January 2021
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ESTMINSTER Volume XII No.1 UARTERLY January 2021 A Jewish society wedding c.1892 Anglo-Jewish High Society The Philippines and the Holocaust The Children Smuggler ‘The Little Doctor’ From the Rabbi ‘Woe is me, perhaps because I have have identified; they suggest that, as the sinned, the world around me is being Festival itself marks increased darkness, darkened and returning to its state of let the candles reflect this reality too. chaos and confusion; this then is the Remove one each day, starting with the kind of death to which I have been eighth. The view of the School of Hillel sentenced from Heaven!’ So he began may also acknowledge that the world is keeping an eight-day fast. getting darker, but the ritual response is the opposite. When the world gets darker But as he observed the winter solstice we bring more light. and noted the day getting increasingly longer, he said, ‘This is the world’s So let us pay respect to both views. course’, and he set forth to keep an eight- Together we have the strength in our day festival. community to acknowledge the darkness in the world, and also to bring more light. (Adapted from the Babylonian Talmud, Many of us in the last year have stepped tractate Avodah Zara, page 8a.) up to contact and care for other members of our community, and we have benefited Together we have the from the resulting conversations and How do we respond to increased relations. We have found new creativity darkness? In Franz Kafka’s short story, strength in our to ensure our togetherness, building Before the Law, a man spends his whole community to special High Holy Days. We have seen life waiting. His eyesight begins to fail, our learning for all ages, and, in many and he doesn’t know ‘whether the world acknowledge the ways, our community goes from strength is really darker or whether his eyes are darkness in the world to strength, finding connection, song, only deceiving him’. support, inspiration and motivation. Kafka’s protagonist does not know The story conveys a world in which we In this etiology of Chanukah, with its ‘whether the world is really darker or live with uncertainty, fear and loneliness, charming psychological and natural whether his eyes are only deceiving him’. with ageing and death, in which we don’t resonances, the Festival is an We are brave enough together to see the know if we are holding ourselves back or acknowledgement of the darkness darkness, and to bring light. being held back, whether the world is around us. The human in the story has a really darker or our eyes are only vital insight that he, and we, might have deceiving us. Some of us may have felt missed; after fasting to reverse the increased darkness recently, in our darkness that brings such fear, the world altered, narrower reality, in a heightened gets lighter, and the human might have awareness of the chaos and injustice attributed this to his action, but instead around us, and in the sadness that can he has learnt, ‘this is the world’s course’. come with this time of year. Chanukah In the darkness, the whole world revolves Rabbi Benji Stanley that we so joyfully celebrated last month entirely and frighteningly around him in can guide us in how to respond to his head, but he moves from fear to a increased darkness. broader perspective. We see in this story the need to acknowledge darkness and to The Festival falls in the darkest time of the year. With each day the world gets assimilate it into a more mature darker, for unlike most festivals that fall awareness of the world around us. in the middle of the Hebrew month, As a Festival that marks increased Chanukah begins towards the end of darkness, a famous disagreement about Kislev, so the moon is also at its thinnest. how to light your candles, takes on more While explanations of Chanukah light. In the Talmud, Shabbat 21b:- normally focus on the victory of a small group of Maccabean fighters over a larger ‘The School of Shammai maintains: on the first day eight lights are lit and Hellenizing force - or the miracle of a small amount of oil lasting for eight days thereafter they are gradually reduced; - there is another story to be found about but the School of Hillel says: on the first day one is lit and thereafter they are Chanukah in the Talmud:- progressively increased…’ Our Rabbis taught: When Adam HaRishon (the first human, Adam) saw The view of the school of Shammai in fact the day getting gradually shorter, he said, reflects an aspect of the Festival that we 3 Around the World border, and thence to safety. As will be children to stay alive during an escape. The Child Smuggler: obvious, travelling with large groups of Thanks to art lessons in Limoges, Marcel children was anything but easy. But Marcel Marceau had another useful talent - as a forger. He Marceau had a secret weapon - his began by altering his passport, giving (1923-2007) training as a mime. himself a less obviously Jewish name. His Marcel was born in Strasbourg, France in initials did not change, but Mangel 1923. His father, Charles Mangel, was a became Marceau (chosen as a patriotic kosher butcher originally from Będzin, gesture, because one of Napoleon’s most Poland. His mother, Anne Werzberg, celebrated generals was a Marceau). With came from Yabluniv, in present-day just ink and crayons, he began doctoring Ukraine. When the boy was four years old, identification papers for dozens of young the family moved to Lille and, after French people. As German youths were France's invasion by Nazi Germany, they drafted into Hitler’s armies in their fled to Limoges. Marcel was then sixteen. hundreds of thousands, German factories were short of labour, and the Reichstag Since his mother had taken him to the issued orders to commandeer boys and cinema aged five, Marcel had been girls in their late teens from the occupied fascinated by Charlie Chaplin. The silent countries. comedian, beloved around the world as ‘the Little Tramp’ in a shabby bowler hat Marceau altered the birth dates on official and tail-coat, made the boy cry with documents to make teenagers seem even laughter. After Hitler rose to power, younger than they were. Instead of being Marcel would entertain his friends with a shipped off to be slave labourers on ‘Bip the Clown’ routine, imitating Chaplin as the Führer, armaments production lines in Germany, complete with stick-on moustache and the youngsters could remain in France - penguin walk. His hero worship grew into often to join the Resistance. As the years pass, more and more an obsession with the theatre and, by his discoveries of heroic acts, performed in The actor also posed as a Boy Scout leader teens, he was determined to be an actor – the 1940s, are gradually being revealed. to trick the authorities. He went disguised although his father wanted him to take The Westminster Quarterly is taking as a Scout leader and took twenty-four over the butcher’s shop. pleasure in recounting some of them and Jewish children, also in Scout uniforms, here is yet another amazing story which Marcel’s cousin Georges Loinger, a soldier through the forests to the border, where tells how a brilliant actor used his skills to with the French army, had been captured someone else was waiting to take them rescue children from under the noses of and sent to a German prisoner-of-war into Switzerland. the Nazis. Everyone knows the late camp from which he escaped and made Once, when he unexpectedly ran into a brilliant Mime Artist, a star most famous his way back to France, where he tracked group of German soldiers towards the end for his stage persona, ‘Bip the Clown’. He down the Mangel family. Marcel had to of the war, he pretended he was a member referred to mime as ‘the art of silence’ and join the Resistance, he said - but the of the French Army and called for (non- he performed professionally worldwide for teenager was too young to join a guerrilla existent) back-up. The Germans fled! over sixty years - but how many know of brigade. Instead, he had different skills his daring and courage during the Second that made him invaluable to the Free World war? French Forces. Loinger knew how Marcel could help him. At an orphanage in the Marceau Marceau was recruited to help Parisian suburb of Sèvres, ninety Jewish the French Resistance by a cousin, who children were being cared for in secret. was a commander in the secret unit, OSE They could not go out, or even play (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants), a noisily, for fear of being discovered. The Jewish relief group that smuggled Jewish OSE hoped to spirit them out of France to children from occupied France to neutral safety, but until then Marcel could countries. The group was part of the entertain them. French Jewish Resistance in France, (Organisation Juive de Combat - OJC, The budding actor did more than that. aka Armée Juive). The OJC, which was Using his gift for communication without composed of nine clandestine Jewish words, he began training the orphans in networks, rescued thousands of children the art of staying silent - moving without and adults during the Holocaust in noise, speaking in sign language. His France. Their mission was to evacuate the lessons quickly formed part of the OSE children who had been hiding in a French curriculum of physical education and Marceau in 2004 orphanage and get them to the Swiss survival skills - all aimed at helping the 4 Marceau’s exploits were just a few of the Dramatic Art in the Sarah Bernhardt daring, and creative, feats pulled off by Theatre in Paris, where he studied with A Lockdown Poem the French Resistance.