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DECEMBER 2020 JOURNAL the Association of Jewish Refugees VOLUME 20 NO.12 DECEMBER 2020 JOURNAL The Association of Jewish Refugees LOOKING BACK The Year Our lead article looks back twelve months. But we are also inviting you to look back over 75 years of the AJR Journal and be part of our commemorative issue next in Review month – see page 3. The history books may well look back at 2020 as the start of Other highlights this month include a preview of two new memorials which are a pandemic. But as we reflect on the past twelve months it is being developed to honour two British important to realise there have been many other highlights, some icons of the Kindertransport (pages 10 & 11) and a light hearted look at the origin exciting, some sad. of Jewish names (page 9). Nostalgia is also at the root of our article on continental cooking (page 12) while the husband of one member was so inspired by a book review in our October issue that he has now written about his own father’s history. We hope you enjoy this final issue of 2020. News ............................................................ 3 Kristallnacht commemorated ........................ 4 Letter from Israel .......................................... 5 Letters to the Editor ................................ 6 – 7 2020 saw some excellent new TV dramas related to the Holocaust and Jewish refugees Art Notes...................................................... 8 The Name Game .......................................... 9 Icons of the Kindertransport ............... 10 – 11 Continental Cooking .................................. 12 First, there are those distinguished Jewish home in Vienna, one of three children of Put off travelling for life ............................. 13 refugees we have lost this year. The literary Béla and Lotte Horovitz. He was soaked Looking for................................................. 14 critic George Steiner died in February. in classical culture and her parents were Unlocked thanks to Lockdown ................... 15 He fled from France to America in 1940 deeply involved in Viennese music and Reviews .............................................. 16 – 17 Obituaries .......................................... 18 – 19 before settling in Britain in the 1950s. His art. Her father co-founded the famous art Events ........................................................ 20 Viennese father, he wrote in his memoir, publisher, Phaidon, which was transplanted Errata, “embodied, as did every corner of to Britain when the family left Austria in our Paris home, the tenor, the prodigality 1938. Elly Miller later ran Phaidon with her Please note that the views expressed and glow of Jewish-European and Central husband Harvey and they then founded throughout this publication are not European emancipation.” “German Harvey Miller Publishers. At her Shiva necessarily the views of the AJR. metaphysics and cultural criticism,” Steiner a publishing colleague said, “Who else wrote, “from Kant to Schopenhauer and has worked with Gombrich, spoken with AJR Team Nietzsche, the classics of German-language Toscanini as a young girl and knew Thomas Chief Executive Michael Newman poetry and drama… crowded the shelves Mann as a family acquaintance?” Finance Director David Kaye of my father’s library.” This was the cultural Heads of Department Community & Volunteer Services Carol Hart world that formed Steiner. In later years, Romek Marber, who died in March, was HR & Administration Karen Markham his greatest contribution as a critic was to best known for designing the covers of Educational Grants & Projects Alex Maws introduce so many central European writers Penguin books. Born in Poland in 1925, Social Services Nicole Valens and thinkers to post-war Britain. he was deported to the Bochnia ghetto, AJR Journal but survived and came to Britain in 1946, Editor Jo Briggs The publisher, Elly Miller, who died in where he was reunited with his father and Editorial Assistant Lilian Levy August, grew up in a similarly cultured Continued on page 2 Contributing Editor David Herman 1 AJR Journal | December 2020 The Year in Review A German film of Judith Kerr’s ever-popular Another fascinating family story is Thomas children’s classic, When Hitler Stole Pink Harding’s The House by the Lake, which (cont.) Rabbit opened the UK Jewish Film Festival was recently republished as a children’s brother. He went to art school and later on 5 November. It is directed by Caroline picture book, beautifully illustrated redesigned the Penguin crime series, giving Link, one of Germany’s best-known by Britta Teckentrup. Bryan Cheyette, them a distinctive new look. directors. She won an Academy Award for published his book on the history of The Best Foreign Language Film for Nowhere in Ghetto in the Very Short Introductions A critic, a publisher and a graphic designer, Africa (2001), which tells the story of the series published by OUP. It lucidly these three cultural figures represented the life in Kenya of a German-Jewish family, describes different kinds of ghetto from range of interests of Jewish refugees who the Redlich family, who emigrated there early modern Europe to Nazi Germany and came to Britain in the mid-20th century. in 1938 to escape persecution in Nazi the black ‘ghettos’ in 1960s America. The They came from Paris, Vienna and Poland. Germany. Her new film movingly tells the Spectator called Rosie Whitehouse’s recent Others, like the distinguished inventor and story of the Kemper family, closely based on book about Holocaust survivors, The philanthropist, George Weisz, who died in Kerr’s own family, and their experience of People on the Beach, “A gripping story of March at ninety, came from Budapest. leaving Berlin in 1933 and passing through human drama and historical seriousness.” Switzerland and Paris before eventually 2020 also saw a number of cultural settling in Britain. The film is beautifully Finally, Holocaust Education, a subject close highlights. BBC 2 celebrated Holocaust shot, but too often deviates from the book. to the AJR’s heart. Karen Pollock, Chief Memorial Day with a moving drama- Anna’s father looks nothing like Alfred Executive of the Holocaust Educational documentary, The Windermere Children, Kerr, who was fifteen years older than the Trust (HET), was awarded the MBE in about the rehabilitation of a group actor playing him. There are numerous the Queen’s Honours List, Olivia Marks- of young Holocaust survivors. The scenes which are added in the film and Woldman, Chief Executive of the Holocaust extraordinary story of Ludwig Guttmann, scenes from the book which are removed. Memorial Day Trust, was awarded the the German-born neurologist who started Too often, the dark tone of the book (and OBE and, most recently, Sir Ben Helfgott the Paralympic Games, was retold in the especially the later books in the trilogy) was awarded a Pride of Britain award Netflix documentary, Rising Phoenix. And, is replaced by the soft-lit interiors of the for his work helping fellow survivors and in a very different vein, Amazon Prime film and the sunlit Alps, which have never educating younger generations about the showed the first series of Hunters, with looked more beautiful. Holocaust. Al Pacino. The drama tells the story of a group of Nazi hunters living in 1970s New It has also been a good year for books Marks-Woldman’s grandfather, Leon York who discover that Nazi war criminals on refugees and the Holocaust. Some of Blumenkehl, came to Britain from Poland are alive and causing mayhem in post- the more interesting books include The in the early 20th century, leaving behind Watergate America. Jews, The Holocaust, and The Public: The many family members who would later be Legacies of David Cesarani, co-edited murdered in the Holocaust. “He arrived,” Tom Stoppard’s play Leopoldstadt won by Larissa Allwork and Rachel Pistol, she said, “penniless and friendless yet built Best New Play in the Olivier Awards. a tribute to the late David Cesarani, a a new life and created a community of While it presents a central European leading Holocaust historian, author of the friends in the UK. For his granddaughter to Jewish milieu, the playwright said it was posthumously published, Final Solution. receive this honour is a further symbol of “not autobiographical”. “It’s so far from Philippe Sands followed his astonishing the diversity and richness of British life.” being the story I lived through,” he told an book, East West Street (2016), part family interviewer from The Jewish Chronicle. “It’s memoir, part Holocaust history and part It is a good note on which to end this a lot to do with being Jewish, knowing you history of ideas, with The Ratline: Love, review of 2020. We have lost many leading are Jewish, acknowledging you are Jewish, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi cultural figures, but there has also been so acting like you are Jewish...or not. And Fugitive. The book tells the story of Otto much to celebrate this year, in almost every that’s the area where I felt I was looking von Wächter, Nazi war criminal and area of British life. inward rather than outward.” fugitive, and how his son could never come to terms with his father’s dark past. David Herman In her biography, Tom Stoppard: A Life, published in the autumn, Hermione Lee described Stoppard’s experience as a child refugee from Czechoslovakia, who fled with his parents to Singapore in 1939 and grew up in post-war Britain. benuri.org It was only much later in his life that Stoppard began to engage with issues of DISCOVER loss and belonging, writing plays about The three strands of our Arts and Health Institute Czech dissidents, 19th century Russian intellectuals in exile and the Jewish quarter pioneering new ways of working with older people of Vienna, though perhaps his experience of childhood trauma was more evident and those living with dementia at benuri.org in his screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. THE FIRST FULL SCALE VIRTUAL MUSEUM AND RESEARCH CENTRE 2951_BU_AJR_120X60_No2.indd 2 14/11/2020 21:42 2 AJR Journal | December 2020 Get onto DIAMOND Hundreds of AJR members who could be eligible for Homecare support in the future could significantly speed up the process at their time of need simply by registering their details now.
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  • USHMM Finding
    https://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection Kindertransport Association Oral History Project Interview with TOM BERMAN June 25, 1994 KEY: • [brackets] describe action in the interview • Italics indicates a word in a foreign language, spelled correctly • {italics in bracket} indicates a word in a foreign language that may be incorrect • {brackets} indicate indecipherable words [FILE: 94_AG_01_TomBerman_06_25_94] Interviewer: Okay. Today is June 25th, 1994. We’re in New York. This is Anita Gross interviewing, and if you could introduce yourself? Tom: Okay. My name is Tom Berman, and I live in Kibbutz Amiad in Israel. And I’m one of the Czech Kindertransport Kinder. Interviewer: Now, before we go into your story, you were about to tell me a story about a lady at {Chatham}, was it? Tom: No. I was going to tell you about the British Refugee Committee, which operated in Prague in 1938 and 1939. It was run by a woman called Doreen Warriner. And their main function was really helping political refugees who were swelling into Prague, first from Germany, then from Austria, and finally from the Sudetenland. I really don’t know about this committee, who founded it or sponsored it, but eventually the Kindertransport operation functioned under the aegis of this committee. So when Nicky went and set things up in December, January 1939, he had to have the blessings of this British Refugee Committee, and worked under that umbrella, although his operation was essentially independent. And the original committee work did not include children at all. So the British Refugee Committee, after Winton left, the man who was running the Czech Kindertransport operation was a man called Trevor Chadwick.
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  • The Difference One Can Make the Story of Nicholas Winton and the Importance of Character
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  • The Pianist of Willesden Lane Based on the Book the Children of Willesden Lane by Mona Golabek & Lee Cohen Aaron Posner
    The Guide A Theatergoer’s Resource The Pianist of Willesden Lane Based on the book The Children of Willesden Lane by Mona Golabek & Lee Cohen Aaron Posner Education & Community Programs Staff Kelsey Tyler Education & Community Programs Director Clara-Liis Hillier Education & Community Programs Associate Eric Werner Education & Community Programs Assistant Matthew B. Zrebski Resident Teaching Artist Resource Guide Contributors Benjamin Fainstein Literary Manager Mary Blair Production Dramaturg & Literary Associate Claudie Jean Fisher Table of Contents Public Relations and Publications Manager Mona Golabek . 2 Mikey Mann Hold On To Your Music Foundation . 3 Graphic Designer Characters in The Pianist of Willesden Lane . 4 German Expansion and Antisemitism . 4 PCS’s 2015–16 Education & Community Programs are generously supported by: Historical & Literary Timeline . 5 Kristallnacht: A Turning Point. 5 Defi ning the Word Refugee . 6 Who is Ruth Hect? . 7 A Rescuer’s Account . 8 Historical Sidelights: The Music of Terezin . 8 About the Oregon Holocaust Memorial . 9-10 PCS’s education programs are supported in part by a grant from the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. with additional support from Craig & Y. Lynne Johnston Holzman Foundation Mentor Graphics Foundation Autzen Foundation 1 and other generous donors. Mona Golabek Ms. Golabek is the founder and president of the non-profit organization Hold On To Your Music. She is an author, recording artist, radio host and internationally acclaimed concert pianist. Ms. Golabek was taught by her mother, Lisa Jura, who, along with Lisa’s mother Malka, is the subject of Ms. Golabek’s book, The Children Of Willesden Lane.
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  • Nicholas Winton, Man and Myth: a Czech Perspective
    Nicholas Winton, Man and Myth: A Czech Perspective Jana Burešová Nicholas Winton, whose Kindertransports from Czechoslovakia to Britain in 1939 saved 669 predominantly Jewish children at risk, has become a myth in his own time. To his ‘children’, however, who had longed to know his identity, Winton the man has become a respected paternal figure, for whom no honour would be sufficient. Diverse celebrations and projects commemorating the Kindertransports bear witness to their enduring esteem, and that of others around the world, but it is the Czech perspective that is central to this paper, linking past and present. Whilst acknowledging that Nicholas Winton did not work in isolation, from a contemporary Czech perspective it was the young British bachelor stockbroker who became the key rescuer of 669 predom- inantly Jewish children at risk in rump Czechoslovakia in 1939,1 following the ceding of the Sudetenland to Germany under the Munich Agreement of 29 September 1938. A few children were sent to London by aeroplane when Trevor Chadwick and Doreen Warriner worked in Prague with the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC),2 but the majority departed without their parents in eight transports directly from Prague’s Wilson Station (thus were not part of the wider Kindertransport movement operating from Germany and Austria). The first group of children left on 14 March 1939, just hours before Germany seized what remained of Czechoslovakia. It subsequently became increasingly difficult for Jewish or politically active anti-Fascists such as Communists and Social Democrats, to escape with their families, but subject to various formalities, the Gestapo still allowed children to leave Czechoslo- vakia.
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