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The Association of Jewish Refugees VOLUME 19 NO.6 JUNE 2019 JOURNAL The Association of Jewish Refugees The gift that keeps A GREAT MIDSUMMER on giving MIX As the popular song goes, our June issue is busting out all over, with We all know what an extraordinary contribution Jewish refugees a great selection of reports and comments. made to wartime and post-war Britain. And the contributions of some Articles include tributes to Bruno of their children and grandchildren are proving equally extraordinary. Kresiky, Arthur Koestler and Julius Braunthal and – on our obituaries page – Rabbi Harry Jacobi, among others. June is also a very busy month for AJR’s Outreach department and we hope that many readers enjoy taking part in at least one of the various inspiring and entertaining events that are advertised throughout these pages. News ............................................................ 3 Stephen Fry, Dame Margaret Hodge, Ed Miliband, Bella Freud and Ben Elton are all German Citizenship Restoration ................... 4 descendants of Jewish refugees Letter from Israel .......................................... 5 Letter to the Editor ....................................6-7 There is hardly any area of British culture Schleger designed the distinctive London Art Notes...................................................... 8 which was not transformed by refugees: bus-stop sign. Bruno Kreisky ............................................... 9 from psychoanalysis and physics to Two political thinkers .............................10-11 classical music and history, from publishers Of course, this was partly a matter of Reviews ...................................................... 12 and art dealers to economists and circumstances. Architects benefited from An appropriate response ............................ 13 Looking For ................................................ 14 cartoonists. It was as if European culture the massive rebuilding of post-war British Lament to Rosa, Susi & Lotte ..................... 15 was tipped up and the greatest intellectual cities. Money was poured into new Obituaries .............................................16-17 and cultural figures of central Europe fell universities, art schools and concert halls. Around the AJR .......................................... 18 into Britain and America. The legacy, as The post-war boom meant there was a Adverts ....................................................... 19 the year-long Insiders/Outsiders festival new middle class to buy art books like Events & Exhibitions ................................... 20 shows, was simply astonishing. Gombrich’s The Story of Art or paintings by artists such as Lucian Freud and Frank You could see and feel their impact Auerbach. AJR Team everywhere. The Academy Cinema Chief Executive Michael Newman on Oxford Street, owned by George But that was not the end of the Finance Director David Kaye Hoellering, or Ackermans Chocolates at extraordinary story of the impact of Heads of Department the top of Goldhurst Terrace; eating places refugees on Britain. A second and Community & Volunteer Services Carol Hart like Cosmo’s, the Dorice and Café Daquise third generation have emerged whose HR & Administration Karen Markham in South Kensington; the Penguin Pool contribution is also just as spectacular. Educational Grants & Projects Alex Maws at London Zoo, designed by Berthold Again, this has touched every area of AJR Journal Lubetkin; Selfridge’s, where Ernst Stern did British life. Broadcasters like Dame Jenny Editor Jo Briggs the Christmas decorations, or Simpson’s in Abramsky, who ran Radio Five Live and Editorial Assistant Lilian Levy Contributing Editor David Herman Piccadilly, where Moholy-Nagy arranged was the daughter of Professor Chimen Secretarial/Advertisements Karin Pereira displays. Any bus stop, because Hans Continued on page 2 1 AJR Journal | June 2019 The gift that gives on refugee charity based in New York. Closer to home, significant second- generation figures within the AJR, include giving (cont.) Other politicians are also the children of Chairman Andrew Kaufman MBE, the Abramsky, and Mark Damazer CBE, refugees. Dame Margaret Hodge is the son of two refugees. Antony Grenville, former Controller of Radio 4 and the son daughter of Jewish-German refugees. formerly of this parish and a leading of a Polish-Jewish deli owner in north Lord (Michael) Howard is the son of historian of German-speaking refugees, is London. Bernat Hecht, born and brought up in the son of two Jews from Vienna. northern Transylvania. Hecht left Romania Academics, of course, such as Jeremy in 1939 and arrived in South Wales, aged There are extraordinary dynasties Adler, emeritus professor of German at 23. His brother and sister were deported such as the three generations of King’s College, London, son of HG Adler; to concentration camps, but survived Borns, Ehrenbergs/Eltons and Freuds, Gustav Born, Professor of Pharmacology and emigrated to Britain after the war. psychoanalysts but also PR people at Cambridge and later at King’s, London, Michael Portillo’s father, Luis Gabriel (Matthew), fashion designers (Bella) was son of the great physicist Max Born; Portillo, was a Spanish republican, forced and novelists (Esther). Some stories are Benjamin Chain, Professor of Cell and to leave Spain after the Spanish Civil War. of getting out in time and what seem Molecular Biology at UCL and son of Ernst Nicholas Clegg’s paternal grandmother, to be relatively smooth assimilation. But Chain, one of the men who discovered Kira von Engelhardt, was a Baroness there are also desperately sad stories of penicillin. Orlando Figes, the acclaimed from Imperial Russia, of German-Russian loss and struggles. No one at the recent Russian historian, is the son of the and Ukrainian origin, whose aristocratic AJR conference on the Kindertransport German-Jewish refugee writer, Eva Figes, family fled the Bolsheviks after the 1917 will forget Jane Merkin’s account of her and Lord John Krebs, a leading figure in Russian Revolution. Baroness Deech is the mother’s lifelong battle with depression. zoology, is the son of Sir Hans Krebs, the daughter of Josef Fraenkel, a Viennese famous biochemist. journalist and historian, and his wife Dora. A key theme of the conference was The parents of David Cameron’s advisor, that, as the first generation passes away, Then there are household names like Steve Hilton, fled Hungary after 1956. we need to listen to the stories of the the comedians David Baddiel, whose second and third generations. They are mother, Sarah (then five months old), Many children and grandchildren of becoming increasingly engaged with escaped from Nazi Germany three weeks refugees became significant cultural the AJR and the experiences of their before the outbreak of World War II, figures. These include the composer parents and grandparents. Often this is an and Ben Elton, son of physicist Professor Alexander Goehr, son of the German- extraordinary legacy. But it also has a dark Lewis Elton, born Ludwig Ehrenberg, and Jewish composer and conductor Walter side which has haunted many lives. nephew of the Tudor historian GR Elton, Goehr; the publishers Ursula Owen, one born Gottfried Ehrenberg. of the founders of Virago, Tom Maschler, David Herman whose parents left Berlin in 1938 and In the media there are journalists like Tom Peter Halban, son of physicist Hans Halban Bower, Anatole Kaletsky, Lord Daniel and stepson of Isaiah Berlin; the famous Finkelstein and Alex Brummer. Kaletsky’s children’s writer, Judith Kerr, daughter of THE AJR CRUISE IS mother was born in Odessa just before the the great Weimar theatre critic, Alfred Russian Revolution. Her parents managed Kerr; and the pop musician Mark Knopfler SETTING SAIL AGAIN to get onto the second last train out of from Dire Straits, son of Erwin Knopfler, Leningrad before the Nazis completed a Hungarian Jew who fled in 1939 and P&O Ventura their encirclement. Finkelstein’s mother, settled in Glasgow. Mirjam, survived Bergen-Belsen, while his father Ludwik (Ludwig) Finkelstein OBE Some, of course, are quintessentially was born in Lviv (now in Ukraine) and English. Take Stephen Fry, for example. 6 – 13 SEPTEMBER 2019 became Professor of Measurement and He grew up in the village of Booton in SOUTHAMPTON – NORWEGIAN FJORDS Instrumentation at City University London. Norfolk. He went to Cambridge and at Stavanger, Olden, Innvikfjorden, Fitzbillies, the famous cake-shop near Nordfjord, Alesund, Bergen Brummer said that, ‘My wonderful father, Pembroke College, you can see his Prices: Twin/Double Cabin Single Cabin just like Ralph Miliband, arrived in Britain recommendation of their Chelsea buns. inside from £874 p.p. inside from £1399 p.p. on a boat as a refugee from what is now Perhaps his most famous acting role outside from £1150 p.p. outside from £1859 p.p. balcony from £1530 p.p. balcony from £2500 p.p. Ukraine, in 1939.’ ‘My father’s parents,’ was as the butler Jeeves in Jeeves and Brummer said, ‘died at Auschwitz. His Wooster. What could be more English? His Prices include all meals and coach transport younger sisters survived the horror of the maternal grandparents, though, Martin to and from Southampton from London. Any excursions from the ship are extra. death camps, partly because Nazi doctors and Rosa Neumann, were Hungarian An AJR staff member will be available at all found them useful as human guinea pigs Jews, who emigrated from Šurany (now times for any assistance or queries and will during their eugenics experiments.’ in Slovakia) in 1927. Rosa’s
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