VOLUME 4 No. 6 JUNE 2004 BJlfl journal H^l l^^lg ^ Association of Jewish Refugees The demons inside dictators' minds Whereas May comes on strong on the very taken up by his struggle with Trotsky, first day, June reaches its high point two- whom he fought as an intellectual thirds of the way through the month. On 21 internationalist - hence Stalin's slogan June, the date of the summer solstice, the 'Socialism in one country' - but not as a sun reaches the northernmost point of its Jew. In contrast to the polyglot highbrow ecliptic - the longest day ofthe year. Trotsky, Stalin would point to his trusted In the Third Reich the occasion used to l)uddy', the Jewish proletarian, i.e. ex- be marked by Sonnwendfeiern - cobbler, Lazar Kaganovich. For all that community singing, dancing and athletic Kaganovich was known by the contests around bonfires lit on hilltops and antisemitically tinged nickname in forest glades - as part ofthe Nazi drive to 'Kosherovich' among the Kremlin elite, he turn the country back from Christian to never entirely forfeited Stalin's trust. And there was another curious factor. Possibly pagan practices. Lazar Kaganovich The night of 21 June 1941 was also the because well brought up daughters of the date the astrology-conscious Hitler chose Hitler's Slavophobic inhumanity drove Tsarist bourgeoisie disdained professional to launch his most audacious enterprise, them back into Stalin's arms. revolutionaries as marriage partners, an the invasion of Russia. The invading forces The world Hitler envisioned after amazing number of Soviet high-ups - were staggeringly successful at first - but victory bore the hallmarks of his race- Molotov, Marshal Voroshilov, KGB chief foiled to land a decisive knock-out blow on mania. It was to be 'cleansed' of all , Yezhov, etc. - had married less the retreating Red Army. Then, in and the vast spaces of Russia were to be conventionally minded Jewesses. October, the first snowfall heralding the inhabited by a severely culled Slav Early on, these Jewish wives in the bitter Russian winter brought the population in a state of perpetual serfdom Kremlin brought a badly needed touch Wehrmacht's advance to a temporary halt. to their German overlords. of glamour to Stalin's court. The whole Why did Hitler allow his troops the Whereas Hitler's pathological mindset phenomenon was symbolised by the ludicrously short time-span of four was fully formed by his late twenties, appointment of Polina Molotov as the months to vanquish an enemy who had Stalin's proceeded on its downward spiral first commissar of the Soviet worsted Napoleon? The answer lies in the into total paranoia throughout the best perfumery industry. pathological racism which addled his part of his life. In the thirties the rise of Hitler made brain. Reared in a home suffused with Pan- This had something to do with the Stalin stress the Soviet Union's anti-racist Germanism - his father was a Schonerer widely disparate origins of their credentials and allow another polyglot supporter - he hated 'mongrelised' Vienna, superficially similar totalitarian Jewish intellectual, Maxim Litvinov, to a city full of Slavs and Jews. ideologies. harked back - via (ill- represent Russia vis-d-vis the outside Convinced by his Slavophobia that the digested) Nietzsche to Gobineau's racism world. At Geneva Litvinov tirelessly Russians were a subhuman rabble, he and Fichte's Teutomania - to a rejection of preached 'collective security' to an proceeded on the assumption that the the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. unfortunately unresponsive West to Wehrmacht would 'finish the job' in one Marxism-Leninism, on the other hand, preserve peace. brief campaigning season. (Consequently was a bastardised offspring of that very Then in May 1939 Stalin replaced he omitted to provide his troops with same Enlightenment. Litvinov with Molotov, signalling to adequate winter clothing, causing This meant that the multinational Soviet Hitler that the way was open for a widespread frostbite.) Union over which Stalin ruled after 1924 Nazi-Soviet pact. (At the same time, he His pathological racism also militated subscribed - officially at least - to notions ordered Molotov to 'clear out the against a successful outcome of Operation of racial equality. It also meant that in the synagogue', i.e. purge the many Jews Barbarossa in another way. Russian - and newly established ruling apparatus staffing the foreign ministry.) especially Ukrainian - revulsion at Soviet minorities that had been discriminated With the conclusion of the Nazi-Soviet rule with its forced collectivisation and against under the Tsar - such as Poles, Pact, the Russian media stopped reporting man-made famines had tumed many Georgians and Jews - were over- overnight the antisemitic atrocities that inhabitants of the German-occupied represented. occurred in German-occupied Eastern territories into potential collaborators, but The beginning of Stalin's reign was Europe. Soviet Jews therefore had no AJR JOURNAL JUNE 2004

Clients or friends? The changing role of the befriender Ronald Channing

Maxim Litvinov inkling of the fate that was to overtake them once the Germans invaded - a fate symbolised by the dreadful massacre in Babi Yar near Kiev. At the height of the war the hard- Volunteer befrienders at AJR seminar led by Gill Yentis pressed Stalin, re-enacting his earlier role Volunteers who generously give of their new phone system - though changing a as a stalwart anti-antisemite, set up a time to visit AJR members in their homes light bulb may be equally important. Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in often find a reward in making deep Organisational changes may be Moscow and sent its chairman, the Yiddish friendships. But the nature of their role is significant too: for example, safe access actor Solomon Mikhoels, to the USA and continually subject to change and it is to the home - the lift, stairs and lighting; Britain to drum up support for the these changes, and how best they can be moving furniture or taking someone Soviet Union. accommodated, which constituted the shopping alone may not always be the Meanwhile in the territories newly theme of a recent seminar for 20 best thing to do; and the bef riender's car liberated from the Germans Soviet volunteer befrienders led by Gill Yentis at insurance should be extended. officialdom refused to treat Jewish theAJR's offices in Stanmore. There had to be recognised survivors as special cases, saying that all boundaries to the relationship. Soviet citizens had suffered equally at the Many people were pleased to become Befrienders were advised not to give hands ofthe Nazis. After 1945, in the run­ 'befrienders' especially to visit individuals their phone number to the friend, for up to the Israeli War of Independence, the within their own communities, but it is example. The dangers of being Soviets aided the Jewish cause, both not always clear what they should do. Do depended on for more and more tasks diplomatically and with arms shipments they offer listening skills or use talking had to be recognised too. from Czechoslovakia. skills to fill in those embarrassing silences? As time passes, the friend's Most preferred to call their hosts This was followed by another volte-face health, memory and mobility may well 'friends' though, in the final analysis, on Stalin's part. When Golda Meir arrived deteriorate, though this may not be 'clients' may be equally valid, as the visits as Israel's first ambassador to Moscow, admitted to. Also, close family and should not impinge on the befriender's Polina Molotov was observed chatting to friends are lost, mentally active people own family obligations and lifestyle. In her in Yiddish. This earned the Soviet can be frustrated by just having the TV to the end, it was clear from the articulate Prime Minister's Jewish wife a sentence of watch all day, and computerised gadgets contribution and enthusiasm of the eight years' banishment in Siberia, and and much else of modern technology befrienders that, as long as the advice of symbolised his growing suspicion that the probably prove incomprehensible! the AJR's Volunteers Coordinator was sympathies of Soviet Jews did not lie with followed and a little common sense was their socialist homeland, but with Israel On the positive side, trust and applied, being a befriender brought its and America. As Stalin's paranoia understanding may be increased, and a own special rewards. deepened over the last five years of his readiness to listen and share things To find out more about becoming, or life, Jews were cumulatively targeted. should enrich the relationship, yet avoid inviting, a befriender please contact First came the KGB's murder of Mikhoels, being over-obligated. Knowledge of how AJR's Volunteers Coordinator, Carol which coincided with a vicious media to cope with the new technology is Hart, on 0208 385 3070. campaign against 'rootless cosmopolitans'. helpful - how to tune a radio or set up a There followed the judicial murder of exponents of Yiddish culture such as AJR Journal Perets Markish and Leib Kvitko - a Richard Grunberger Editor-in-Chief rni JACKMAN • chapter of horrors climaxed by the Ronald Channing Executive Editor notorious Doctors' Plot. Howard Spier Editorial and Production **-^ SILVERMAN AJR Journal, Jubilee House, COMMERCIAL PROPERTY CONSULTANTS It is rumoured that Stalin was even Merrion Avenue, Stanmore, Middlesex HA7 4RL contemplating the mass deportation of Tel: 020 8385 3070 Fax: 020 8385 3080 Soviet Jewry to Siberia when he shuffled e-mail: [email protected] 26 Conduit Street, London WIR 9TA off his mortal coil, thereby lifting the www.ajrorg.uk Telephone: 020 7409 0771 Fax: 020 7493 8017 shadow of fear from millions. AJR JOURNAL JUNE 2004

The longest hatred Richard Grunberger NEWTONS Leading Hampstead Solicitors advise on Mel Gibson's The Passion, which revives Lustlummel (lascivious lout) of the Property, Wills, Family Trusts the charge of Jewish , also Berggasse, and charged Dr Ehrlich, and Charitable Trusts features some antisemitic grace notes. In discoverer of salvarsan - an antidote to the scene where the bag with the 30 syphilis - of wanting to poison the French and German spoken pieces of silver is flung at Judas Iscariot, bloodstream of German men. Home visits arranged he fails to catch it and has to grub around Matters sexual also fed into Polish on the dirty floor to collect the . Readers may remember 22 Fitzjohn's Avenue, spilled coins. the scene in Claude Lanzmann's film London NWS SNB That vignette neatly combines two Shoah where elderly Polish women Tel: 020 7435 5351 antisemitic stereotypes: Jewish greed reminiscing about the 1930s allege that Fax: 020 7435 8881 and lack of physical dexterity due to non- chic, sophisticated Jewesses threatened participation in sports. The latter charge the stability of their marriages. - which incidentally prompted the Then the war intervened and by 1945/6 founding of the Maccabi and Hakoah Poland resounded to the cry of clubs - is, of course, nowhere near as zydokomuna (Jewish Communism). The CONSULTANT poisonous as many others, such as Jewish only to stain Europe after the to long established English kinship with the devil. Holocaust occurred in Kielce during the Solicitors (bi-lingual German) This notion, most readily believed in first postwar winter - connived at by would be happy to assist clients rural areas unvisited by any strangers, Catholic prelates opposed to the with English, German and results from the image of Jews having Sovietisation ofthe country. Austrian problems. horns. That image, reproduced in many The compound noun zydokomuna Contact Henry Ebner works of art - including Michelangelo's likewise encapsulates the creed of Myers Ebner & Deaner sculpture of Moses - can be traced back to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, self-appointed 103 Shepherds Bush Road St Jerome's mistranslation of Hebrew moral tutor to the Russian nation. London W6 7LP 'beams of light' (that issued fromMoses' s Solzhenitsyn believes that the 1917 Telephone 020 7602 4631 forehead on his descent from Sinai) as Revolution - which he considers an ALL LEGAL WORK 'horns' in the Latin version ofthe Bible. unmitigated disaster for his country - was UNDERTAKEN The alleged Jewish kinship with Satan largely the work of the Jews. (To be fair to inspired pathological fantasies in him, he also implicates other medieval Germany; a castle near nationalities, such as Poles, Letts and Nuremberg still features images of Jews Georgians, in the guilt for the imposition engaged in carnal intercourse with pigs. of Bolshevik rule on the Russian people.) AUSTRIAN and GERMAN This preoccupation with the Jews' Which is odd given that Karl Marx, the PENSIONS inordinate sexual desires was a recurring founding father of Communism, asserted theme. In the 1820s Wilhelm Hauff that the capitalist system was suffused PROPERTY penned a historical novel about Jud Siiss- with the spirit of . He actually RESTITUTION CLAIMS Oppenheimer, depicting the court Jew as wrote: 'What is the wordly cult of the EAST GERMANY - BERLIN a self-aggrandising lecher. A century Jew? Huckstering! Who is his worldly On instructions our office will later Hitler \nMein Kampf devoted a long deity? Money!' assist to deal with your paragraph to the description of a young Today of course post-Communist applications and pursue the matter Jew lying in ambush to deflower a Russia has embraced capitalism, and so, with the authorities. German maiden. Once in power the to an extent, has Communist China - Nazis commissioned a film of the Jud which leads one to wonder what the For further information and an appointment Siiss story which portrayed the court Jew global conflict between the two systems please contact: as an insatiable rapist responsible for the was all about. (blonde) heroine's suicide. The longest hatred, however, is still ICS CLAIMS All in all, the sexual sphere afforded with us but it has switched location. 146-154 Kilburn High Road German antisemites unlimited scope for Today Teheran and Baghdad have London NW6 4JD attacking Jews. They disrupted theatre replaced pre-war Berlin and Warsaw as Tel: 020 7328 7251 (Ext. 107) performances of Schnitzler's Der Reigen places where crowds shout 'Death to Fax: 020 7624 5002 (La Ronde), denigrated Freud as der the Jews!' AJR JOURNAL JUNE 2004

Truth and fiction: Holocaust on stage and screen Ronald Channing

The playwright, screenwriter and orchestral musicians. For Harwood, a novelist Ronald Harwood discussed play was born. the dilemmas of an author when He adhered to certain 'rules'. These dealing with the representation of included ruthlessly avoiding events in at a meeting manipulation and shunning hosted by Jewish Policy Research and sentimentality. In The Pianist, on the Spiro Ark. Harwood has gained an which he worked closely with its international reputation for scripting director, Roman Polanski, both the plays and films, including The Dresser, book's author, Vladislav Spillman, and Taking Sides and Mahler's Conversion his film version were spoken and as well as Cry the Beloved Country and written in the third person. Spillman The Pianist, for which he received an wrote 'as if it was about someone else', Academy Award. His most recent he said. He and Polanski played novel. Home, was awarded the Jewish many reels of archival footage to Quarterly Prize for fiction. exorcise all traces of falsehood or South African-born, he was just five Ronald Harwood portrays Holocaust sentimental emotion. truths through fiction years old when, following the Turning to accusations of Holocaust outbreak of World War II, his father produced. The writer had to be true to denial made in court by David Irving enlisted in the forces, believing in the the events he or she had chosen to against Deborah Lipstadt, Irving was justice of the Allied cause and dramatise. found by the judge to be opposing the barbarities being Ronald Harwood regarded 'demonstrably a liar, falsifier and a perpetrated on the Jews. Holocaust subjects as something of a rogue'. Regretfully, Harwood's two- 'History is interpreted, reinterpreted burden or obsession. As a child he hour adaptation of the court drama and ignored', said Harwood, even recalled watching news footage ofthe had not been filmed, but abandoned. 'obfuscated'. Yet it was possible to bodies of concentration camp victims Plays and films were 'informing and reveal the 'truth' best, in his view, being bulldozed into burial pits, educating', he stated, the need for through fiction - through the images which have remained in his which was greater than ever. Calls for perspective of an individual artist. memory, as they have in mine, the delegitimisation and destruction There were innumerable plays and through our entire lives. of Israel were 'camouflage for films on the 'industrial slaughter' of In mid-1990s Manchester he came antisemitism', threatening all the the Jews, from Anne Frank to across George Clare's book Bedin Days standards of a decent society. Conspiracy, which reconstructed the 1946-48, which dealt with the extent Harwood never imagined he would assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. to which the world-renowned ever have to defend Israel's right to Truth is explained' in fiction, he held, conductor, Wilhelm Furtwangler, did exist, but his support was and one character can stand in place or did not collaborate with the Nazis. unequivocal. While hoping that the of many, as in Schindler's List. The Furtwangler was indeed a member of need for plays and films on the integrity of the artist was the filter the National Socialist Party but was Holocaust would diminish, he through which the work was witnessed as having aided Jewish thought this unlikely

Deportations from Hungary remembered Dr Trude Levi, Dr Ladislaus Lob and Mayor of Harrow Cllr Mano Dharmarajah pictured at Pinner Synagogue's Yom HaShoah ceremony, this year commemorating particularly the 60th anniversary of the deportations from Hungary. Members of the 'Third Generation'joined members ofthe 'First Generation' in an impressive candle-lighting ceremony, while Dr Levi and Dr Lob spoke chillingly of their experiences as Holocaust survivors in Hungary. The Hungarian Ambassador, HE Mr Bela Szombati, also was present. Pinner Synagogue's Yom HaShoah Committee is chaired by Gaby Glassman.

Left to right: Dr Trude Levi, Dr Ladislaus Lob and IVIayor of Harrow Cllr Mano Dharmarajah AJR JOURNAL JUNE 2004 Remembering the past shaping the future Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks Edited version of address given on Yom HaShoah,Holocaust Memorial Day, at the Logan Hall commemorationceremony

Didn't the Jews of Europe believe that of the world on a convenient target - their troubles were behind them, that and Jews, whether in the Diaspora or after all they had suffered for 1,000 in Israel, as individuals or as a nation, years, at last they were safe and free? are always a convenient target, Now at last there was an age of because we are small, vulnerable, enlightenment, rationality, high because we are different. culture, liberty and equality. At the Those who died in the Shoah have very height of those hopes came the left us a sacred responsibility. What nightmare, a hell-on-earth our they died for, we must live for: the imagination still struggles to begin to right to be Jews without fear. We will understand. fight this battle in three ways. First, Two and a half years ago our world we will fight hatred in all its forms, was changed by 9/11, in which 3,000 whoever preaches it and whoever it is people were killed on a single day. directed against. Second, we will seek During the Shoah, an average of 3,000 Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks allies, among Christians, Muslims, Jews were killed a day, every day of Hindus, Sikhs, among people of every week of every month for five- world would not forget, and the conscience, whatever their colour, and-a-half years. The Jews of Europe greater courage to do so not in anger, whatever their creed. Let me say: Jews loved Europe, had lived in it for 1,000 rage or desire for revenge, but in the must not be left to fight antisemitism years - in some places, 2,000 years. name of life and humanity and tolerance alone. The victim cannot cure the They loved its languages, literature and peace. crime. It is not the one who is hated, and landscapes and enriched every Now we must turn oiu" eyes to the but the one who hates, who needs to aspect of its life. They helped make the future and the next generation must change. Third, we will fight in the Europe of modern times. But that love shoulder responsibility. Those like me, name of the sanctity of human life, in was betrayed. born after the Shoah, believed the world the name of the one thing in the As long as there are Jews on the face when it said 'Never again'. After the universe on which God has set his of the earth, we will remember the greatest crime of man against man, image, humanity itself. young, the old, the weak, the frail, the people would learn and antisemitism We say to all those who practise children, one-and-a-half million of itself would die. It hasn't. Today terror in the name of God, who call for them, whose only crime was to be born throughout Europe, synagogues are murder and martyrdom, who take hate with a Jewish grandparent. We will vandalised, Jewish cemeteries are and call it holy, that is not the God of remember the righteous gentiles, who desecrated, Jewish schools set on fire. Abraham, the God Jews, Christians showed that evil is not inevitable. This Terror still seeks Jewish victims, Jews and Muslims worship, the God whose year, the sixtieth anniversary of the die, antisemitism lives. name is peace, the God who destruction of Hungarian Jewry, we People say we exaggerate. We don't. commands us to love the stranger, the remember especially Raoul We do not say that today is 1944 or 1933 God who shed tears when his children Wallenberg, the hero who saved over again, but we do say that a terrible shed blood in his name. thousands - perhaps tens of thousands hate is being born - and let it not be said And we say to you, the survivors, we - of lives among the Jews of Budapest. of us that we saw it as a tiny flame and will not let you down. We will not rest The hero without a grave. did nothing until it became a raging fire. until your message is heard, until the And we will remember the People say it is not antisemitism, it is flames of hate are extinguished, until survivors, every one of whom is a anti-Zionism, criticism of Israel, and your candle of memory lights the way hero. Not only did they have the different from the antisemitism of the to a world that honours life. May the courage to survive, they had the past. No new hate is exactly like the old - God of life give us the strength to courage to tell the story so that the the scapegoating, blaming the troubles sanctify, dignify and cherish life. AJR JOURNAL JUNE 2004

rights in Syria, and in Turkey the 15 million Kurds have only very limited rights, many thousands of them The Editor reserves the right having been forcibly evacuated from to shorten correspondence their villages and with no state schools I TO THE 1 submitted for publication allowing them to speak in their own ^ EDITOR I language. I could go on at length about this major Middle East problem, S^!^ but the Jews are not unique. Ruth Walter PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD experience of seeing the statue and Harrow, Middx Sir - Francis Deutsch (December issue) the collection of items in the glass should check the facts before he writes cabinet. Unfortunately, because the FRAUGHTENCOUNTER about Israel and the Palestinians. There stone plinth offers good seating and Sir - I sympathise with Ruth has never been in history an there are no benches around, it was Schwiening (April issue), who independent Palestine, neither when occupied on that sunny afternoon by a experienced a shocking outburst from the area was under Arab control back family and other rail passengers who her German relatives, for which there in the seventh-eighth centuries CE, nor obviously had no interest in the can be no excuse. We must, however, under the Ottomans, and, of course, exhibits and hardly moved aside face the fact that not only not under the British. The Palestinians sufficiently to allow us to see them. antisemitism but racial abuse is were offered a state twice in the last 60 Moreover, the strong sunlight, further increasing all over the world. The years. The United Nations voted for a magnified by the glass, made us realise reasons are not difficult to find nor, it two-state solution in 1947 - a Jewish that the precious exhibits - originals all seems, is this likely to change in the state and an Arab (Palestinian) state. - would rapidly fade, especially the present climate of vicious conflicts This was rejected by the Arabs. What documents. and terrorism. could have become a Palestinian state Two suggestions, therefore, to the The Germans have a particular in 1948 was annexed by Jordan and founding organisations: a sun canopy problem in having to live with the guilt Egypt; Jordan's annexation of the West over the top of the glass cabinet, at of the Holocaust and having to justify Bank was recognised only by Britain least protecting the east, south and their expressed pacifism in an ever- and Pakistan. west sides; and a small (6-inch high?) complex political climate, especially In July 2000 it was Israel under Ehud metal railing rising from the plinth so the Middle East situation. In the last 60 Barak that handed over to Arafat a as to prevent it being used as seating years successive German governments Palestinian state on a silver platter. It for coke and sandwich munchers. Not have done everything possible to was again rejected. And it was the that I can blame the latter for using it eradicate antisemitism and the majority of Germans, who were never Palestinians, by initiating the intifada, in this way, for one thing because the tainted by the Nazis, have been who broke all agreements (including tablet identifying the exhibit as a memorial is a good few yards away on sympathetic to the Jewish cause. But the Oslo accords) to reach a peaceful the entrance wall. this is being eroded, not least by the solution. It seems that only when the continuing vilification of all Germans, Palestinian leadership becomes far Eric and Miriam Mark something the new younger more responsible will a two-state Belgium generation rightly refuses to accept. solution be viable. Jews have a special responsibility in THE KURDS Prof Dennis Kurzon this respect. The recent anti-German Sir - Your April editorial states that, Israel outbursts of Richard Desmond of the after the destruction of Jerusalem by Daily Express will without doubt cause the Romans, we were 'burdened with much rightful anger in Germany and LIVERPOOL STREET MEMORIAL the unique fate of being a people will add fuel to the hatred spread by Sir-As we now live in Belgium, my wife without firm ground under our feet these irrational bigots. and I have only just had the throughout the ensuing 20 centuries.' I opportunity of seeing the memorial. wish that were true, but there are 40 Walter Wolff Having preceded the Kindertransport, I million Kurdish people who during the London Wl 1 arrived at Liverpool Street on a cold same period have had their land and foggy January 1935 evening as a occupied by successive empires such MISNOMER (I) young boy whose parents had to stay as Persia, Macedonia, the Romans and Sir -1 seem to be of the minority who, behind in Germany, but who at least Byzantines and had forced conversions while not always agreeing with the was met by a hospitable couple, to Sunni Islam. These people now live subject matter of your editorials, themselves refugees. in territory occupied by Turkey, Syria, always enjoys your remarkable We fully agree with David Doherty Iran and Iraq or as refugees in Europe. command ofthe English language. It is (April issue) in his praise for the moving Even today they have no citizen's unfortunate that the conciseness AJR JOURNAL JUNE 2004 which is its greatest asset is getting being referred to as refugees, I lost in today's morass of useless thought I had put a line under the ARE YOU ON A LOW media info. perceived malaprop. Now that we are INCOMEANDINNEED The AJR Journal is invariably well septa- or octogenarians, unless we OF HOMECARE HELP? written by all the contributors and its admit to being in our second or third title of course is the acronym of the childhood, how much more AJR might be able to offer Association of Jewish Refugees. inappropriate to call ourselves financial assistance. Analysing it over a period of time, KINDER. I therefore suggest, again Members who might not however, it appears to be dealing with tongue in cheek, the descriptive otherwise be able to afford mostly with all aspects of German acronym CHIRPIES - Children in homecare please contact: refugees and events as though it were Retrospect. Estelle Brookner, Secretary the organ of the Association of Eric Fisher AJR Social Services Dept German Refugees. There are Uxbridge Tel: 020 8385 3070 occasional references to Austrian or Czech refugees because they also OUTOFTOUCH came on the Kindertransports, a Sir - In reply to Professor Peter possibility obviously denied to Landsberg (January issue), I also do children in neighbouring countries. Companions not fit into the usual slot. I came to of London The greatest number of refugees the UK in July 1938, went straight to Incorporating coming to the UK was, of course, from school, was evacuated in 1940, and Hampstead Home Care Germany, but there were quite a did not meet many other refugees. number who came from other When I had to prove the date of A long established company countries. My family and I, for arrival in the UK, the (then) Woburn providing care in your home instance, came from the former House had no record of my arrival as I Assistance ivith personal care Yugoslavia, as did quite a few others. did not come with a group or need General household duties Apart from Austria and Respite care help. My MP was most helpful and Czechoslovakia, there were also a Medical appointment service established my arrival date with the good number from Hungary, Holland, Home Office. Many years later I read JUR CARE IS YOUR CARE' Romania and France, to mention just in a friend's AJR Journal ot 'Young 020 7483 0212/0213 some countries from which Jews fled. Austria', wrote to them and the rest, All came to England by their own as they say, is history. I have made efforts, had the same struggles to many good friends in the group. A^ SPRING establish and re-build their lives, and Anne Selinger some went to the top of their GROVE Reading professions, as did refugees from 214 Finchley Road Germany. There were just fewer of -CAIfl London NW3 them to be noted. HAPPY BIRTHDAY EDITOR \ }/ London's Most Luxurious Sir - My wife joins me in sending RETIREMENT HOME I think it would be only right, and of belated birthday wishes. I always • Entertainment-Activities great interest as well, if the journal enjoy your articles - although I don't • Stress Free Living would publish a series of articles agree with some opinions - but would > 24 Hour Staffing • Excellent Cuisine showing from which other countries • Full En-Suite Facilities be lost without having a dictionary at refugees managed to come to hand: such perfect command of Call for more information England, how they established or a personal tour English! Long may you continue to themselves and where they are now. stimulate and entertain us. 020 8446 2117 Vignettes which you publish now of or 020 7794 4455 (mostly) German refugees should also Max Hofman [email protected] beofsomeofthem. Lugano, Switzerland Mrs Nina Hofman Sir - Good health and many London Simon R Rhodes M.Ch.S. flourishing years as Editor of the AJR STATE REGISTERED CHIROPODIST Journal. Surgeries at: MISNOMER (II) Eric Kaufman 67 Kilburn High Road, NW6 (opp M&S) When, a few years ago, I coined the London NWS Telephone 020 7624 1576 acronym JACOBS - Jewish Association 3 Queens Close (off Green Lane) of Continental Britons - with Lord Sir - Happy Birthday and many, many Edgware, Middx HA87PU Jakobovits as our patron (albeit with more, Richard Grunberger! Telephone 020 8905 3264 tongue in cheek) to appease those Guy Bishop Visiting chiropody service available hyper-sensitive souls who objected to Port Aransas, Texas AJRJOURNAL JUNE 2004

dancing in the rain, their faces turned » away as though the artist himself wants RG'S INTERFACe to keep a respectful distance. The girl is NOTES Midwives to genius (continued from wearing a long, sexy red dress and both May issue) Bertolt Brecht worked as she and her lover are totally oblivious Gloria Tessler assistant to Max Reinhardt, was to the English weather. In the befriended by Lion Feuchtwanger, background, a maid is bent double married Helene Weigel and trying to shield herself from a wet and collaborated with the composers Kurt bitter wind, also no doubt to prevent Weill, Hans Eisler and Paul Dessau. (As a Communist, Brecht also had the umbrella from imploding. There is Jewish enemies, e.g. Friedrich such sweet irony in this portrayal. It Torberg, who wanted his plays banned can be read as British stiff upper lip in in postwar Austria.) the face of cold reality, true love in the Roman Polanski, who survived the face of reason, British understatement Holocaust as a street urchin and had a in the time of chaos. The singing colourful career as a film director - butler? Well, you can't hear him, but Knife in the Water, the horror film Jack Vettriano The Singing Butler such serenades are surely part of Rosemary's Baby, the thriller Chinatown, the Oscar-winning The Vettriano's Italian heritage: for a wet, You can take the beauty out of art, but Pianist - was the subject of a you can never take the art out of English summer read a Venetian retrospective at London's National beauty. By degrees, it seems, the art gondolier's gloomy lovesong. Film Theatre in April. world is returning to images of beauty Other images of beauty are pushing People of the Book The Nobel Prize in spite of itself. Many would rub their out the stuffed cows, bloody heads and winner Canetti's Auto-da-Fe climaxes hands with glee at popular artist Jack maggots which have been our daily and in the burning down of a library. Stefan Vettriano's snub to snobbish critics indigestible diet. In fact, it is Marc Zweig made a bookseller living from hand to mouth the hero of his novella with his famous The Singing Butler, Quinn, the man who cast his head in Buchmendel. Lion Feuchtwanger built which fetched nearly £750,00 at several frozen pints of his own blood, up three huge book collections in his auction in Edinburgh after frenzied who will now fill the empty plinth in lifetime - in Weimar Germany, pre­ bidding. It brought the quiet and self- Trafalgar Square with a courageous and war France and postwar California. deprecating Scottish painter into the touching 15-foot white marble statue of Friedrich Gundolf (ne Gundefinger), financial league of the world's so- pregnant thalidomide artist Alison who taught German literature at Heidelberg and was an expert on called greatest modern artists. And Lapper. Her fragile and understated Goethe and Stefan George, built up a this despite the fact that none of his repose looks out on a world where 7,500-volume library which his works has ever been bought by a beauty and celebrity are venerated, but widow, an emigree in London, sold off British art gallery. Stylised and disablement is largely ignored. It is piecemeal to keep the wolf fi'omth e dreamy. The Singing Butler, like beautiful - of that there is no doubt - and door. The dispersal of Gundolfs Vettriano's other work, appears on Quinn has given us the eyes to see it, library is the subject of a newly published study in Germany. greeting cards all over the UK, and, but the artistic intention is always the such is its lyrical mood, that it same: to shock. The name's the same It is a curious fact that quite a number of Jews injects romance back into the Another image of peaceful repose is prominent in the arts share the same everyday world. that of David Beckham, the blond surname. Schoenberg: the inventor of But while the critics scoff and Adonis of Real Madrid, caught napping the 12-tone system Arnold and the compare his work with airport fiction, in a 107-minute film by video artist composer of Les Miserables Claude- Michel. Miller: the British polymath they are impervious to the artist's Sam Taylor Wood, on show at the and director Jonathan and the National Portrait Gallery. Almost message. Sentimental art it may be, American playwright Arthur (The but there is a subtext of wry humour transgressive in its intimacy', drools Crucible). Roth: the Austrian novelist and cynicism that poses questions and The Guardian, which compares Joseph (Radetzky March) and his captures most eloquently a quality football's sleeping saint with American colleague Philip (The that is traditionally and eternally Michaelangelo's David. In the world of Human Stain). Grossman: the Russian novelist VassiH (Life and British. The butler is presumably the celebrity, sleeping beauties are always Fate) and his Israeli colleague David the innocents. man holding an umbrella over a couple (See Under Love). AJR JOURNAL JUNE 2004

Neglected masterpiece by a personal and public tragedy, both factors refugee writer are of equal importance. Lilli SchliJchterer's choice of Ernst Jahn KASEBIER EROBERT DEN REVIEWS determined her fate. A medical student KURFURSTENDAMM from a comfortable, liberal Jewish family, Gabriele Tergit Lilli fell in love with Ernst, a recently- Das Neue Bedin, 2004, 271pp. We owe a debt of gratitude to Jens Bruning, who has edited this new edition qualified doctor, and single-mindedly Journalism and journalists have been a of the novel, for his devoted efforts over pursued this depressive young man favoured theme of German novelists since many years to bring Gabriele Tergit back despite his own, often fluctuating, Gustav Freytag's Die Journalisten, which into the public eye. It was a particular commitment and her parents' opposition featured the Jewish hack Schmock. With pleasure to hear him read from the novel to a mixed marriage. Family photographs the modernisation of the German mass at Club 43 in March, a nostalgic show the non-Jewish Ernst, despite his media after 1918, journalists bulked large experience for those members of the romantic nickname 'Amade', as anything in literary works created during the Club who can still remember Tergit but an Aryan god: slight, dark and vibrant artistic life of the Weimar Republic: herself speaking at its meetings. balding, he could easily have passed the provincial nobody Tredup in Hans Gabriele Tergit was the nom-de-plume as Jewish. Fallada's Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben, of Elise Hirschmann, born in 1894 into a If Lilli was to enjoy a few years of the visit to the editorial offices in Erich Berlin Jewish family. After studying, she domestic harmony in Immenhausen with Kastner's Fabian, the use of newspaper became a journalist, known especially Ernst and their young children before the headlines for dramatic purposes in plays for her court reports in the prestigious eruption of the Nazi inferno, this was like Ernst Toller's Hoppla, wir leben! Bediner Tageblatt. She married the meagre compensation for the architect H.J. Reifenberg (later Gabriele Tergit's Kasebier erobert den tribulations that lay before her While her Kurfurstendamm, published by Rowohlt responsible for Belsize Square unmarried sister, Elsa, emigrated to in 1931, ranks with the best of these Synagogue), but just when Kasebier England in 1933, to be joined later by her works. It uses the media-manipulated rise promised to bring her literary success, widowed mother, this option was barred and fall of the mediocre comic Kasebier to she, her husband and young son had to to Lilli when Ernst turned down a position provide a panoramic survey of the flee Germany in March 1933. After a his sister-in-law had arranged for him. cultural, commercial and social elites of spell in Palestine, they came to London in Berlin society, at the hectic highpoint of its 1938, where Tergit wrote for a number When Ernst divorced her in 1942, Lilli dizzying dance on the edge of the abyss - of newspapers and established herself as lost the protection afforded Jewish into which it duly fell, with the financial something like the doyenne of refugee spouses of Aryans and was later detained crisis that engulfs Tergit's entrepreneurs, writers. For almost 25 years she was in prison before being deported to journalists, bankers and beau monde at secretary of the PEN Centre of German Auschwitz. While her grandchildren were the end of the novel. The collapse of the Writers Abroad, the 'Deutscher Exif-PEN'. aware that their grandmother had fevered speculative bubble engineered by Gabriele Tergit took British nationality perished in the death camp, the subject bankers, builders and pressmen latching and remained in Britain until her death in remained taboo until the discovery, some on to the Kasebier phenomenon and the 1982. She wrote frequently for AJR 54 years after Lilli's death, of a cache of ensuing rush of bankruptcies take place Information, and some readers will letters she had written and received. against the background of the crisis of the remember the enchanting Buchlein vom These provided the author, Lilli's political system of the Republic, with the Bett (1954) and Kaiserkron und Paonien grandson, with material for a Nazis achieving their political rot. Kleine Kulturgeschichte der Blumen unique testimony. breakthrough in the elections of (1958), as well as the longer novel It is these remarkable, life-affirming September 1930. Effingers, which tells the story of a letters, placed in context by Martin Tergit's novel employs the bold German-Jewish family. But she never Doerrys lucid and objective narrative, enjoyed the fame that her early novel experimental techniques pioneered by which make Lilli's sad history so Alfred Dbblin in Bedin Alexanderplatz to had promised her and that the Nazis memorable. From the beginning, the capture the modern metropolitan stole from her. Hopefully this new reader is hooked by the correspondence experience, combining them with the edition of Kasebier will at last secure the between Lilli and her 'Amade', while flippant, cynical humour of Fafa/an, where novel its rightful place in the sparkling deploring the mistake she is making in Kastner leads his hero, Candide-like, from pantheon of Weimar literature. choosing him, something she later has one aspect of modern big-city life to Anthony Grenville another Tergit's style has a gripping the insight to acknowledge. Yet even immediacy and a liveliness that matches after their divorce and Ernst's remarriage, Lilli continues to feel for Ernst the the pulsating rhythms of Berlin life in the A unique testimony late 1920s. The story of the staff of her unconditional, non-possessive 'agape' of MY WOUNDED HEART Bediner Rundschau, under the revered maternal love. Martin Doerry editor Miermann, is amusing, fascinating Other letters between Lilli and various Bloomsbury, £16.99 and finally, with the destruction of the friends illustrate the dramatic changes paper by the manoeuvres of opportunists, How often is misfortune the result of confronting German Jews. But it is the moving. The novel is, in short, a pleasure personal choice rather than external correspondence between this to read. circumstances? In this moving story of a courageous mother and her adoring AJR JOURNAL JUNE 2004 children after her imprisonment in (English, Welsh and Yiddish) dialogue Breitenau which sears the reader with and a dramatically gory ending. Letter from Israel its extraordinary power and humanity. Wondrous Oblivion displays few of Dorothea Shefer-Vanson Informative, humorous, heart-rending, these characteristics although it these letters capture the essence of each replicates the tripartite ethnic pattern of How far do you want to go back? child: Gerhard, the anti-aircraft gunner the previous film: here, the protagonists Targeted killings? But each targeted (later a minister in Willi Brandt's are Jewish, English and West Indian. killing was preceded by terrorist government); Ilse, the mother- The hero is David Wiseman, 12-year-old attacks that murdered and maimed substitute; lively Johanna; tomboy Eva; son of refugee parents living in a dozens of Israelis. respectable working-class and cosseted toddler Dorle, born in The security fence? But before that neighbourhood in 1960s London. 1940 when her parents' marriage was we had the second intifada, with the virtually over. They also provide a David feels doubly isolated. At school, indiscriminate murder of many he shines as a scholar, but fails to make riveting depiction of life in wartime Israelis. the grade as a sportsman; at home, his Germany, not least the bombing of The failure of the Oslo Accords? But father is too preoccupied with business they had enabled the Palestinians to Kassel, where the family moved after matters to show him much love, and the blow up buses throughout Israel. the divorce. The dichotomy experienced gentile neighbours keep a wary distance. Israeli incursions into the Gaza by these half-Jewish children between The seminal moment in David's young Strip? But before that, in 1994, Israel anxiety about their mother's fate and life occurs when a West Indian family had allowed Yasser Arafat to return commonality with their fellow citizens moves in next door The father is, of from exile and establish a Palestinian in the face of the 'enemy' onslaught is course, a cricket enthusiast, under police force, with joint Israeli- particularly striking. whose expert tuition the lad sloughs off Palestinian patrols. After Israel Unforgettable in its breadth and his erstwhile ineptitude on the pitch. opened the tunnel leading to the complexity, and in the depth and More than that: he begins to discern the Western Wall the Palestinian intensity of its perspective, Doerry's music of the spheres in the thwack of policemen turned on their Israeli tribute to his grandmother's 'wounded leather on willow. Put more prosaically, counterparts in an orgy of killing. heart' will live on as a classic of world he now at last feels an appreciated The occupation of the western bank literature. member of the school: cricket, he intuits, of the Suez Canal? But that was preceded by the Yom Kippur War of Emma Klein has become his passport into wider English society. 1973, when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel in an attempt to wrest the The great Rudyard Kipling divided the FILM 'occupied territories' away from it. English into 'flannelled fools' (cricket- The getting of Wisden The occupation of the West Bank lovers) and 'muddied oafs' (football WONDROUS OBLIVION and the Sinai Strip? But that was fans). Since I incline slightly towards the directed by Paul Morrison preceded by the Six-Day War of 1967, latter, I was probably the wrong person when the combined forces of Syria, On general release to review this film. But I also feel that my Egypt and Jordan attacked Israel in an readers may be the wrong people to The problem with Anglo-Jewish films is attempt to obliterate it. see it! akin to the one frequently experienced Israel's Declaration of Richard Grunberger with buses: first there isn't one for ages - Independence in 1948? But that was and then two or three come along preceded by the UN resolution together. proposing that the problem be WANTED TO BUY resolved by partitioning the disputed I exaggerate, but only slightly. Hard territory. The rejection of this by on the heels ot Suzie Gold (see review in German and the Arabs led to the War of May issue), the brainchild of two Independence, when Jewish forces newcomers, comes Wondrous Oblivion, English Books overcame armies that greatly directed by Paul Morrison, a more outnumbered it. seasoned film-maker. His last movie, Established bookdealer The White Paper issued by the Solomon and Gaynor, was something of (AJR member) British Foreign Office in 1939, which a pioneering venture, with trilingual always welcomes sought to appease Arab anti-Jewish invitations to view feeling by restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine? But that and purchase Annely Juda Fine Art condemned millions of European valuable books Jews to death at the hands of the 23 Dering Street For an immediate response, Nazis. (off New Bond Street) please contact: Jewish immigration to Palestine in Robert Hornung general? But that was preceded by Tel: 020 7629 7578 2 Mount View, Ealing, centuries of exile, persecution, Fax: 020 7491 2139 London W5 IPR Email: [email protected] and poverty. CONTEMPORARY PAINTING Tel: 020 8998 0546 Or do you agree with those who say AND SCULPTURE j (Spm to 9pm is best) there should be no Jewish state?

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Alf Keiles couldn't understand why AJR first free music school for Joumal wanted to profile him. 'You write underprivileged black children in about professors and achievers!', he PROFILE Johannesburg. In 1977 he joined the protested. 'What have I achieved?' Howard Spier International Association of Jazz Record Thankfully he succumbed to a combined Collectors. onslaught on his false modesty by his In accordance with our 'pact', we doughty wife Esther and myself. Alf Keiles turned finally to Alfs present-day jazz We sat in the 'music room' in Alfs The Jazz Man connection. Alfs eyes lit up. I saw a Borehamwood home, a room packed to transformed man before me. I confessed the rafters with items pertaining to jazz. I wasn't a great jazz fan: I preferred We made a pact to leave the jazz classical music. To which Alf responded coimection to the end of our meeting, that he was interested in all music - jazz, first exploring other aspects of Alfs life Beatles, Beethoven. as a 'non-achiever'. Alf was 'stunned' by jazz at the age of Alf was bom in Wiesbaden in 1927. eight. There was plenty of music in the His family ran a cigarette factory, family. His father played the piano, Alf apparently the most successful of its believes - he recalls a baby grand in their kind in Germany. His mother died in Wiesbaden home - while one imcle 1931. In 1935 his father left for South played the violin and another played the Africa in search of a new home, leaving drums. A third uncle was an avid him and his sister with their collector of jazz records. Alfs family grandmother. In the following year, told continues the tradition: Esther is a fine that Jews were no longer welcome at his classical pianist and all three of their school, he and his sister were put on a sons are accomplished musicians, two of train to Genoa to await a place on a ship them professionals. to Capetown, where they were to rejoin Alf has compiled a database of 17,000 their father. Their father would jazz items - a figure which represents henceforth never speak of their life in not even 10 percent of all the recordings Germany: Alf would not findou t about it in his house (not forgetting the garage). until a half-century had elapsed. his customary versatility, he adapted the His collection includes some 40,000 In South Africa Alf lived a sort of dual- toy factory to the manufacture of boxes recordings on cassettes, 2,500 78s, track life. His father did not encourage for television sets. Politically though the 2,000 LPs, 200 EPs, 168 videos, 150 his interest in music. At the age of 14 he writing was on the wall. In 1986, exactly CDs, hundreds of 4-hour reels, was working in a Johannesburg 50 years after his emigration to South hundreds of reference books, complete supermarket. Esther was working there Africa, Alf and Esther moved to the UK. collections of magazines, and much, too, though they didn't know each other Soon afterwards they started a plastics much more. at the time. He left school at the age of company. In 1998, following the sale of On top of all that, Alf is in regular 16, becoming an engineering the company, came retirement. contact with jazz enthusiasts apprentice. Having taken a degree in Back to Alfs dual-track life. In South worldwide, corresponding daily with engineering, he gained a British AMca, at the age of 14, Alf bought a jazz-lovers as far apart as Siberia and university degree in mechanical saxophone, paying, unknown to his Texas. Almost every minute of the day engineering via a correspondence father, two shillings and sixpence a week he is dealing with queries, for instance course. for lessons. From the age of 16 he began fi-om the BBC, involved in musical In 1953 Alf started up a small to build up a unique collection of jazz exchange programmes with collectors engineering business. The business recordings and memorabilia. At the age around the world, compiling CDs, and was highly successful and he sold it for a of 17 he was playing Friday nights in a writing programmes for radio good price. In 1964 he opened a toy jazz club. He became a founder member broadcasts, including in the USA. As for factory, which became the largest of its of the Johannesburg Jazz Club as well as lectures/recitals, he is booked solid until kind outside the UK. In defiance of a founder member and chairman of the at least September. govermnent policies, he employed more Jazz Record Collectors' Club of South As I made my way back from this 'non- than his quota of black workers, Africa. He arranged for many world- achiever's' home, my head reeling with ensuring they received equal pay with renovraed jazz artists to appear in South statistics, I resolved not be so narrow in other workers. Around 1971, displaying Afiica, and assisted in establishing the my choice of music in the future.

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musical which regrettably never made it Next meeting: Tuesday 8 June, 11.00 am. A video about Beth Shalom INSIDE to London. Composed and written by the same people who gave us Fiddler on the theAJR Roof, the history of the banking family West Midlands: "from Vienna to the from Frankfurt seemed to be Forest of Dean' encapsulated in a sensitive musical Fourteen members attended our coating. Very, very enjoyable. meeting at the Rake Way Community Harrogate Continental Friends Herbert Haberberg Centre plus the speaker. Richard At our second meeting this year, we Newton, from Coleford in spent a pleasant pre-Pesach afternoon, Next meeting: Thursday 24 June, 10.30 Gloucestershire - whose father was a sharing memories of Pesach am. Group discussion refugee - gave a most interesting talk on celebrations of long ago in other his father's journey 'firom Vienna to the countries. Susaime Green reminded us Dazzling talk at Brighton & Hove Forest of Dean'. Henny Rednall of forthcoming events in Leeds and of Sarid the Northern holiday in St Annes Next meeting: Monday 7 June, 2.30 pm AJR Life President Ludwig Spiro spoke in July. Inge Little without notes for over an hour on his North London reminder of Next meeting: Wednesday 2 June internment in the Isle of Man in May 1940 refugee status to January 1941, reeling off a host of A slide presentation by William names and figures in dazzling fashion. It Weald of Kent: close neighbours Kacziynski of pre-war and wartime was fascinating to hear how the 'enemy letters and postcards summed up the Meeting again in Tunbridge Wells, we aliens' organised their daily existence, discussed venues and possible speakers poignancy of the refugee status in that working and studying together, period. In many ways it reflected our for future meetings. Our thanks to organising concerts and never losing members who contributed to the very own experience: the rare letter sent by a their dignity. Fausta Shelton most circuitous route, the 25-word Red nice refreshments, especially Jane Cross postcard, and the returned Dickson, who did most ofthe work at the Next meeting: Wednesday 23 June. communication marked 'addressee hall, as well as Myrna Glass, who works South-East Region get-together unknown'. Our thanks to William and so hard on our behalf. When after the his wife. Herbert Haberberg meeting several members had lunch llford talk by a superb raconteur together, three of them discovered they An appreciative audience thoroughly Next meeting: Thursday 24 June. Group had lived near one another in Berlin enjoyed Otto Deutsch's youthful discussion though they hadn't known each other at reminiscences of the Vienna coffee the time. Inge Ball houses. Otto is a superb raconteur and we Sparks for Marks were all transported to the Vienna of the The editor of Marks & Spencer's Next meeting: Wednesday 23 June. thirties, strolling around Grinzing and classy customers' magazine, Diane South-East Region get-together travelling with him on the local trams. Kenwood Zitcar, revealed to a Though I'd heard this talk before I found it fascinated audience at the AJR Gastronomic feast in Cambridge no less fascinating. Luncheon Club just how important We enjoyed a gastronomic feast when Meta Roseneil this way of reaching potential invited to lunch by Rebecca, spouse of customers is regarded. Only available Jonathan Djanogly MP, at their Next meeting: Wednesday 16 June. in the stores, the magazine was constituency home in Alconbury. There Geoffrey Perry, 'When Life Becomes the 'voicepiece' of M&S, whose were 15 of us, including Rebecca's aunt - History' customers, on average, spent 39 an AJR member, a 'second-generation' minutes reading the magazine, enabling 3,000 messages to be representative, and a Vienna-born Essex: 'a new Jewish spirit in transmitted. temporary escapee fi^omHampstead . In Vienna' addition to enjoying the spring sunshine, Our chairman. Otto Deutsch, gave us a Even with its recent ups and downs, the garden, the food and the company, vivid picture of Jewish life in pre-war M&S was still an institution; it was we agreed provisional plans for the Vienna. The flourishing social life the unthinkable to have a high street remainder of the year. Jews used to enjoy in the coffee houses without a store. The M&S magazine has to be of the highest quality with Francis Deutsch was brought to a cruel halt with the German invasion of Austria. But the beautiful photographs. Though not a sales brochure, it does try to make the Next meeting: Wednesday 30 June. Visit bittersweet memories of Otto's season's offers as desirable as to Cabinet War Rooms birthplace have always remained in his possible. People were very discerning heart and during his occasional visits to and Diane had to work very hard 'to get Record turnout at North London Vienna he was happy to discover that a the message across'. We had a record turnout for Walter new Jewish spirit has triumphed over the Ronald Channing Woyda's presentation of Rothschild, a years of despair. Julie Franks

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SOUTH-EAST REGION ANNUAL GENERAL Paul Balint AJR Day Centre GET-TOGETHER MEETING 1 5 Cleve Road, London, N\A/6 Tel: 020 7328 0208 on ASSOCIATION OF WEDNESDAY, 23 JUNE 2004, JEWISH REFUGEES 11 AM TO 4.30 PM AJR LUNCHEON CLUB Sunday 6 June 2004, in TUNBRIDGE WELLS, KENT Wednesday 16 June 2004 at 3.00 pm The Camden Centre, 11.45 am for 12.15pm at Market Square Rabbi Helen Freeman £15 or £12.50 JFS, The Ma», Kenton, Middlesex 'A Rabbi's Journey' for those travelling independently Guest speaker Early reservations please! Please telephone Lady Jakobovits Myrna Glass as soon as possible Lunch now only £5 For further details, on 020 8385 3070 (Head Office) Please telephone Sylvia or Susie please telephone 020 8385 3070 or 020 8904 7499 (evening) on 020 7328 0208

|XT_ AID Kindertransport Lily Freeman iX I ~/^J l\ special interest group Invites all her friends to the opening of her exhibition MONTHLY MEETINGS AT CLEVE ROAD 'HAPPY PAINTINGS' Monday 7 June 2004 11.45 am for 12.15pm at Hampstead Museum, Burgh House, New End Square, NW3 on Thursday 10 June 2004 6.30-8.30 pm Michael Rosen from the Embassy Exhibition continues until 20 June 2004 Opening times 12-5 pm Wed-Sun inclusive of Israel will speak about the current situation in Israel

Lunch £5 AJR GROUP CONTACTS Reservations required Please telephone 020 7328 0208 Brighton & Hove (Sussex Region) North London Fausta Shelton 01273 734 648 Jenny Zundel 020 8882 4033 Monday - Thursday Cambridge Oxford 9.30 am - 3.30 pm, Lisel Eisner 01223 356721 Myrna Glass 020 8385 3070 Sunday 2 pm - 5.30 pm Dundee Pinner (HA Postal District) June Afternoon Entertainment: Susanne Green 0151 291 5734 Vera Gellman 020 8866 4833 Tue 1 Margaret Gruneberg East Midlands (Nottingham) Sheffield Wed 2 Michael Heaton Bob Norton 01159 212 494 Steve Mendelssohn 0114 2630666 Thur 3 Sheila Games Edinburgh South London Frangoise Robertson 0131 337 3406 Ken Ambrose 020 8852 0262 Sun 6 CLOSED Essex (Westcliff) South West Midlands Mon 7 KT LUNCH Larry Lisner 01702 300812 (Worcester area) Kards & Games Klub Glasgow Ruth Jackson 01386 552264 Tue 8 Francoise Geller Claire Singerman 0141 649 4620 Surrey Wed 9 Cantor Stephen Robins Harrogate Edmee Barta 01372 727 412 Thur 10 Wizo Ladies Choir Inge Little 01423 886254 Weald of Kent Sun 13 DAY CENTRE OPEN Hull Max and Jane Dickson Bob Rosner 0148 2649156 01892 541026 Mon 14 Kards & Games Klub llford Wessex (Bournemouth) Tue 15 Paul Coleman Meta Roseneil 020 8505 0063 Mark Goldfinger 01202 552 434 Wed 16 LUNCHEON CLUB Speaker: Leeds HSFA West Midlands (Birmingham) Rabbi Helen Freeman Trude Silman 0113 2251628 Henny Rednall 0121 373 5603 Thur 17 Mike Marandi Liverpool Myrna Glass, AJR South and Sun 20 CLOSED Susanne Green 0151 291 5734 Midlands Groups Co-ordinator Mon 21 Kards & Games Klub 020 8385 3077 Manchester Tue 22 Paul Yakov Werner Lachs 0161 773 4091 Susanne Green, AJR Northern Wed 23 Margaret Opdahl Newcastle Groups Co-ordinator Walter Knoblauch 0191 2855339 0151 291 5734 Thur 24 Katinka Seiner Norfolk (Norwich) KT-AJR (Kindertransport) Sun 27 CLOSED Myrna Glass 020 8385 3070 Andrea Goodmaker 020 8385 3070 Mon 28 Kards & Games Klub Tue 29 Rita & Jack Davis Editorials and articles published, and opinions expressed, in AJR Journal are not necessarily Wed 30 Jenny Kossew those of the Association of Jewish Refugees and should not be regarded as such.

13 AJR JOURNAL JUNE 2004

FAMILY ANNOUNCEMENTS THE HOME CARE PRACTICE Engagements NORTHERN HOLIDAY Mazeltov and best wishes to Ronald Sunday 4 July - Friday 9 July 2004 Helps you remain in your own home Channing, AJR's Head of Media and The Fernlea Hotel, We can offer you a wide range of Community Relations, and his wife Sima on 11/17 South Promenade, Personal Care and Support the double engagement of their elder son St Annes-on-Sea, Lanes F18 ILU long or short term, living in or out Jonathan to Caroline and elder daughter Champagne reception, entertainment, at affordable rates. Joanna to Daniel. outings, an opportunity to relax Please call Jenny Flavill, our Care Deaths among friends Manager for a no obligation chat on Grodzinski. Hilde n6e Weglein passed away £280 per person - travel can be arranged Tel 020 7328 8408 peacefully on 23 April aged 91. She was Fax 020 7624 5002 treasured by Peter, Sheila, Natasha and For furtlier information or an Sasha. She had no easy life but 'hilfsbereit' application form, contact was her middle name. Ruth Finestone on 020 8385 3070 as soon as possible as numbers are limited Lippman. Gidon Lippman, born Berlin ACACIA LODGE 2.5.24, died peacefully 28.2.04. Thankfully Mrs Pringsheim, S.R.N. MATRON For Elderly, Retired and Convalescent he got to know his grandson Julen, born (Ucensed by Borougti of Barnet} last year. Shalom. Gerda, Dan, Jonathan BELSIZE SQUARE • Single and Double Rooms. and Teresa. • Ensuite facilities, CH in all rooms. SYNAGOGUE • Gardens, TV and reading rooms. Classified • Nurse on duty 24 hours. 51 Belsize Square, NW3 4HX Manicure & Pedicure in the comfort ofyour • Long and short term and respite, own home. Telephone 020 8343 0976. We offer a traditional style of religious including trial period if required. service with Cantor, Choir and organ DayCentre From £350 per week 020 8445 1244/020 8446 2820 office hours Pamela Bloch at the Paul Balint AJR Further details can be obtained from the synagogue secretary 020 8455 1335 other times Day Centre. Clothes sale, separates etc. Telephone 020 7794 3949 37-39 Torrington Park, North Finchley, London N12 9TB Thursday 10 June and Wednesday Minister: Rabbi Rodney J Mariner 23June, 9.30-11.45 am. Cantor: Rev Lawrence H Fine Chiropodist. Trevor Goldman at Regular Services the Paul Balint AJR Day Centre Friday evenings at 6.45 pm Wednesday 30 June, 10 am -11.30 am. Saturday mornings at 10 am Religion School: Sundays at 10 am to 1 pm Nursery School: 9.15 am to 12.15 pm Beisize Under 3's: 9.30 am to 11.30 am FROM HOME (yijtcH^*^ Home Care Space donated by Pafra Limited If you are lonely, or your family are worried about Care through quality and professionalism you alone, consider moving into our Progressive Our communal hail is available for cultural Jewish Abbeyfield Home for able bodied pensioners and social functions Celebrating our 25th Anniversary as a recent resident said 25 years of experience in providing the highest Tel: 020 7794 3949 ' I never knew it could be so homely ' standards of care in the comfort of your own home PEGGY LANG SWITCH ON ELECTRICS HOUSE Rewires and all household Walm Lane,Willesden permanent and short-stay electrical work currently we have 'two vacancies' PHONE PAUL: 020 8200 3518 1 tiour to 24 liours care COSTS ARE EXTREMELY Registered througli the National Cdre Standard Commission REASONABLE

?4 lioLir teleplioiie 020 7794 9323 For information: check our website - www.colvirMiursiiig.co.uk ALTERATIONS www.JewishAbbeyfield.org.uk - or phone OF ANY KIND TO LADIES' FASHIONS ANN KIR,< 01923 821923 ADVERTISEMENT RATES I also design and make children's clothes West Hampstead area FAMfLY EVENTS 020 7328 6571 First 15 words free of charge, Leo Baeck Housing Association Ltd £2.00 per 5 words thereafter. Clara Nehab House CLASSIFIED, SEARCH NOTICES Residential Care Home £2.00 per 5 words. JOURNEY INTO FREEDOM All single rooms with en suite bath/shower BOX NUMBERS - £3.00 extra by PETER HART Short stays/Respite and 24 hour Permanent Care DISPLAY ADVERTS Large attractive gardens per single column inch 65mm £12.00 A fascinating and moving Ground Floor Lounge and Dining rooms COPY DATE - 5 weeks prior to publication authentic war-time story Lift access to all floors Easy access to local shops and public transport Bookshops & Internet £8.99 Enquiries and further information Kitchener Camp remembered Or borrow from any library please contact: The Manager The picture which accompanied this article Normal or large print Clara Nehab House by Hans Jackson in the May issue was of his 13-19 Leeside Crescent ISBN No. 0 7552 0070 5 London NWII ODA group listening to the declaration of war on Phone: 020 8455 2286 3 September 1939.

14 AJR JOURNAL JUNE 2004

Obituary Arts and Events Diary - June Central Office for Holocaust Claims Hans W. Cohn, a leading Existential To 28 October West End - East End: Michael Newman Psychotherapist, has died aged 87. Born Jewish Life Across London'. Jewish in Breslau, he arrived in this country seven Museum Finchley Austrian pension update months after the outbreak of war. To 24 July Morris Kestelman (1905- To avoid Austrian bank charges, Having studied for an honours degree 1998): an exhibition of his paintings. recipients of a pension from Austria at the University of London, he obtained London Jewish Cultural Centre. 10.00 am are advised to submit an application a PhD with his thesis on the psychological to Spm for the direct transfer of the pension aspects of the work of the poet Else To 20 June 'I Never Saw Another to the United Kingdom. The specially Lasker-Schuler, which was published by Butterfly ... Children's Art from designed forms must be completed Cambridge University Press. Theresienstadt'. Jewish Museum with the applicant's UK account Trained as a psychotherapist, he Camden Town, in association with the details, including the bank's Bl code involved himself deeply in existential Jewish Museum of Prague and IBA number - both of which are therapy (Daseinsanaiyse). He taught at available over the counter in your Regents College, wrote two books on the Thursdays at 3 pm Coffee House Chess. local bank. Receiving a pension subject, and helped many individuals London Jewish Cultural Centre through this improved banking privately. In 2003 he was made Honorary Mon 7 Dr Zhores Medvedev, system will require a pensioner to Visiting Fellow of the School of 'Vladimir Putin: The Changing complete a life certificate only once Psychotherapy and Counselling at Perspective'. Club 43 a year Regents College. Tues 8 An Evening with Shevah Weiss, The one-page application forms Hans Cohn was a poet until the 1960s. Chairman of the Council of Yad are available through this office and Many of his poems were published in Vashem. Hampstead Garden Suburb the AJR Social Work Department and German literary magazines and Synagogue, London N2. 8.00 pm. Spiro must be returned to the anthologies. His last poems were Ark. Tel 020 7723 9991 Pensionsversicherungsanstalt published in Mit alien funf Sinnen, which Thur 10 'A Central European Wanderer: in Vienna. appeared in Germany in 1994. These Joseph Roth'. Illustrated lecture. London Under the terms of the British poems were later translated into English: Jewish Cultural Centre 7.30 pm. Bankers' Association guidelines, With All Five Senses was published by the Tickets £5 Menard Press in 1999. Jill Bamber, British banks have agreed not to Mon 14 Club 43 Annual General Meeting reviewing the volume in AJR Journal, charge their customers commission wrote: This poet ... brings us revelation Tues, Wed, Thur 15, 16, 17 charges on any Holocaust and healing.' ', the Man and his Image', compensation payments. international conference. Institute of German bank charges Jewish Studies, UCL, tel 020 7679 3520. It has come to the attention of this Project on film Admission free office that German restitution or Mon 21 Dr Charmian Brinson and Dr compensation awards greater than and emigration Richard Dove, '"The best actor in €12,500 (approximately £8,000) can Karin Rausch England" (James Agate): Martin Miller attract German bank fees that may amount to several hundred Euros. In Within the framework of an extensive on British Stage and Screen'. Club 43 instances where a restitution research project on Film and Emigration Mon 28 Roy Clemens, 'Some More authority makes an award to a from Nazi Germany we are completing an Ladies of Ireland'. Club 43 claimant's lawyer, who then transfers encyclopedia with more than 3,000 entries of Tues 29 Professor Sigrid Weigel (Technical to the UK a sum in excess of €12,500, refugees. Alas, there are still important data University of Berlin), 'Walter Benjamin's a commercial bank rate is applied. missing. K you can help with information Critique of Political Theology". Wiener (for instance whereabouts, dates of death, Library. 7.00 pm. Admission free Wherever possible, transfers relatives) on the following persons, please should be made in units of less than contact Johannes Gutenberg, Universitat ORGANISATION CONTACTS €12,500, the limit at which European Union regulations for inner-German Mainz, Filmwissenschaft Club 43 Belsize Square Synagogue. bank fees apply. (Forschungsprojekt Filmemigration), Meetings 7.45 pm. Contact Hans Seelig Wallstrasse 11, D 55122 Mainz, Germany, or tel 01442 254360 Further help send an e-mail to [email protected]: Written enquiries should be sent to Jewish Museum Camden Town 129-131 Central Office for Holocaust Claims K. C. Alexander, Jane Bess, Eric Victor Albert Street, London NWl tel 020 7284 (UK), Jubilee House, Merrion Avenue, Cass, Suzan Dehson, Henry Edward Fisher, 1997 Peter Eric Forest, Gustav Hamber, George Stanmore, Middx HA7 4RL, by fax to Jewish Museum Finchley Sternberg Herbert, Anthony Howard, Henry Jacobsen, 020 8385 3075, or by email to Centre, London N3 tel 020 8439 1143 Walter Jentzsch, Carl Kayser, Liselotte [email protected] Assistance can Kristian, Rudolf Carl Liebmann, Siegmund London Jewish Cultural Centre, be provided strictly by appointment Oehlberg, Molhe Ordeyna, Hermann Pek, Kidderpore Avenue, London NW3 tel 020 at the Holocaust Survivors Centre Hans Ritter, Ferdinand Stein, Ema Stoll, 7431 0345 in Hendon, north London. For Alfred Travers, Willi Werder, Cornelia Wildt, Wiener Library 4 Devonshire Street, an appointment, please ring Catherine Wiimer, Martin Wronker. London Wl tel 020 7636 7247 020 8385 3074.

15 AJR JOURNAL JUNE 2004

Schindler on Amy's list Newsround Ronald Channing Sharon loses Gaza vote Likud Party members reject by a 60-40% vote Ariel Sharon's plan for a unilateral Dr Amy Gottlieb, withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The right, who withdrawal plan was supported by US recalled her work President George Bush. in the DP camps at the AJR Jewish museum opened in Budapest Luncheon Club, A Holocaust Memorial Centre has been pictured with opened in Hungary. The state-run Club founder museum is intended to promote Anne Marx, who Hungarian awareness of the Holocaust, after eight including the country's own involvement successful years is to work with in the murder of the Hungarian Jewish Ruth Wald as population. Israeli President Moshe co-chairman Katzav participated in the opening ceremony. The emigration of Oscar Schindler from progressed. Amy followed, under the Five charged in neo-Nazi case war-torn Europe to Argentina was auspices of the American Joint German prosecutors charged three organised by Amy Gottlieb. Though Distribution Committee, to set up women and two men with being young and inexperienced, she was camps for Jewish DPs in Greece and members or supporters of the neo-Nazi among the earliest British volunteers to Italy and in defeated Austria and organisation Kameradschaft FSiJd, bring help to Europe's Displaced Germany. Some people were sent which they say plotted to bomb the Persons (DP) camps and she joined the back in trains to their countries of dedication ceremony at a new Munich first relief unit in February 1944, one of origin, while houses were bought as synagogue last year. (AP) 20 Jews among a group of 100. homes for dispossessed children. Race hate on decline in Germany Dr Amy Gottlieb, as she is today, a Under the 'Joint' it became 'normal' for Antisemitic incidents have fallen retired archivist, historian and author, DPs to settle in the United States and dramatically in Germany, but the was the guest speaker at a full house of Amy helped to organise the first ship number of violent attacks has risen. the AJR Luncheon Club, which she held which took Jewish refugees across According to a Jewish Chronicle report, spell-bound with her recollections of the Atlantic. government sources said there were rescuing Jewish survivors. Initially, Amy did not realise how 1,300 reported antisemitic crimes in Despite not knowing her destination, many Jewish lives Oscar Schindler 2003, a drop of 20% from the previous she boarded a liner in Liverpool, a had saved. He appeared to her to be a year. But the number of violent attacks welcome escape from the London Blitz. 'very modest man, quietly spoken and against Jews rose from 28 to 35, The ship eventually docked in Port Said with a sense of humour'. Amy including 12 incidents in BeHin. and she still recalls the train to Cairo arranged for him and his wife, Mussolini's home to become being fired on. Amy was put to work together with some protective Jewish Holocaust museum setting up schools for evacuated Greek, couples, to embark for Argentina, his The estate that was Benito Mussolini's Serbian and Croatian children, and then, chosen destination. The Joint officials favourite home during his decades as posted to the Suez Canal, she helped paid for his migration; later Schindler Italy's dictator is to house a museum young Jewish men on their way to the went on to Australia. In all, Amy spent dedicated to commemorating the Holocaust of Rome's Jews. then Palestine. 10 years in Germany serving Jewish As the liberation of Europe survivors ofthe Holocaust. Prague Jewish coalition comes to power A coalition that promised to bring a new SPECIAL INVITATION Visit the exhibition of era of transparency and openness to to the children of the Children's Art from Theresienstadt Prague's Jewish community has been Kindertransport and other followed by a welcome and tea elected. The success of the 'Coalition for members of the AJR Thursday 17 June, 2-4 pm a Democratic Community' has shored up from the (entrance free) attempts by community chairman Jewish Museum As accommodation is limited, please book Tomas Jelinek to force through 129-131 Albert Street, direct with the Museum democratic measures which he says Camden Town, London NWl Call Norma Yantin before 8 June on were being blocked by some officials. 0207 284 1997

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 Jubilee House is situated adjacent to Stanmore Underground Station. 16