AJR r tion Volume LII No. 7 July 1997 £3 (to non-members) Don't miss... The camera doesn't necessarily lie Refections on news from Bletchley Park and Vienna Richard Grunberger p3 Heartland of European Jewry Varieties of antisemitism Ronald Channing p 12 ne of the by-products of the 'Goldhagen But enough of such nightmare thoughts! If we turn Diverse controversy' is the realisation that the our gaze from past myths and the more pertinent National Days Oantisemitic mindset is not all of a piece. We question whether anti-Jewish prejudice inhibited the he new differentiate increasingly between 'ordinary' Allied response to the Holocaust to the present, we month brings antisemites opposed to Jewish integration and can gauge how much things have changed for the in its train influence, and eliminationist ones who want Jews better. T wiped off the face of the earth. Right now Michael Howard is the most high pro­ two high-profile National Days: the Proof that the same individual can readily switch file Tory of all and Peter Mandelson runs him a close American Fourth of from the merely hate-filled to the actively murderous second on the Labour benches. Both are targets of July and France's variant of the mindset was provided by Wilhelm II. (not necessarily unjustified) censure, but neither has Quartorze Juillet. Until Germany's defeat in war (for the outbreak of been - publicly - attacked for his origins. This Both have a martial which he bore a major responsibility) the Kaiser still doesn't prove that Westminster and Wapping are significance, deigned to rub shoulders with Albert Ballin of the prejudice-free zones, but indicates that we are mov­ the former Hamburg-America Line and the banker Fuersten- ing in the right direction. commemorating the War of Independence, berg; thereafter he advocated the gassing of all Jews. And a propos of movement: even Austria is inch­ the latter the Storming Goldhagen's thesis that, even before the Nazi take­ ing forward into the Twentieth Century. Exactly a of the Bastille. over, the mass of Germans were eliminationist rather hundred years after he assumed the directorship, the A totally different than ordinary antisemites has been fiercely contested Vienna Opera has named its ornate foyer the Gustav National Day - not by German historians. English historians have, by Mahler Saal! It proves the truth of the adage Austria only non-martial, but and large, noted the controversy without feeling Erit In Orbe Ultima (Austria will be the last in the in fact quite fictitious impelled to pronounce upon it. world) D - is Ireland's June There is, however, a distantly related question 16. On that day in which agitated F^nglish historians several years ago 1904 Leopold Bloom, and to which we feel it appropriate to return. The a shambling middle- question is whether Britain should have tried to aged Jew, undertook peregrinations across make peace with Hitler in 1941. The historian re­ Dublin which form sponsible for raising the question was the notorious the subject matter of Churchill-hating protege of Alan Clark's, Dr John James Joyce's Charmley (see our August 1995 issue). As part of his Ulysses. Joyce's indictment of the 'warmonger' Churchill, Charmley sympathetic portrayal argued that Hitler's Final Solution was not premedi­ of his hero sets him tated, but a reaction to impending defeat on the miles apart from such Eastern Front. contemporary literary Now his flawed argument is totally discredited by greats as Pound, newly-released documents from Bletchley Park Eliot, Henry James and Virginia Woolf, which show massacres of Russian Jews already oc­ who were all to a curring in 1941, the year of Wehrmacht triumphs in greater or lesser the East. degree infected with In considering the subtext of Charmley's script antisemitism. Re one is tempted to ask at what point of the spectrum Joyce it behoves us to his 'scholarly' myth of 'Churchill's War' overlaps lien Hel/gotl reading the memorial over the command bunlter of rejoice D with Mosley's demagogic myth of a 'Jews' War? the Martyrs of 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (see p. 12) AJR INFORMATION JULY 1997 Profile Beth Shalom, an inspiration to AJR members A volunteer in war and peace einz (Jerry) Hoffman was born seventy-five years ago in Vienna, H where his father owned menswear shops. Having completed Untermittel- schtile he went to a textile college till 1938. After the Anschluss he gained some months' practical experience in a weav­ ing mill, but the need to emigrate became ever more pressing. He went to Italy and made abortive attempts to smuggle him­ self aboard a US-bound liner and across the Swiss border. At last, in the nick of time, he managed (with Quaker help) to come to England as an agricultural trainee. He found work on the land less than appealling. However, when war broke out he wanted to join up immediately, but the pick-and-shovel duties of the Pioneer Corps struck him as so similar to agricul­ Stephen Smith addressing members in Beth Shalom Centre's memorial hall. tural labour, that he waited till aliens were admitted into the fighting services. tephen Smith, director of Beth nificantly, few Christian groups had vis­ He joined the quaintly named Horse Ar­ Shalom, and his effervescent mother, ited the Centre, though individual tillery as a dispatch rider in a mechanised SMrs Marina Smith, warmly wel­ Christians had. unit. Shipped to India, he transferred to comed more than a hundred AJR Following a delicious vegetarian lunch, the paratroops and did his practice jumps members on a visit specially arranged by the fine weather tempted many to explore near the NW Frontier. He next endured David Jedwab and the AJR Events Com­ the Centre's beautiful memorial gardens three years of jungle warfare in Burma, an mittee. and the view over a luscious Nottingham­ experience which he sums up with one The rationale behind the creation of the shire countryside, before entering the word: Hell. Centre, Stephen Smith explained, was as a Centre's Holocaust exhibition which After demob he lived in Westcliff, where focus for Holocaust studies rather than as graphically illustrates the rise of the Third his parents, who had come to Britain on a museum of its history. He described Reich and its persecution of the Jews. domestic permits, ran a boarding house. Beth Shalom as "a bridge from the past to AJR member Eric Kaufman, making his He began to work as a motor mechanic the future, where the past does not get left first visit to Beth Shalom, declared that and this connection with cars eventually in the past." Beth Shalom attempted to Stephen Smith had established "a unique led to him being a self-employed driving fulfil the twin objectives of providing a place, tucked away in a beautiful English instructor in London's West End. memorial place to the victims of the landscape. Everything was done with In Westcliff, too, he met a girl who in­ Shoah, while working for the creation of great sensitivity to inform those who had troduced him to Yiddishkeit, with which a caring society in which the rights of all to be informed, the younger generation in he had previously only had nodding ac­ individuals were respected. particular." quaintance. Theirs was a give-and-take Nothing in his Christian background Jane Sigaloff, a member of that third marriage. He learnt Hebrew prayers and had prepared him for the discovery, dur­ generation, was relieved to find that Beth she agreed to holiday visits to Austria, for ing a first visit to Israel, of Jews living in Shalom was not a conventional museum, whose mountain scenery he retains nostal­ today's world, yet maintaining their an­ but more akin to the home of a large fam­ gic affection. cient traditions. Knowledge of the ily in a quiet setting which gave visitors Several years ago, with retirement Holocaust, which should have changed the time to contemplate what they had looming, he took up the hobby of making the Christians' age-old perceptions of the seen. scale models of famous buildings out of Jews, had, in fact, changed little. Edith Arie, a survivor with a self-im­ match sticks and cardboard; his accom­ Stephen described Christianity as a pro­ posed duty to read Holocaust accounts plishments in this field earned him a genitor of European antisemitism. and visit Holocaust education centres, mention in the local paper. Consequently, the Churches had found thought the exhibits were very well pre­ Latterly he occupies his time with vol­ the Holocaust too sensitive an issue to sented. She found herself very moved by untary work for AJR and - jointly with discuss, as it brought into question funda­ the love and effort of the Smith family. his wife - for JACs. mental tenets of the faith. Their D Ronald Channing ORG preference was to ignore the subject. Sig­ (AJR's next visit 14 June 1998) B*a«aaajKKi5-* AjR INFORMATION JULY 1997 this genre were the British-made Desert The camera doesn't Fox and the American Cross of Iron). For the past year or so the Crimes of the PARTNER necessarily lie Wehrmacht exhibition has, at last, been In long established English Solicitors hen Shelley called poets the stripping the coats of whitewash from the (bl-lingual German) would be happy 'unacknowledged legislators of spurious knights in field grey. to assist clients with English, German Wmankind' he got it wrong. Switzerland is, of course, another and Austrian problems. Contact Consider: for 18 years Harold Pinter, whited sepulchre currently crumbling Henry Ebner John Mortimer, David Hare et al before our very eyes (which ought to excoriated the Tories, and the electorate remind us of Leopold Lindberg's The Myers Ebner & Deaner continued returning Thatcher and Major Last Chance, an indictment of Swiss war­ 103 Shepherds Bush Road to Downing Street.