieg. He also Interparliamentary Coalition Conference suggests that the Jew is feared because collected the autographed letters of against anti-Semitism in February 2009 he is believed to be cleverer than the Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner – all later was ignored by the media in the West gentile, while the black man is feared confiscated by the Nazis. Tragically, like and bookstores in the UK refused to give because he is supposedly sexually more so many others of his time, he failed to it any prominence. MacShane emerges potent. Thus the Jew is going to swindle take heed of the Nazi bureaucratic death as a man of immense common sense and you, and you can’t help this because he machine. goodwill and you should go out and buy knows something you don’t. On the other This is a roller-coaster story of rags to his book even at this late stage. hand, the black man is going to marry riches and riches to rags, with jealous Anthony Julius (aka Princess Diana’s your daughter ... enemies, occasionally visionary kings, forced divorce lawyer and author of a book on This comparison with other prejudices conversions, extortionate taxes, court T. S. Eliot’s anti-Semitism), in contrast, has is important. In my childhood experience, Jews, non Jews, tolerance and virulent written a brilliant, encyclopaedic, closely Catholics were generally more hated than anti-Semitism. It is told simply and without argued book that is both much more Jews. A heavy regional accent led to social sentimentality against the background of detailed and more narrowly focused. It exclusion. Being black or Asian was a the Inquisition, the Seven Years’ War, the deals with four phases of English anti- huge disadvantage – ‘a touch of the tar French Revolution, the Enlightenment and Semitism: the blood-soaked mediaeval brush’, people would say of someone a the Nazi era. The author’s description of anti-Semitism up to the expulsion of the little swarthy. Northerners didn’t like the the slowly encroaching Aryanisation of Jews in 1290; literary anti-Semitism from ‘soft southerners’ and vice versa. Scots Jewish businesses and professions and the mediaeval ballad ‘Sir Hugh, or the were believed to be stingy; ‘to welsh’ the almost bureaucratic restrictions and Jew’s Daughter’ through to Caryl Churchill on one’s debts was as reprehensible as persecutions which will end in the death and Tom Paulin; modern anti-Semitism ‘to jew’ someone. To this day, Millwall camps chillingly revisit the horrors of the after the readmission to England; and supporters dislike West Ham supporters, Inquisition with which the book opens. the new anti-Semitism masquerading as a hostility that frequently explodes into Gloria Tessler anti-Zionism. (Doubters should consult violence. the Hamas charter, especially Art. 22, Thus Julius’s book is comprehensive, Anti-Semitism revisited which blames the ‘Zionists’ – i.e. the ­informative and a labour of love (or hate?), GLOBALISING HATRED: international Jewish conspiracy – for the but is for dipping into rather than THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM French and Communist revolutions and wading through. And its discussion of by Denis MacShane both world wars.) prejudice could be more nuanced. I am London: Phoenix, 2009, Julius points out that there has been reminded of Harry Golden, humorist paperback pp.198 little anti-Jewish violence in England since and editor of the newspaper Carolina the readmission and he is concerned mainly Israelite, which championed civil rights TRIALS OF THE DIASPORA: with the day-to-day marginalisations, for blacks in the 1950s-60s, a cause that A HISTORY OF ANTI-SEMITISM insults and exclusions. He sees this as more was not popular in Carolina at the time. IN ENGLAND typical of post-Reformation anti-Semitism He was approached by a group of white by Anthony Julius Oxford: OUP 2010, pp.811 hardcover than the Holocaust, which was in many supremacists, who demanded if he would ways an aberration. want his daughter to marry a black man. read Denis MacShane’s book after Julius gives numerous examples of He is reputed to have replied ‘Frankly, I hearing him speak at the 2009 Limmud the uses of anti-Semitism – it legitimises wouldn’t want her to marry any of you I conference and thought it would be cruelty, snobbery, social exclusion and goyim!’ interesting to compare it with Anthony commercial disadvantage – but does Bryan Reuben

11 AJR JOURNAL may 2010

Newcastle upon Tyne NORTH MEETS SOUTH: ‘Story of a Siege’ ‘A WONDERFUL 3-DAY Tony Fox, a local historian who is organising TRIP TO LONDON’ an exhibition on this event later in the year, gave us a fascinating lecture on ‘The Siege of Newcastle in 1644’. DINNER AT BELSIZE SQUARE Glasgow ‘Story Telling’ SYNAGOGUE Meeting at the home of AJR Co-ordinator Guest speaker Jeni Barnett, a regular Agnes Isaacs for an afternoon of ‘Story broadcaster on LBC Radio, told us she Telling’, we listened spellbound as mem- was born in 1939 in Mile End Road and bers told of a treasured book of Polish had been taunted for being Jewish both poetry, a cherished antique porcelain at school and in her early career. She deer, and related many stories depict- then hid her Jewish identity for many ing the experiences of people in Europe Our itinerary was extremely varied: years, finally admitting it on TV. Jeni and beyond during and after the war. Keats House; dinner at Belsize Square and her family also suffered problems All followed by a scrumptious tea and a Synagogue (see report below); the in connection with their radical left- chance to chat to members old and new. London Eye (our group’s first choice wing views. There followed one of the Anthea Berg – simply amazing!); the Globe Theatre liveliest discussions ever heard at an accompanied by a highly knowledgea- AJR meeting. Bromley CF Heated discussion ble guide (a director!); the Tate; Jersey The dinner was well attended by Over a delicious tea at the home of Boys at the Prince Edward Theatre; the members from both Northern and local Liane Segal, we had a somewhat heated Freud Museum in Hampstead. Our trip AJR groups. Edgar H. Ring discussion about Israel – but who are we ended with lunch at the AJR Centre, to criticise any of Israel’s actions? We with nostalgic music by singer Jeffrey Temple Fortune George Layton also discussed future events, welcoming Strum. Our thanks to all AJR staff who George Layton, who was born in Bradford the fact that a commemoration of Yom worked so hard to make it possible but whose parents were born in Vienna, Hashoah was planned for Hyde Park. for us to have such an enjoyable time read us his short story The Long Walk. This Eva Byk in London. was followed by a lively Q&A session and Veronika Keczkes tea. David Lang Hendon History of the Royal Free Next meeting: 13 May. Roger Beales, ‘The Bank of England’ Retired doctor Eva Blumenthal told us HGS ‘A Strange Affair’ the Royal Free Hospital was originally a Prof Gerald Curzon introduced us to Brighton & Hove Sarid A productive dispensary for treating the poor free of the intriguing relationship between the collaboration charge and was the first medical school philosophers Hannah Arendt, of Jewish Historian Helen Fry spoke to us about for women in conjunction with the origin, and Martin Heidegger, who joined ­German-speaking refugees who volun- Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital. In the Nazi Party. Lazlo Roman teered to form the Pioneer Corps, while 1975 it moved from Grays Inn Road to Next meeting: 10 May. 6th anniversary. James Hamilton spoke about his and its present site in Hampstead. Ben Helfgott, ‘The Holocaust in Poland’ Helen’s joint venture Goodnight Vienna. Annette Saville Next meeting: 24 May. Shirley Bilgora, ‘The Nottingham (East Midlands) Lunch Ceska Abrahams Search for a Grave’ Get-together Next meeting: 17 May. 11th anniversary. We missed Evie Lake, one of our members Mark Perry, ‘John Nash and the Royal Pavilion’ Ealing History of WJR who sadly died in her late 90s. Our 103- Harry Heber gave us a history of World year-old member couldn’t make it this REGIONAL GET-TOGETHER time. We welcomed a new member from Jewish Relief dating from the early 1930s – the establishment of a fund for Leicester. As usual, the conversation was IN OXFORD Wednesday 26 May sheltering Jews from pogroms in Eastern lively with friendships renewed. Europe – to the present day – aid for the Bob Norton Speaker: Dr Anthony Grenville Asian tsunami and recent earthquakes. All-day event including lunch Renée Tyack Wembley Calmed by cakes and tea For details, please call Susan Harrod Next meeting: 4 May. Renée Tyack, ‘My Several old/new faces returned to our on 020 8385 3070 Parents’ Journey’ social at Harris Court. We were in the mood for lively discussion, but delicious Oxford ‘The Diversity of Faith’ Ilford ‘Life at the Bar’ cakes and tea helped to calm us. Rabbi Daniela Thau gave us a most We were regaled with anecdotes by former Laura Levy constructive lecture on the ‘Diversity of barrister Raymond Sturgess, who had Next meeting: 12 May. Social Get-together Faith’, discussing the best-known religions, many stories to tell and told them well. their symbols and music. Anne Selinger Another greatly appreciated morning. Welwyn Exchanging memories Next meeting: 26 May. Oxford Regional with Dr Anthony Grenville (see above) Meta Roseneil Members from all over Herts enjoyed Next meeting: 5 May. Robin Hamilton- Monica’s splendid hospitality. We ex- Taylor, ‘Israel Update’ changed memories of childhood and lucky West Midlands (Birmingham) ‘The escapes and marvelled at extraordinary History of Broadcasting’ Pinner A productive duo coincidences such as meeting a childhood John D. Smith offered a selection of music- Helen Fry spoke about the pianist Harriet friend on a London bus after 40 years. related presentations in aid of St Mary’s Cohen, subject of one of her books. Helen’s Fred Simms Hospice. ‘Radio Memories’ took us back co-author James Hamilton (Goodnight Next meeting: 11 May. Social Get-together to the early days of broadcasting – and Vienna) gave us insight into how they then forward through the years with work together productively and revealed Bristol/Bath The Suchet family recordings of well-remembered music and his interest in the fictional story of an MI6 Peter Suchet spoke to us about his well- speeches. Philip Lesser connection to a talented musician. known family: brothers David and John Walter Weg and their late father, a distinguished Café Imperial Radio interviews Next meeting: 6 May. Tony Dinkin QC, surgeon. Peter showed in a lengthy Q&A A great turnout on a lovely spring day in ‘Silk, Lace and Black Tights: Life at the session he is no mean public performer honour of journalist Melanie McFadyean. Bar, 2010’ himself. David Hackel All our veterans were interviewed, with a

12 AJR JOURNAL may 2010 view to Melanie getting a programme on Radio 4. Hazel Beiny THE MUSIC OF BELSIZE SQUARE Paul Balint AJR Centre SYNAGOGUE 15 Cleve Road, London NW6 Edgware ‘The Last Jews of Kerala’ Speaking to the AJR Centre Luncheon Tel: 020 7328 0208 Edna Fernandez spoke about the history Club, Sue Mariner gave us a fascinating of the last Jews of Kerala, a state in south- demonstration of the music of Belsize east India, and answered many questions. Square Synagogue, whose liturgy has KT-AJR No meeting in May due to Shavuot its roots mainly in compositions by Kindertransport special Felix Winkler Sulzer and Lewandowsky. She opened interest group with an excerpt of a reproduction of a Radlett ‘Desert Island Discs’ 100-year-old recording of the Deutsche Monday 10 May 2010 Judy Kelner played extracts from well- Kedusha, sung by Magnus Davidson Martin Stern known pieces of classical music, and one and the Fasanenstrasse Choir. This was ‘Why Do We Write Hebrew piece of jazz, in each instance discussing followed by the Synagogue’s second the music and its composer. Fritz Starer cantor, Joe Dollinger, chanting Adonai Backwards?’ Next meeting: 26 May. Oxford Regional Malach. KINDLY NOTE THAT LUNCH WILL BE with Dr Anthony Grenville (see above) Louis Berkman’s moving rendition SERVED AT 1.00 PM ON MONDAYS of Psalm 130 (Mi Ma’amakim) came Reservations required SECOND GENERATION MEETINGS next – Sue explained how in the Middle Please telephone 020 7328 0208 Tuesday 11 May ‘Victim and Persecutor’. Dis- Ages this prayer was mischievously cussion evening. Wiener Library, 7.00 pm Monday, Wednesday & Thursday construed as allowing Jews to renege 9.30 am – 3.30 pm Tuesday 18 May Ela Kaczmarska, ‘Finding on their debts. The Synagogue’s fourth Holocaust Information at the National cantor, Larry Fine, sang two items from Please note that the Centre is Archives’. Wiener Library, 7.00 pm. Ela, an the Yom Kippur service and the present closed on Tuesdays Education Officer at the National Archives, incumbent, Norman Cohen Falah, has recently been researching docu- May Afternoon Entertainment concluded with the Jahres Kaddisch in Mon 3 CLOSED – BANK HOLIDAY ments relating to the Kindertransport. jovial, folksy mood. Finally, a surprise: For details, phone 0781 357 4699 Tue 4 CLOSED Psalm 114, the second verse of the Wed 5 Roy Blass Hallel, sung to a tune so perfectly Cardiff ‘Pear’s Transparent Soap’ Thur 6 Madeleine Whiteson complementing that of Lewandowsky’s We were regaled with an illustrated talk Mon 10 CLOSED first verse that few people realised it was Tue 11 CLOSED by Andrea Cameron (from London) on composed by Sue herself! Wed 12 Michael Heaton the history of Pear’s soap. Andrea was Walter E. Goddard Thur 13 Sheila Games exceptionally knowledgeable and her Mon 17 Kards & Games Klub – slides were of excellent quality. Monday Music Matinee Marian Lane Cleve Road A controversial story Prof Ladislaus Löb told us the intriguing Tue 18 CLOSED and controversial story of Reszo Kasztner, Wed 19 CLOSED – SHAvuoT who saved over 1,600 Jews from the Nazis Thur 20 CLOSED – SHAVUOT Mon 24 Kards & Games Klub AJR GROUP CONTACTS and was assassinated in Israel after the Tue 25 CLOSED Bradford Continental Friends war. David Lang Wed 26 Mike Marandi Lilly and Albert Waxman 01274 581189 Next meeting: 25 May. Helen Fry and Thur 27 Gayathrie Peiris Brighton & Hove (Sussex Region) James Hamilton: Harriett Cohen and Fausta Shelton 01273 734 648 Goodnight Vienna Mon 31 CLOSED – BANK HOLIDAY Bristol/Bath Kitty Balint-Kurti 0117 973 1150 Cambridge ALSO MEETING IN MAY Anne Bender 01223 276 999 Kingston CF 6 May. Social and switch on electrics Cardiff Rewires and all household Myrna Glass 020 8385 3077 speaker – tbc electrical work Cleve Road, AJR Centre Eastbourne CF 27 May. Social Myrna Glass 020 8385 3077 PHONE PAUL: 020 8200 3518 Dundee Get-together. Details to be sent out Agnes Isaacs 0755 1968 593 Mobile: 0795 614 8566 East Midlands (Nottingham) Bob Norton 01159 212 494 Norfolk (Norwich) Edgware Myrna Glass 020 8385 3077 ‘DROP IN’ ADVICE SERVICE Hazel Beiny 020 8385 3077 North London Members requiring benefit advice please Edinburgh Jenny Zundel 020 8882 4033 telephone Linda Kasmir on 020 8385 3070 to make Françoise Robertson 0131 337 3406 Oxford an appointment at AJR, Jubilee House, Essex (Westcliff) Susie Bates 01235 526 702 Merrion Avenue, Stanmore, Middx HA7 4RL Larry Lisner 01702 300812 Pinner (HA Postal District) Glasgow Vera Gellman 020 8866 4833 Claire Singerman 0141 649 4620 Radlett Hazel Beiny, Southern Groups Co-ordinator Harrogate Esther Rinkoff 020 8385 3077 020 8385 3070 Inge Little 01423 886254 Sheffield Hendon Steve Mendelsson 0114 2630666 Myrna Glass, London South and Midlands Hazel Beiny 020 8385 3070 South London Groups Co-ordinator Hertfordshire Lore Robinson 020 8670 7926 020 8385 3077 Hazel Beiny 020 8385 3070 South West Midlands (Worcester area) Susanne Green, Northern Groups Co-ordinator HGS Myrna Glass 020 8385 3070 0151 291 5734 Gerda Torrence 020 8883 9425 Surrey Susan Harrod, Groups’ Administrator Hull Edmée Barta 01372 727 412 020 8385 3070 Susanne Green 0151 291 5734 Temple Fortune Ilford Esther Rinkoff 020 8385 3077 Agnes Isaacs, Scotland and Newcastle Meta Rosenell 020 8505 0063 Co-ordinator Weald of Kent 0755 1968 593 Leeds HSFA Max and Jane Dickson Trude Silman 0113 2251628 01892 541026 Esther Rinkoff, Southern Region Co-ordinator Liverpool Wembley 020 8385 3077 Susanne Green 0151 291 5734 Laura Levy 020 8904 5527 KT-AJR (Kindertransport) Manchester Wessex (Bournemouth) Andrea Goodmaker 020 8385 3070 Werner Lachs 0161 773 4091 Mark Goldfinger 01202 552 434 Child Survivors Association–AJR Newcastle West Midlands (Birmingham) Henri Obstfeld 020 8954 5298 Walter Knoblauch 0191 2855339 Fred Austin 01384 252310

13 AJR JOURNAL may 2010

family announcements HOLIDAY FOR 4-DAY TRIP TO Anniversary NORTHERN MEMBERS Congratulations to Peter and Marie GLASGOW (Mia) Schwab, who will be celebrating Sun 27 June – Sun 4 July 2010 their 65th Wedding Anniversary on at the Inn On The Prom Sunday 9 May to 5 May. 11/17 South Promenade, St Annes Wednesday 12 May 2010 Tel 01253 726 726 Deaths Fagan, Elsie, born Ilse Holzelmacher, The cost, including Dinner, Bed and THIS TRIP HAS BEEN Vienna 26 August 1928, widow of Terence Breakfast, is £582.50 per person CANCELLED Fagan, mother of John and Margaret, For booking form contact died peacefully in Yorkshire 25 January Ruth Finestone on (direct line) 2010. 020 8385 3082 or 07966 886535 Meyer, Charles (Helmut Karl) of JOIN US FOR A WEEK Llanidloes and Offenbach, died 30 March aged 91. Sadly missed by wife Margaret IN BOURNEMOUTH Outing to at the and all his family. Kew Gardens Walter, Illa (née Ilse Fackenheim), Monday 7 June 2010 Royale Hotel born 8 June 1914 Kassel, Germany, (formerly Anglo Suisse) died peacefully 28 March 2010 London. The AJR Outreach Groups’ Sunday 9 May to Sunday 16 May Mourned by family and friends. Department is arranging an outing to Kew Gardens. £420 per week, dinner, bed Consecration This will be a whole day with and breakfast The tombstone consecration for Dr lunch in the restaurant. plus £30 supplement for single room Kenneth Saunders will take place on to include transport from Cleve Road, Explore glasshouses, landscapes Thursday 13 May at 11.00 am at Edgware- lunch on outward journey bury Lane Cemetery, Edgware, Middx. and 250 years of history at the world’s most famous garden. Climb Please contact Carol Rossen or classified to the treetops, delve into rainforest Lorna Moss on 020 8385 3070 or discover more on a guided tour PAUL BALINT AJR CENTRE which will form part of our visit. Pamela Bloch Clothes sale, separates The land train is available for those etc. Wednesday 5 May 2010, 9.30- who have difficulty walking long 11.45 am distances. HOLIDAY IN EASTBOURNE INFORMATION ON AJR For further details, please call Susan Harrod, Regional Groups Administrator, The AJR are doing another ACTIVITIES BY EMAIL on 020 8385 3070. holiday at the Lansdowne Hotel From time to time, the AJR circulates Friday 16 July to Friday 23 July by email information of activities, events and projects which may be £520 per week dinner, bed and of interest to members. To receive ARE YOU INTERESTED breakfast plus £40 per week single these notices, please send an email to [email protected] and we will add you IN A 5-DAY TRIP TO room supplement to include to the distribution list. BUDAPEST? transport from Cleve Road, lunch on outward journey If you are, please call Book early to avoid disappointment FIRST FLOOR RETIREMENT Carol or Lorna on 0208 385 3070 FLAT FOR SALE in kenton Numbers will be limited Please contact Carol Rossen or First floor retirement flat with lift. Lorna Moss on 020 8385 3070 Warden-assisted. Entryphone system Please note there will be a certain 1 fitted bedroom, lounge/dining room, amount of walking involved fitted kitchen, modern bathroom/WC Electric economy heating, residents’ lounge, laundry room and games room Home Care Communal gardens Colvin New 99-year lease – In excellent condition Care through quality and Near shops, synagogues, buses and trains PillarCare professionalism Asking price £139,000 Celebrating our 25th Anniversary Please call Carol on 01923 857 822 or 0794 7694 844 Quality support and care at home 25 years of experience in providing the  Hourly Care from 1 hour – 24 hours highest standards of care in the comfort of your own home ADVERTISEMENT RATES  Live-In/Night Duty/Sleepover Care FAMILY EVENTS  Convalescent and Personal Health Care First 15 words free of charge, £2.00 per 5 words thereafter  Compassionate and Affordable Service CLASSIFIED, SEARCH NOTICES  Professional, Qualified, Kind Care Staff £2.00 per 5 words  Registered with the CSCI and UKHCA BOX NUMBERS £3.00 extra 1 hour to 24 hours care DISPLAY ADVERTS Call us on Freephone 0800 028 4645 Registered through the National Care Standard Commission Per single column inch 65mm £12.00 Studio 1 Utopia Village Call our 24 hour tel 020 7794 9323 COPY DATE 5 weeks prior to publication 7 Chalcot Road, NW1 8LH www.colvin-nursing.co.uk

14 AJR JOURNAL may 2010

Holocaust survivor whose mother Obituary Wept, published in 1998. The couple and two youngest sisters were have told their story countless times in A murdered in Auschwitz has died at schools and colleges and at meetings the age of 85. For 66 years, Ibi Ginsburg Ibi Ginsburg and conferences. Their testimonies have lived with the memory of the terrible born in Lithuania also been filmed by the Steven Spielberg hardship she endured at the camp after and survived four Shoah Foundation and for the AJR’s arriving there in May 1944 with her years in ghettos Refugee Voices testimony archive. parents and three sisters. and camps. But Ibi regularly attended services at the She never forgot the number 86711 they never met Bradford Reform Synagogue. the Nazis gave her minutes after she and until after libera- Members of the synagogue and other her family arrived along with thousands tion, when Ibi was members of the Holocaust Survivors’ of other Jews from the Hungarian town sent to work at a Association and many friends attended her of Tokay. Ibi Ginsburg in 1945 monastery near funeral at the Park Wood Crematorium in Ibi, who died at her home in Elland, Munich converted Elland along with her husband, daughters near Halifax, which she shared with her into a military hospital. Val, who had lost Mandy and Pauline, son-in-law Malcolm, husband Valdemar (Val), recalled how 13 members of his family in the Holocaust, and grandchildren Samuel, Jacob and she and her 13-year-old sister Judith had spent several months there recover- Amy. were selected to work. Her mother Emily ing from his ordeal and had then been David Edge, a friend for many years, and two youngest sisters Rachel, 10, and given a job as a security man. said: ‘She was a lovable, feisty woman Miriam, 7, were selected for the gas cham- The two met, were married a year whose indomitable spirit and will to live bers. Her father Herman was sent to Maut­ later and in 1948 moved to England. They enabled her to survive. She was a very hausen but survived and was reunited with settled in Elland, where both worked in special lady.’ Ibi and Judith after the war. the textile industry. Towards the end of the war, Ibi and her Ibi and Val decided 15 years ago that This is an edited version of an obituary sister were sent to Dachau and worked on they owed it to the victims to tell their which appeared in the Yorkshire Post on the same construction site as Val, who was stories. Val told his in a book And Kovno 6 March 2010.

t was like a bullet to the head,’ Gunter Back in Germany survivors from Herne; myself, my brother Jeff ‘ said, thinking back to 9 November 1938, and 250 or so local dignitaries on a freezing Iwhen he was an eight-year-old in Herne, a by Lester Christie snow-filled day, so symbolic of the hardship mining town (now twinned with Wakefield) of camp life – all witnessed the unveiling of a with a population of about 160,000 and beautiful memorial to the Jews of Herne who some 70 miles from my mother’s home town had perished in the Holocaust. A memorial of Duisburg. illustrating every name, date and place of Two days earlier, Gunter’s father – death, composed of concrete (mixed to the awarded the Iron Cross in the First World War ­colour of Jerusalem stone) and glass with a – had been warned of what was to happen black-slate ramp displaying the names of the ‘spontaneously’ on what came to be known camps and ghettos in which millions of Jews as Kristallnacht by the ‘outraged people’ of and others had died. In the background, the Germany! Gunter, his father and brother had doleful sound of a Yiddish folk song ‘You entered the magnificent synagogue in Herne, watch whilst my village burns’ found by built in 1911 and featured with pride on the Editha and played on trumpet, trombone front page of the local paper – the same and tuba drifting into the cold midday air. paper that would 27 years later scream out Editha had fought long and hard to achieve ‘Don’t buy from Jews, buy German’ – and this memorial service. removed the Sefer Torahs, one of which is Gunter, now over 80, well over 6ft, now in Ramat Gan. upright, spoke. Reliving those days back in My mother’s second cousin, Editha Jank- 1938, he visibly crumpled. leowicz, aged six, gazed out of her bedroom Editha spoke – again her memories of life window on the evening of 9 November, in Herne. She took out the only photographs watching, terrified, the black smoke and she had from her childhood: one as a six- flames of the burning synagogue. year-old holding a doll, the other her first Soon after began the frantic efforts of Back Lester Christie, Jeff Christie; front Irit day at the Jewish school. Both had been sent parents to at least get their children out of Matan, Esther Hocherman, Carmi Tzadock by Editha’s parents to my mother in England Germany. Editha, an only child, was put on had any idea. Both remember the time of for safe-keeping and given to Editha by my a Kindertransport to Belgium (and, when parting at the railway station in Herne as if mother when they found one another at the Belgium fell, on a goods wagon to France, it were yesterday. end of the war by chance. Editha’s speech, a then to Vichy France, then, towards the My mother, Toni Berger, 17 years old and reflection of her very being – having learned end of the war, to Cadiz, and then on an living in Duisburg, was sent out of Germany as a child how to survive: trust no one, rely old, battered boat to Palestine – a story for by her widowed mother early in 1939 in a on no one – was uncompromising. another time). desperate attempt to obtain visas for her The speeches at an end and a minute’s Gunter was more fortunate – a Kinder- mother, Channah, her sister Lottie and her silence observed, I took out of my pocket the transport to England, ultimately a British brother Max. Among the few possessions black, leather-bound siddur – my mother`s citizen, now residing in New York, enjoying she was able to take was her pocket-size siddur – and, after a brief explanation of the what his parents never would – a grand- siddur. journey it had made since 1939, in memory child. 29 January 2010, Herne. Editha (now of our uncle Max who did not survive and How was the choice made? Who would named Esther), with one of her daughters all the other victims of the Shoah, I and my go and who would stay? Who would live and Irit and one of her grandchildren Carmi; brother Jeff recited Kaddish from that siddur, who would die? Neither Editha nor Gunter Gunter, his wife and children with two other back once again in Germany.

15 AJR JOURNAL may 2010

are facing a growing tide of people from Letter from disadvantaged parts of the globe seeking to gain entry into more prosperous Israel countries which could offer them a better future. The Americans have built a barrier to prevent impoverished Mexicans from entering their country. Although England Refugees: The moral dilemma is protected by the Channel, it has still efugees. That word means many their lives. A large proportion of these seen fit to demand that France control its different things to many different made their way to the newly-created state. coastal areas more vigorously to prevent R people. This occurred at a time when the core refugees from Africa finding their way First of all, of course, the readership of population of the country was tiny, causing into the UK. Spain, Italy and France patrol this journal is loosely defined as having considerable hardship to the entire nation. their coasts in a vain attempt to prevent once fallen into that category. By today, Nonetheless, every effort was made to refugees from entering. however, most of those who once sought accommodate the newcomers, and today Now that problem is confronting Israel refuge from a life-threatening situation most of them and their descendants are too. Refugees from Africa are prepared have settled into the comfortable exis­ well established and constitute an integral to endure the risks and hardships of tence that their adopted homeland offers. part of Israeli society. travelling on foot across Egypt and the Many have gone on to achieve great While Israel accepted, and did its Sinai desert, as well as paying enormous things, even garnering honours on the utmost to assimilate, its Jewish refugees, sums to smugglers, to try and get into way, and both they and their host coun- the Arab countries refused to contemplate Israel. On a recent tour of the southern tries are to be congratulated for that. integrating their brethren, preferring border area, Prime Minister Netanyahu Here in Israel, the word refugees is to leave them stateless and homeless was surprised to hear that about 500 immediately associated with those Arabs, in order to perpetuate their plight Africans were managing to infiltrate into defined today as Palestinians, who left and put pressure on the international Israel each week. Media reports stressed their homes, whether voluntarily or community to solve their problem. that they could represent an economic, forcibly, as a result of the fighting that The UN established a special unit, the demographic and security threat, though erupted after the 1947 UN resolution United Nations Relief and Works Agency this claim does not have a firm factual sanctioning the creation of a Jewish state (UNWRA), in 1949 to help Palestinian basis. in part of what is now Israel. It is common refugees, bestowing refugee status So once again Israel is confronted knowledge that those hostilities were on future descendants of the original with a moral dilemma. Should it build instigated by a coalition of eight Arab refugees, thereby perpetuating the a physical barrier to prevent any more countries determined to put an end to suffering of people who could quite African refugees entering Israel, or is it Israel’s very existence. Not long after easily have been absorbed in host Arab more appropriate for us as Jews to refer those Palestinians left their homes, a countries without further ado. This issue back to our own history of flight and roughly equivalent number of Jews living still besets any attempt to find a solution persecution and offer shelter to those in Arab countries were forced to abandon to the conflict in the Middle East. fleeing from a similar plight? their homes and businesses and flee for Now, countries all over the world Dorothea Shefer-Vanson Asylum Aid – the many parallels s a member of the ‘second genera- who arrived on the Kindertransport, their work. She told me wryly she was a dentist tion’, I was intrigued to discover parents have waved them off – on a plane – and the UK is short of dentists. My grand- A that the organisation I work for, or lorry rather than a train – to hoped- father, also a dentist, was not allowed to Asylum Aid, was founded by ‘one of for safety. The trust those parents place work in his profession. However, I under- us’. Ernest Morton was born in Berlin, in people in Europe to look after their stand this did not stop him from providing appeared as a child actor in Emil and children must be the same trust that my dental services to other Jewish refugees in the Detectives, and arrived in England in grandparents felt in 1939. north London! 1937. In 1990 he played a central role in Many adult asylum-seekers have This year it is 20 years since Ernest Mor- founding Asylum Aid. The charity’s initial ­suffered dreadful persecution, including ton founded Asylum Aid. Our anniversary focus was on providing legal advice and torture and rape, in their countries of plans include a guest lecture on asylum representation to vulnerable asylum-seek- origin so, when they are detained in and human rights in his memory (he died ers, but this soon extended to research this country, as many are, this brings in 2006), developing our work taking test and campaigning work. back terrible memories and makes the cases through the courts, and a major Working at Asylum Aid since 2004, I experience extremely traumatic. I am fundraising campaign with an ambitious have been struck by the many parallels reminded of my grandfather who, having target of £20,000. between the experiences of my parents been sent to Dachau after Kristallnacht, With sufficient resources we will be and grandparents and those of refugees reached the safety of England, only to be able to continue doing all we can to arriving in the UK today. interned on the Isle of Man. protect refugees fleeing persecution for At Asylum Aid we have a dedicated And I was reminded of my grandfather the next 20 years and beyond. caseworker advising and representing again recently when I met a woman who, Debora Singer unaccompanied children. Like my mother like all asylum-seekers, is not allowed to www.asylumaid.org.uk

Published by the Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain, Jubilee House, Merrion Avenue, Stanmore, Middx HA7 4RL Telephone 020 8385 3070 Fax 020 8385 3080 e-mail [email protected] For the latest AJR news, including details of forthcoming events and information about our services, visit www.ajr.org.uk Printed by FBprinters llp, 26 St Albans Lane, London NW11 7QB Tel: 020 8458 3220 Email: [email protected]

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