AJR information Volume UV No. 11 November 1999 £3 (to non-members) Don't miss. An open letter to the Editor, Daily Telegrapt) Might-have-beens of history Richard Crunberger pl Austria - unable Not as black as he was shirted to apologise Ralph Blumenau p4 ir - The School of Historical Revisionism Lastly, Wilson presents the onetime Tory/Labour The Mozart House - Joint Principals David Irving and Roger politician's metamorphosis into a Hitler clone as Martha Blend pl3 f SGaraudy - has recruited a newcomer to the eminently understandable, since nearly all visitors to faculty: your contributor AN Wilson. Berlin were charmed by the Fuehrer. Besides 'in On the same day, 29 September, that the Almeida 1936 the Nazi horrors were all in the future'. In Wil­ Haider ante Theatre restaged Marlowe's Jew of Malta, featuring son's estimate, the incarceration and torture of a Jewish monster in human shape, the Daily thousands of concentration camp inmates, the kill­ portas Telegraph carried an article by Wilson which at­ ing of hundreds during the Night of the Long he hills are tempted the exact opposite on Mosley's behalf: it Knives, stripping the Jews of their civic rights and alive with portrayed a genuine monster in engagingly human, the murder of the Peace Nobel laureate Carl von T the sound not to say superman shape. Ossietzky do not, apparently, constitute horror. of music. Irving's chef d'oeuvre is the denial of Hitler's com­ The term has, of course, widely varied connota­ Lederhosen-clad plicity in the Holocaust - which, according to tions. We can legitimately invoke it when we read a voters are marching Garaudy, never actually took place. Compared to historically illiterate rehabilitation of the putative to the beat of those big hitters Wilson makes a distinctly minor Gauleiter of German-occupied Britain in your influ­ Foreigners out. Bar contribution to Revisionism: he merely pours gal­ ential newspaper. asylum seekers and lons of whitewash over the British blackshirt leader. n Editor, AJR Information Austria for the He dubs Mosley a 'patriot' who in 1939 called Austrians. upon his followers to join up. He conveniently fails Sixty years ago to mention Mosley's most prominent follower 'Lord their fathers' Haw-Haw', who did join up in 1939 - as a volun­ ecstatic welcome to teer serving on Goebbels' Radio Berlin. Several Hitler was ascribed hundred other British Fascists, including Mosley to poverty. Today's himself, were simultaneously detained in this coun­ Austria, the worid's try under Emergency Regulation 18B. seventh richest Wilson approvingly quotes Mosley's subsequent country in terms of statement that he was 'proud to have gone to prison per capita income, rather than fight an unnecessary (our italics) war apparently still which cost millions of lives'. (In his heart of hearts, craves a leader of course, Mosley was unlikely to regret most of the figure. lives lost, i.e. twenty million Communist Russians Up till now the and six million Jews.) widely execrated Apropos of the latter, the term Jew doesn't even 'pariah' states Iraq, appear in Wilson's article. Now, writing about Iran, Burma and Mosley without a single mention of his Jew-baiting N Korea have all is on a par with composing a piece on Captain Scott come from die that totally omits the Antarctic. Diana Franklin, who played the Andantino from Mozart's 'Jeunehomme' piano concerto at the AJR Third World. Are In his rhetoric the Jews, a term interchangeable Concert at Imperial College, with Richard Dickins, '^he Austrians really with 'international financiers', were the root cause who conducted the players of the London Concertino. prepared to emerge of Britain's plight in the 1930s. On the streets poor Together with internationally acclaimed soloists as the first pariah East End Jews, only one generation removed from Raphael Wallfisch, cello, and David Juritz, violin, the high standard of performance and a well-chosen country in the heart the Russian pogroms, served as a soft target for his programme delighted a very appreciative audience. of Europe? D incitement to mob violence. AJR INFORMATION NOVEMBER 1999 In the late 1950s, they had a son and Profile daughter who, to Lilly's intense pride, were to do well at school and go on to university. The son is now a consultant A lady who makes psychiatrist - which for Lilly is vicarious fulfilment of her own girlish ambition to things happen study medicine. orn in mid-twenties' Vienna, Lilly In 1985, convinced that the offspring of Allen grew up in its Jewish district, refugees had problems integrating into Baka the Matzo Island. Her English - or even Anglo-Jewish - society coffeehouse owner father and mother she launched (together with John brought up three children with loving Dunston) the Association of Children of care. For all that, Lilly feels that the Jewish Refugees. Not content with that, mother discriminated against the girls: the she soon afterwards set up a club for brother was sent to grammar school older age groups called FJR (Former Jew­ while she and her sister had to make do ish Refugees). The 40-strong FJR now in with secondary moderns. its thirteenth^) year, meets monthly at a After the Anschluss the mother con­ West Kensington hotel owned by the trived, via Quaker connections, to brother of a member. Though turn-out dispatch all three children to England. fluctuates, Lilly's own brother and sister She and the father stayed behind and are always in attendance. Lilly Allen perished in the Shoah. Never one to let grass grow under her In England Lilly completed her school­ feet, Lilly is now actively thinking 01 ing and did office work, eventually from Czechoslovakia. During the follow­ setting up a successor body to RoK acquiring the skills of bilingual secretary. ing years she kept working to enable (Reunion of Kindertransport), as well as (The brother, meanwhile, studied for a her husband to be trained as a diamond running Keep Fit classes for elderly refu­ degree in his spare time and ultimately polisher. When he, too, started earning gees. Which only proves that age 'S became Senior Maths' master at a good money they took long holidays in more of a state of mind than a physical school). Israel and Italy, where they met up with condition. In 1949 Lilly married a fellow refugee surviving relatives. D Richard Grunberger In fact, chance plays a huge role in his­ been spared the outbreak of the Second Might-have-beens tory - as I hope to demonstrate through Worid War in September 1939- more trenchant examples than genetic Now consider the following hypo­ of history modifications to the Portillo family tree. thetical scenario: Two years later, after ad Michael Portillo's experiments If, in 1763, Tsarina Catherine (aka the months of heavy bombing, the British with homosexuality come to light Great) and her fellow conspirators had war cabinet meets. Defence Minister H in Franco Spain, his six fiercely murdered Tsar Peter III a few months Alan Clark urges acceptance of Hitler s Catholic uncles might, for the sake of earlier he could not have made a sepa­ peace offer which lets Germany keep consistency, have been obliged to kill rate peace with Frederick the Great Europe and Britain her Empire. Churchil' him. Homosexuality was one of the which saved the latter from the conse­ objects to handing over half a million cankers, alongside democracy and quences of his defeat by Russia and her Jews. Clark retorts: that's exactly the atheism, which patriots enrolled in allies. In that hypothetical case Prussia number of British lives our separate Franco's crusade aimed to eradicate. Had would have remained a third rate power, peace will have saved by 1945. If ^^ they not shot the great Garcia Lorca as instead of graduating into the second stay in the war Labour will come to much for his sexual as for his political rank, from which position Bismarck el­ power, in that year and Stalin will swal­ orientation? evated her to grand Imperial status. low half of Europe. Churchill is voted The uncles may even have shot Likewise, if Friedrich III, the liberal father out of office and hardly any Jew remains Michael's father, had he not fled to Eng­ of Wilhelm II, had not died of throat can­ alive in Britain. land. (After all, a civil war is fratricide cer in 1888, the German Imperial crown Next scene: the Kremlin, November writ large.) would not have passed to the Kaiser and i960. The Politburo agonises over Fidel In history hardly anything is ever inevi­ the world would have been spared the Castro's demand that more Soviet nuclear table. Inheriting the same genes and Great War. missiles be despatched to Cuba- subjected to the identical family environ­ Without that war there would have Khrushchev argues the opposite, urging ment, one of the seven Portillo brothers been no Ludendorff in the position to put that the missiles already there should be became a Socialist, while the other six Lenin aboard the sealed train in 1917 and withdrawn. He loses the vote. World War turned fascist; and that solitary Socialist to participate in Hitler's Munich Putsch in Three breaks out. Hardly anybody is 1^^ subsequently fathered a son who became 1923. alive. standard bearer of the British Right. Without Hitler mankind would have AJR INFORMATION NOVEMBER 1999 Wheels within wheels and DNA - where the English didn't have to copy the Austrians? NEWTONS Bruno We tried to lift it, couldn't even Bruno That's a real brain teased shift it, we were getting no­ Certainly Fortnum, of Fortnum Leading Hampstead Solicitors where, so we had a cup of tea..